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Quotable Comey

In 1975, the Atomic Industrial Forum had invited David Comey to tell the nuclear industry how it could be more credible with the public. He was a high-priced consultant; not a lobbyist, an historian. Comey gave them his standard answer: To become credible you must tell the truth.

— Albert Bates quoting Comey at The Great Change [h/t Moisha Blechman]

Quotable Sagan

It often happens that scientists say: “You know, that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken.” And then they actually change their minds, and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

— Carl Sagan (CSICOP Keynote Address, 1987)

Quotable Simon

Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote.

— U.S. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon (1927-2000) 

Quotable West

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

— Attributed to novelist Rebecca West, née Cicely Isabel Fairfield (1892-1983)

Quotable Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.

— FREDERICK DOUGLASS (WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION SPEECH, 1857)

Quotable Mencken

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

— Henry louis (H.L.) Mencken 

Quotable Dash

So, who is this man? He’s the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock. He’s a non-Christian, arugula-eating, drug-using follower of unabashedly old-fashioned liberal teachings from the hippies and folk music stars of the 60s. And he believes in science, in things that science can demonstrate like climate change and Pi having a value more specific than “3”, and in extending responsible benefits to his employees while encouraging his company to lead by being environmentally responsible.

Every single person who’d attack Steve Jobs on any of these grounds is, demonstrably, worse at business than Jobs. They're unqualified to assert that liberal values are bad for business, when the demonstrable, factual, obvious evidence contradicts those assertions.

It’s a choice whether you, or anyone else, wants to accept the falsehood that liberal values are somehow in contradiction with business success at a global scale. Indeed, it would seem that many who claim to be pro-business are trying to “save” us from exactly the inclusive, creative, tolerant values that have made America's most successful company possible. I side with the makers, the creators, and the inventors, and it's about time that the pack of clamoring would-be politicians be put on the defensive for attacking the values of those of us on this side.

— Anil DaSh on Steve Jobs

Quotable Spikes

It is what it is, but it ain’t what you think.

— New England Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes

Quotable Oglesby

What gives you hope gives me bitterness—this balmy night, soft spring, sweet air. Life looks so little and death looks so big. You don't misunderstand me. What’s worth working for is simply worth working for—on its own present terms, on the face value of what it is. I mean, I’m not in the movement like a businessman’s in business, waiting for the payoff on the investment. The value of my commitment is not pending anything, the commitment isn't waiting to be ratified by success or refuted by failure. Life is better than death, one sides with life always.

— Anti-war activist CARL Oglesby [h/t Daniel Radosh]

Quotable Hersey

[T]yranny has finally achieved its foul purpose when among the many, scattered at large, there are acquiescence, apathy, complacency, bland acceptance of outrage, pride in vulgar triumphs, blurring of the meaning of words, confusion in moral standards—in short, a blight of communal character. It is when people who are thought of as good solid citizens, whose who make up the backbone of the populace, become touched by this blight and do not realize it, become not only infected but the infectors—this is when tyranny has won the day. The ‘good’ citizens then say: What a beautiful day! What a fine year this has been! Are you going to the amphitheater this afternoon?.

— John Hersey, The Conspiracy (1972)

Quotable Pynchon

There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.

— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Quotable Toynbee

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.

— Arnold Toynbee