Mudgeon's Musings: Old Ben Saw Him Coming

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Old Ben Saw Him Coming

"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1735)

Reference: Franklin: Writings, Lemay, ed., Library of America
(1198)

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Timely Truths

“The Roman Republic fell not because of the ambition of Caesar but because it had already long ceased to be a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who formed in war the terrible Roman Legion had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it.”
. . . Theodore Roosevelt

"Corruptisima republica plurimae leges." (The more corrupt a republic, the more numerous its laws.)
. . . Tacitus

"Work is the curse of the drinking class."
. . . Unknown

Observations, Wit, and Wisdom

When seconds count, the police are just minutes away.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
. . . H. L. Mencken

The collection of clowns who hold sway atop Capitol Hill are divided into two bodies: the lower one is the House of Reprehensibles and the upper one is the U.S. Skanksty a.k.a. the House of Gasbags.

There are very few problems that cannot be solved through the judicious application of a sufficient quantity of high explosives.