Linux Politics

[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
                -- Winston Churchill

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when
a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent
songs.  I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as
those without might see and hear.  They told a tale which was then altogether
beyond my feeble comprehension: they were tones, loud, long and deep,
breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest
anguish.  Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God
for deliverance from chains.
                -- Frederick Douglass

So from the depths of its enchantment, Terra was able to calculate a course
of action.  Here at last was an opportunity to consort with Dirbanu on a
friendly basis -- great Durbanu which, since it had force fields which Earth
could not duplicate, must of necessity have many other things Earth could
use; mighty Durbanu before whom we would kneel in supplication (with purely-
for-defense bombs hidden in our pockets) with lowered heads (making invisible
the knife in our teeth) and ask for crumbs from their table (in order to
extrapolate the location of their kitchens).
                -- Theodore Sturgeon, "The World Well Lost"

... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
                -- Voltarine de Cleyre

So many men, so many opinions; every one his own way.
                -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)

Some men rob you with a six-gun -- others with a fountain pen.
                -- Woodie Guthrie

        Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees
on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert
Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of
employees in the Department of Agriculture at no time exceeds the number of
farmers in America."
                -- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"

Stamp out organized crime!!  Abolish the IRS.

        Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.  Five years later?
Six?  It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that
never comes again.  San Fransisco in the middle sixties was a very special time
and place to be a part of.  Maybe it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long
run...  There was madness in any direction, at any hour.  If not across the
Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...  You could
strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we
were doing was right, that we were winning...
        And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply prevail.  There was no point in fighting
-- on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest
of a high and beautiful wave.  So now, less than five years later, you can go
up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes
you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson

Such a foolish notion, that war is called devotion, when the greatest
warriors are the ones who stand for peace.