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Excerpts — A few of our favorite quotations
(from the 2000+ in this book)
(See also our Quote of the Day, which is often
taken from The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations.)
[ Back to Texts On Line, Books, or Reviews ]
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"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
—Letter to Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887
Power corrupts;
Absolute power corrupts absolutely;
God is all powerful;
Draw your own conclusions.
"ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate
their incapacity."
—The Devil's Dictionary
"War is the health of the state."
—The State
"This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what
you like, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with
both hands and make the most of it."
—Attributed
"Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before."
—Attributed
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
"For the right amount of money, you're willing to eat Alpo."
—Quoted in The Sporting News, February 1, 1988
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being
oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."
—Quoted in Propaganda Review, Spring 1989
"The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous,
sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered
under one flag since the end of the Middle Ages."
—Minority Report
"Having your fate rest in the hands of a jury is the same as entrusting yourself to
surgery with a mentally retarded doctor."
—Quoted in The Match!, No. 28
"Christians call it faith . . . I call it the herd . . ."
—Beyond Good and Evil
". . . that little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account
the laws of nature are constantly broken—such an enhancement of every kind
of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt.
And yet Christianity owes it triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity."
—The Anti-Christ
"If you wanted to get America destroyed, if you were a malevolent, evil force and
you said, How can I turn God against America? What can I do to get God mad at the
people of America to cause this great land to vomit out the people?' Well, I'd pick
five things. I'd begin to have incest. I'd begin to commit adultery wherever possible,
all over the country, and sexuality. I'd begin to have them offering up and killing
their babies. I'd get them having homosexual relations, and then I'd have them
having sex with animals."
—Quoted in the San Francisco Examiner, September 7, 1986
"I think we could put Adolf Hitler in center field and fans would cheer for him if he hit
.350."
—Quoted in The Sporting News, March 13, 1989
"Adam was human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake,
he wanted it because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then
he would have eaten the serpent."
—Pudd'nhead Wilson
"All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the
despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many,
and ochlocracies [government by the masses] are unjust to the few. High hopes were once
formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the
people, for the people."
—The Soul of Man Under Socialism
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