One-Liners

How do you plagiarize a cliche?

Quoted from: Cobb

[O]n the one hand there are well-developed cultures, which could have good government or good anarchy, while on the other hand there are poorly-developed cultures, which could have only bad government or bad anarchy.

Quoted from: Arnold Kling

Via: Chicago Boyz

In the end, wearing snarky t-shirts is the mark of someone who doesn't want to be responsible, but just make powerful noise.

Quoted from: Cobb

You can't tell the truth to strangers.

Quoted from: Sippican Cottage

The reality is that it just doesn't matter very much at all whether Barack Obama serves George Bush's fourth term or Mitt Romney serves Barack Obama's second term.

Quoted from: Kn@ppster

via: Aretae

[R]eal hiring is a function of real demand, which in turn is a function of purchasing power.

Quoted from: Karl Denninger

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Quoted from: Stephen Wright via Theo Spark

Definitions reside in people, not in words.

Quoted from: Dalton Kehoe; Effective Communication Skills, Lecture 3

Moral people cannot depend on legality alone to guide them.

Quoted from: Walter E. Williams

Right now, they all support positions I don’t hold.

Quoted from: Ron Paul, in an interview with CNN after South Carolina’s 2012 primary.

Evil comes in many guises, although it usually follows patterns.

Quoted from: Neo-neocon

Debt at the government level has become the accumulated losses for a society that refuses to confront its problems.

Quoted from: Commentor “Roundtine” at Vox Popoli

A Christianity which is not basically mystical must become either a political ideology or a mindless fundamentalism.

Quoted from: Behold the Spirit by Alan Watts

Only you can shut the fuck up.

Quoted from: A training session with Quorum Security.

There is nothing, nothing, that politics cannot reduce to ash.

Quoted from: Mencius Moldbug

The privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion.

Quoted from: Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle Corporation.

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And a two-line corollary from Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems:

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

The more laws you have, the less relevant guilt becomes.

Quoted from: The Last Psychiatrist

H/T: Maggie’s Farm

If the law is not reasonable, the behavior of those who reject it often will not be either.

Quoted from: Vox Day

Short-term, uncertain duration "tax cuts" are not tax cuts at all, but deficit-financed spending.

Quoted from: Mike Munger

A month after his historic victory at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto said:

A military man can scarcely pride himself on having "smitten a sleeping enemy"; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten.

Betraying secrets is a weak form of heroism, if it can be considered heroic at all. It is a sneak attack. If your life was on the line, would you rather rely on a WikiLeaker or a warrior?

Perhaps much of the outrage at Mr. Assange is displacement. Instead of feeling shame in themselves (or their government), the anger is refocused on the one who exposed them.

If the secrets were important, why were they not protected better? Who was responsible for vetting whichever scoundrels betrayed the team?