"Warm Body" Democracy

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.... [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.
-Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Never Learned Anything

What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher

Funny Because It's True

All I want out of life is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit. That's why I've decided to transfer to Business School.
-Guenter the monkey, "Mars University", Futurama

Never Compromise

No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.
-Rorschach, Watchmen

Independence Day

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.
-John Adams, from a letter to Abigail Adams.
(The Declaration of Independence was adopted officially two days later, hence Adams referring to the second rather than the fourth.)

Rocks

I am allergic to rocks hitting me in the face.
-Mike Rowe, Dirty Jobs, "Wind Farm Technician"

Unwatched

What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing.
-David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion

Vows

I will now read these special vows which Homer has prepared for this occasion. "Do you, Marge, take Homer, in richness and in poorness" -- poorness is underlined -- "in impotence and in potence, in quiet solitude or blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey-navigated"... [consults the notecards] ... and it goes on like this.
-Rev. Lovejoy, The Simpsons, "A Milhouse Divided"

Pants

Pants. Then spaceship. In that order.
-Jaime Reyes, Blue Beetle #24

Beans

You gotta respect a girl who likes beans.
-Darin Labar