Collected Quotes From Our Mad World

Various online and press sources


"And what do you do?"

Queen Elizabeth II, to Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Brian May


"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

Barack Obama


"Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

Dwight Eisenhower


"You are ignoramus, you are a burro, Mr Danger... or to say it to you in my bad English: [switching languages] You are a donkey, Mr Danger. You are a donkey, Mr George W Bush.

[Returning to Spanish] You are a coward, a killer, a [perpetrator of] genocide, an alcoholic, a drunk, a liar, an immoral person, Mr Danger. You are the worst, Mr Danger. The worst of this planet... A psychologically sick man, I know it."

Hugo Chavez


"We are being told that we have to hope his father succeeds...because his father was black"

Rush Limbaugh on Obama


"The English approach to ideas is not to kill them, but to let them die of neglect"

Jeremy Paxman


"I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war."

Barack Obama


"If You believe the mainstream media hype, you'd think that every time you drive your SUV the Earth's temperature rises six degrees"

Glenn Beck


"I am on the anti-imperialist left." The Stalinist left? "I wouldn't define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe."

George Galloway


"Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so."

Gore Vidal


"It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution, this idea of the separation of church and state"

"I am for enhanced interrogation.  I don't believe waterboarding is torture... I'll do it for charity"

Sean Hannity


"I just wish Hurricane Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else... I wouldn't have rescued them"

"If Americans can go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and its clean, he has nothing, I will apologise to the nation, I will not tust the Bush administration again, alright?"

"I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City...even though its run by blacks."

Bill O'Reilly


"When pasty-faced fat white blokes start blowing planes out of the sky in protest at the Government's anti-obesity guidelines then I will be the first in the queue to be profiled and frisked. I'll assume the position quicker than George Michael on Hampstead Heath.

"But until then I'm afraid young Muslim men should stop bleating about Islamophobia and racism and get used to the idea that if we are going to get our airports back to any sense of normality then they are the people who will be more likely to be stopped and searched.

"I don't understand the fuss about the Monarch passengers who refused to fly with two blokes acting suspiciously on a flight from Malaga. We've been told to be vigilant and that's what these people were being. Now the usual suspects are accusing them of paranoia, racism and Islamophobia....

"If Islam, as we are repeatedly told, really does mean peace then why aren't the million-and-a-half moderates demonstrating that on London's streets? I'm sure that the terrorists' mate and fanatics' friend Ken Livingstone could donate Trafalgar Square for a rally. He could even divert a bit of funding away from flying in mad Muslim clerics who want to slaughter gays and justify suicide bombings in Israeli pizza parlours, to help pay for peace banners.

"Of course there's more chance of me going to paradise and deflowering 72 virgins than this happening.
 
"Despite being told since 9/11 that this isn't a war against Islam I'm increasingly feeling as if Islam is engaged in a real and propaganda war against us and our way of life....

"John Reid now wants to bypass the Human Rights Act and intern terror suspects. He should go further and rip up the Act, secure our borders, investigate every young Muslim who has been to Pakistan and immediately stop the farce of airline restrictions for all and replace it with ethnic and religious profiling."

Jon Gaunt in The Sun, 22 August 2006


"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Francois Voltaire


"I have a number of things that I am gonna demand and one of them is that no more Muslim immigrants come into this country.  No more mosques be permitted to be built in this country... and yes, we need racial profiling immediately"

Michael Savage


"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."

John F. Kennedy



"Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job."

Michael Steele, former Lt. Governor of Maryland, a government job.



"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act."

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever."

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

George Orwell



"Al-Qaeda means Bush and Blair. Who established Al-Qaeda? You are the ones who should be put on trial. You were the mother of Al-Qaeda."

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, July 2005



"I know Jesus Christ died for my sins, and that's all I really need to know."

 

"I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am."

"The New York Times editorial page is like a Ouija board that has only three answers, no matter what the question. The answers are: higher taxes, more restrictions on political speech and stricter gun control."

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Ann Coulter
 

"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf. Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice."

 

"I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his."

Gearge Galloway

 
"You don't have the right to protest... you're a foreigner, shut your mouth or get out"

Rush Limbaugh


"Terrorism can be commendable and it can be reprehensible. Terrifying an innocent person and terrorizing them is objectionable and unjust, also unjustly terrorizing people is not right. Whereas terrorizing oppressors and criminals and thieves and robbers is necessary for the safety of people and for the protection of their property... The terrorism we practice is of the most commendable kind for it is directed at tyrants, the traitors who commit acts of treason against their own countries and their faith and their own prophet and their own nation. Terrorizing those and punishing them are necessary measures to straighten things and to make them right."

Osama Bin Laden, ABC interview, 1998


"I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament."

Tony Blair


"History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior."

Vladimir Putin


"The gay and lesbian mafia wants our children.  If it can win their souls and their minds, it knows their bodies will follow"

Michael Savage



"Do you still throw spears at each other?"

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh



"More than change the pace, this is about deepening the changes that we have already inititated, to accelerate them and make them more radical."

"...does not reflect the economic crisis we are experiencing, which is not a temporary crisis but a crisis of the capitalist system, and the document suggest soultions by legitimizing those responsible for the crisis, for instance, the International Monetary Fund."

"The European Union can give (the deal) whatever pretty name it wants, but we are headed for a free-trade agreement, and we will not accept that."

Rafael Correa



"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society"

Rush Limbaugh



"We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated."

Barack Obama



"I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully."

"Do you have blacks, too?" (to then Brazilian President, Fernando Cardoso)

""The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th."

"This is an impressive crowd -- the haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite -- I call you my base."

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."

George W. Bush