Freebsd Fortunes 3

Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
steroid-free fitness center.
                -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about
her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad
nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democracy can only be measured on the existence of an opposition.
                -- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]

Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
                -- Senator Soaper

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who
will get the blame.
                -- Laurence J. Peter

Democracy is also a form of worship.
It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
                -- H.L. Mencken

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
                -- Arman de Caillavet, 1913

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half
of the people are right more than half of the time.
                -- E.B. White

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and
deserve to get it good and hard.
                -- H.L. Mencken, "Little Book in C major", 1916