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"Logic admits of no compromise. The essence of politics is compromise. It is therefore not strange that some of the most important and most useful political instruments in the world should be among the most illogical compositions that ever were penned." Thomas Babington Macaulay   "We Westerners must each firmly denounce whatever is American in his house, his clothes, his soul." Andre Siegfried   "Beyond question, an amazing experiment is being made here, an experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism, politics and technology. It would be a mistake to allow feeling aroused by contemplating the harsh deeds and extravagant assertions that have accompanied the Fascist process (as all other immense historical changes) to obscure the potentialities and lessons of the adventure–no, not adventure, but destiny riding without any saddle and bridle across the historic peninsula that bridges the world of antiquity and our modern world." Charles Beard   "The people here have a seven hour work day now and only work till three o'clock on Saturdays with Sundays off. They have socialism, which means they do not pay for their apartments. As for medical care, the money for these comes from the profit they help to create in their labor, which in U.S. goes to capitalist. Here in Moscow, there is a housing shortage because of the war but it's not bad now. There is no unemployment here and in fact a slight shortage of manpower even with a 250,000,000 population. This is because this country is building at a pace which will put it first in all fields of endeavor in 15 years. Most important is the fact they do not work for employers at all, a milkman or a factory supervisor are both socially equal. This does not mean they have the same salary of course. This just means that their work goes for the common good of all." Lee Harvey Oswald   "The Nazis' contempt for Christianity's emphasis upon human suffering was robustly rebuffed: 'By foolishly representing Christian humility as a self-degradation and an unheroic attitude, the repulsive pride of these innovators only makes itself an object of ridicule.' Pacelli also found time to condemn the Nazis' obsessions with greatness, heroism, strength and so forth, not to speak of their athletic cult of the body, often cultivated at the expense not only of the mind but of those unfortunates the Nazis were compulsorily sterilising. He found a moment for a shaft of sarcasm: 'The Church of Christ, which in all ages up to those which are nearest to us counts more heroic confessors and martyrs than any other moral society, certainly does not need to receive instruction from such quarters about heroic sentiment and action.' Pacelli used Natural Law doctrine to confound the Nazi philosophy of 'Right is what is advantageous to the people.' The encyclical stated that 'the believer has an inalienable right to profess his faith and to practise it in the manner suited to him. Laws which suppress or render difficult the profession and practice of this faith are contrary to natural law.' Nazi attempts to monopolise the education of children at the expense of their parents or the Churches were attacked too: 'Laws or other regulations concerning schools, which take no account of the rights of the parents given them by natural law, or which by threats or violence nullify them, contradict the natural law and are essentially immoral.'" Michael Burleigh   "Mobile telephones are amazingly ubiquitous in Africa, even among people who are not particularly well off, often in a form of shared ownership. Just look at the effect that that's had on Kenyan farmers finding markets for their produce. They call ahead and find where the best prices are and send their produce there." Matt Ridley   "We don't have to choose between a world based on terror and one based on profit, even if the latter claims to defend certain spiritual values." Jacques Madaule   "He knew how many Germans there were in this country, how many pacifists, and how many time-serving politicians stood ready to betray the country in its time of peril. If President Wilson had not defied Germany he would have been a traitor, and any man who refuses to back the President in this crisis is worse than a traitor." Clarence Darrow   "With Roosevelt's approval, General Hugh Johnson, head of the NRA and designer of its Blue Eagle symbol, organized a massive campaign to rally support for the NRA. 'Those who are not with us are against us,' Johnson orated, 'and the way to show that you are a part of this great army of the New Deal is to insist on this symbol of solidarity.' Johnson denounced 'chiselers' and 'slackers'; his office plastered the land with billboard displays; distributed posters, lapel buttons, and stickers; dispatched volunteer speakers across the country; and published Helpful Hints and Pointed Paragraphs to provide them with The Word. Roosevelt himself, in a fireside chat, compared the Blue Eagle to a 'bright badge' worn by soldiers in night attacks to help separate friend from foe." John Garraty   "According to the data, the average age of midlevel party leaders is 34, and within the government, it's 44. One can indeed say that Germany today is being led by its youth." Joseph Goebbels   "You wished, and still wish, to make your own, your own truly extreme fanaticism, into a rule of common life. You wish for an absurdity, an impossibility, a total negation of nature, man, and society. This wish is fatal because it forces you to spend your strength in vain, always shooting to miss. No man, however strong he is, and no society, however perfect its discipline and however powerful its organization, can conquer nature." Sergey Nechayev   "The new openness toward the capitalist world was heralded on December 19, 1978, when Boeing announced Beijing's purchase of three 747 jetliners and Coca Cola unveiled a deal to build a bottling plant in Shanghai. The next month Deng paid the first visit by a ruler of the People's Republic to the United States. He toured assembly lines, laid a wreath on Martin Luther King's grave, and took the controls of a space ship on a simulated mission. In Seattle he got a taste of American free speech: he was greeted with protests not only by supporters of Taiwan but also by a group of thirty American Maoists who staged a 'Little Red Book March' through the university district, chanting 'death to Deng' and 'Long Live Mao Tse-tung.' In Houston he was feted with a barbeque and a rodeo, where he posed in a ten-gallon hat, and aides confided that he was a fan of western movies. He told a luncheon audience that he had come 'to learn from the American people, creators of an advanced civilization.'" Joshua Muravchik   "There is in the world and in our country a cluster of ideas which represent the most advanced that the progressive and revolutionary movement has produced over the past half century; we are interested in seeing them asserted at school." Giorgio Bini   "I request with all the earnestness such a subject demands, that our good religious people in England will not attempt to disturb these slaves in the happiness and independence which they enjoy in their present condition, For while they are under humane masters—and almost all slave proprietors are now humane, for they know it to be to their interest to be so—the West Indian 'slave' as he is called, is greatly more comfortable and happy than the British or Irish operative manufacturer or day-labourer." Robert Owen   "All co-operative schemes which provide equal remuneration to the skilled and industrious and the ignorant and idle, must work their own downfall, or by this unjust plan of remuneration they must of necessity eliminate the valuable members—who find their services reaped by the indigent—and retain only the improvident, unskilled, and vicious members." Robert Dale Owen   "We should not determine the type of things children are taught in primary schools by the things a doctor, engineer, teacher, economist, or administrator need to know. Most of our pupils will never be any of these things. We should determine the type of things taught in the primary schools by the things which the boy or girl ought to know—that is, the skills he ought to acquire and the values he ought to cherish if he, or she, is to live happily and well in a socialist and predominantly rural society, and contribute to the improvement of life there." Julius Nyerere   "May the school, in all of its stages and in all of its teachings, educate the youth of Italy so as to make it understand the historical climate of the revolution!" Benito Mussolini   "Somalia. Started off as a humanitarian mission then changed into a nation-building mission and that's where the mission went wrong. The mission was changed. And as a result, our nation paid a price. And so I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war." George Walker Bush   "It is remarkable how prescient his observations were and how fully they anticipated so many subsequent studies that echoed his ideas while ignoring him completely. He understood the overwhelming urge toward routine, which was the enemy of original thinking or insight: 'Everything we think, feel, or do often becomes automatic and our conscious life is unburdened of it.' The familiar was not only comfortable but safe, shielding one from contradiction and criticism. Routine did not require new thought or energy, whereas going beyond it put one in a place without clear rules or data for making decisions. 'Carrying out a new plan and acting according to a customary one,' asserted Schumpeter, 'are things as different as making a road and walking along it.'" Maury Klein   "The United States watch-making industry claimed protection for many years on the grounds that its skilled craftsmen would be essential in wartime. Even though we have had a strong Navy for quite some time, our maritime industry has enjoyed protection for 200 years. And, for some reason, the Export Administration Act, which allegedly guards against the exportation of sensitive goods and technology to protect national security, restricts the export of unprocessed red cedar and horses. (But only if the horses travel by sea!)" Alan Blinder   "He believed that the issues that divided Catholics and Protestants in Europe at the time were not so insuperable that some common ground could not be found. Much of the problem, he insisted, lay not in basic dogma but in the particular, nonessential beliefs and customs that had developed within each tradition. 'Most of the objections that can be made against Rome regard the practice of the people rather than the dogmas,' he wrote in 1682. If only one could discover and properly interpret the core beliefs that unite all Christians—and distill them from the layers of ecclesiastic organization, ceremonial observance, and sectarian understanding within which they had become encrusted—there would be a possibility of reuniting the faithful within a single church. Leibniz would begin his reasoning with the Catholics and Lutherans in the German lands, but his hopes extended to a reconciliation throughout all of European Christendom." Steven Nadler   "In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say: 'This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter.' It is more certain than consols, and payment of income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you." Arnold Bennett   "Human beings are worthy of the highest respect, but not all opinions and beliefs are worthy of respect and tolerance. There are some who believe in fascism, white supremacy, the inferiority of women. Must they be respected?" Maryam Namazie   "We are back with Jennings and the secular Holy Church whose congregation is The World. America has meaning—or success—only as it realizes natural right and reason throughout the universe. As D.H. Lawrence phrased it, the 'true myth of America' involves the dream of perpetual youth. There is no past, no present—only the Future. America 'starts old, old, wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth.' Or, as Crevecoeur put it at the time of the Revolution, 'the American is a new man.' Jefferson worked it out very neatly. 'I strongly suggest that our geographical peculiarities may call for a different code of natural law to govern relations with other nations.' But, quite in keeping with his lower-class bluntness, Thomas Paine said it all in twelve words. 'We have it in our power to begin the world over again.'" William Appleman Williams   "As to whatever may depend on enterprise, we need not fear to be outdone by any people on earth. It may almost be said, that enterprise is our element." Alexander Hamilton   "On this one point he was specific; he would cut government spending 25 per cent. At Sioux City, Iowa, in September, Governor Roosevelt stated: 'I accuse the present Administration of being the greatest spending Administration in peace times in all our history. It is an Administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs and the reduced earning power of the people.' In Pittsburgh the next month, he declared: 'I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign. In my opinion, it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business.' One of his New Deal administrators reflected subsequently: 'Given later developments, the campaign speeches often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each other's lines.'" William Leuchtenburg   "Establishing the liberties of America will not only make that people happy, but will have some effect in diminishing the misery of those, who in other parts of the world groan under despotism, by rendering it more circumspect, and inducing it to govern with a lighter hand." Benjamin Franklin   "The Phoenician merchants who sailed the Mediterranean were denounced by Hebrew prophets like Isaiah and Greek intellectuals like Homer. But trading networks enabled the ancient Greeks to develop their alphabet, mathematics and science, and later fostered innovation in the trading hubs of the Roman Empire, India, China, Arabia, Renaissance Italy and other European capitals." John Tierney   "The camera was received coldly in the court room at first; it was a witness, with an extremely long memory. The judges were never quite certain of my intentions, while the defense lawyers and their clients probably suspected that I was working on behalf of a completely compromised institution, state-controlled television, and refused to co-operate with me. But this did not last long. After only a few days, the lawyers noticed that whenever the camera was present during the hearings there were either no jail sentences at all, or they were suspended by the judges. There was a simple explanation for this. The judges were afraid that the reels of film recording their faces at the very moment they delivered unjust prison sentences could one day be used as evidence against them. The lawyers then started to tell me in advance of their clients' cases, calculating that they were likely to get off with a shorter sentence. The camera in the court room had become a desirable and welcome presence for them. There were several such cases taking place in military or civilian tribunals every day, and so in order to satisfy all my 'bookings,' I had to try to get hold of a second camera. While it was still officially possible, I used to set up the two cameras in the courts without even bothering to check whether they were loaded with film or not." Krzysztof Kieslowski   "Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly." Albert Einstein