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Sir Humphrey Appleby (Character) - Quotes

Sir Humphrey Appleby: East Yemen, isn't that a democracy? Sir Richard Wharton: Its full name is the Peoples' Democratic Republic of East Yemen. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Ah I see, so it's a communist dictatorship.

The Real Helen Thomas | National Review Online

In the movie Animal House, the Deltas are put on trial for their antics. When offered a chance to defend themselves, the best argument the fraternity’s president can come up with is, “But sir, Delta Tau Chi has a long tradition of existence both to its members and the community at large.”

Indianas Law Is Not the Return of Jim Crow

But we live in an age where non-compliance with the Left’s agenda must be cast as bigotry. Everyone is free to celebrate as instructed. This is what liberals think liberty means today.

Waiting For Baba Ramdev

Truth is, politics is not reformed by apolitical people (by which I mean people who are not familiar with the politics and disdainful of it) entering into politics, but only by politicians.

Quote by Michael Crichton: “You know what's wrong with scientific power? I...”

“You know what's wrong with scientific power? It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.” ― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

Robert Heinlein | OpenDepth

Any social organization does well enough if it isn't rigid. The framework doesn't matter as long as there is enough looseness to permit that one man in a multitude to display his genius. Most so-called social scientists seem to think that organization is everything. It is almost nothing — except when it is a straitjacket. It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of zeros. ~ Robert A. Heinlein in Glory Road

Indian Prime Minister Modi 'appalled' by 'shocking' statue built to worship him - People - News - The Independent

Modi was unseated in a Delhi state assembly election today by the anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party. This is a huge setback for the PM.

AIB is guilty, not of offending, but of not being fair to themselves

God knows that this country could get used to laughing at itself. And God knows that it’s really hard to get this country to laugh at itself

Murti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is much more difficult to focus on God as the unmanifested than God with form, due to human beings having the need to perceive via the senses.[8]

Dude, this party is not happening ! ~ Something like life

I will repeat what I have said earlier, coming decade will be marked by ascendancy of libertarians/liberals in intellectual circle. Yet, is there any attempt to understand nuance of coalition making by "liberals". No, sir ! It is all grandstanding and unbearable smugness.

Brown Pundits: Pakistan: Litfests and Bookfairs – Two Worlds? by Ajmal Kamal

Muslims came to the Subcontinent (from Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Andalusia, the Balkans, wherever) to spread Islam in this infidel region and rule here. They (we) ruled Hindustan for a glorious thousand years, after which – because we had become deficient in our religious piety and jihad – we were thrown out of power by the imperialist British. When it was time for the White colonialists to return the lost thrown to us, the wicked non-Muslims (comprising more than 75 percent in the subcontinent, mind it) tried to impose democratic politics to keep us Muslims – born to dominate the world in the name of Allah – deprived of our right to rule India permanently. We defeated them by dividing India and making Pakistan – the fortress of Islam – from where we’ll carry on the jihad to rule not only the entire South Asia but also Afghanistan, Central Asia and beyond. Meanwhile, the foreign enemies (others) are conspiring – with connivance of the enemies inside us (internal others such as our religious and sectarian minorities and their misguided sympathizers) – to defeat our sacred struggle. But we’ll continue to make ourselves (and our women, especially) religiously purer, stronger in faith and sensitive to the conspiracies around us. Once we overcome our enemies, after killing them in large numbers and sacrificing many of our own, we will impose the will of Allah on our land and beyond.

Koenraad Elst: Letter to the organizers of the India Ideas Conclave

Nowadays plenty of soft-brained Christians could be found willing to concede that non-Christians also go to heaven. Silly Hindus would then deduce that Christianity has changed and now allows non-Christians their non-Christian religion, even after death. In fact, these soft-Christians don't represent their Church and official Christian teachings, which haven't changed: outside Jesus no Salvation.

The Age of Alarmists

As political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta perceptively wrote in one of his recent Indian Express pieces: “As critics, we often define our identities by picking out the worst arguments and the worst characters to go after. This is not because of the magnitude of the objective threats they pose. It is because our intellectual victories are easy”.

Losing My Religion Meaning

This title and tag line have thrown some interpreters, but Georgia-born Stipe explained that it’s a Southern expression used when “something has pushed you so far that you would lose your faith over it. Something has pushed you to the nth degree.” In other words, losing your religion is being at your rope’s end; it’s being on the brink. The phrase and the song, therefore, are not really about religion at all, which Stipe is emphatic about. “Some people still think that it's a song about religion; it's not. It's just a song about having a crush."

Faithful, besieged ~ Something like life

And once Pakistan was formed on basis of Islamic identity, its tragic destiny was also decided. For in defining their identity in negation to Hindu identity, Muslim elites had made themselves dependent on their adversary. When the partition eliminated the adversary, the Pakistan intellectuals sought to define themselves either by associating even more strongly with Ummah in a Voldemortian fashion, and at the same time taking a strong adversarial position to India. This is the reason I don't think any reconcilation between India and Pakistan is possible.

Cylindrical Elephants & Spherical Cows ~ Something like life

a dialectical siren song for those chasing intellectual certainty, and the results as predictable, intellectual wreck on treacherous shoals of reality.

Officers Did Not Use Excessive Force in Arresting Garner | National Review Online

Where I do find fault with the officers is in their failure to bring Garner to a seated position as soon as they had him under control. Police trainers have long been aware of a phenomenon known as positional asphyxia, in which a person subdued as Garner was can die if left lying in a prone position for too long. Obese people are known to be at a greater risk of this condition than others. The civil case to follow will likely rest on this lapse as much as it does on the use of force itself.

Officers Did Not Use Excessive Force in Arresting Garner | National Review Online

don’t put a law on the books if you don’t want the cops to enforce it, and don’t ask them to enforce it if you’re not willing to accept the fact that violence will sometimes occur when people resist that enforcement.

Modi, interrupted? (Updated)

5. Its central leadership has been captured by a coterie of hanger-ons, opportunists and careerists, more interested in cuddling up to the warmth that emanates from  corridors of power, and suck from the teats of state than provide leadership.  To summarize, From party of leaders, BJP has become a party of dealers

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - Quotes - IMDb

There's a point, far out there when the structures fail you, and the rules aren't weapons anymore, they're... shackles letting the bad guy get ahead. One day... you may face such a moment of crisis. And in that moment, I hope you have a friend like I did, to plunge their hands into the filth so that you can keep yours clean!

'Women Matter More Than Fetuses' | National Review Online

I am not a doctrinaire pro-lifer, but I find the pro-abortion view that fetuses are mere uterine contents until they are alive outside the womb to be morally tone deaf, utterly unpersuasive, and ideologically far more extreme than the pro-life view.

Bread & Circus

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”

Chris Cillizza's Interesting Error | National Review Online

It is easy to slip into cheap Menckenism on the subject of American voters, but they are, it often seems, insanely stupid. It is a puzzle how Americans, who are the world’s smartest engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and firefighters, allow themselves to get took time after time by the half-bright collection of swindlers and criminals who aspire to rule us. That they also permit themselves to be condescended to by men such as Barack Obama and Jonathan Gruber is mysterious, too, and, contra Chris Cillizza, not to conservatives alone.

Poe's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook."

They Say You Should Break This Grammar Rule - Bloomberg View

Such as “Don’t split an infinitive,” which is absolute nonsense in English but makes sense in Latin: Latin infinitives are one word and can’t be split.