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Jesse Helms

Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (18 October 1921 – 4 July 2008) was an American journalist, media executive, and politician. A leader in the conservative movement, he served as a senator from North Carolina from 1973 to 2003. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001 he had a major voice in foreign policy. Helms helped organize and fund the conservative resurgence in the 1970s, focusing on Ronald Reagan's quest for the White House as well as helping many local and regional candidates. Originally a Democrat, he switched to the Republican Party in 1970.

1950s

 * To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing.
 * (1956) on criticism that a fictional character in his newspaper column was offensive cited The New York Times (2001)

 * Compromise, hell! That's what happened to us all down the line -- and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?
 * (1959), as quoted in The New York Times.

1960s

 * White women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights. The hundreds of others who had their purses snatched last year by Negro hoodlums may understandably insist that their right to walk the street unmolested was violated.
 * (1963), as quoted in Whitewash: In his new autobiography, Jesse Helms sees himself as a humanitarian not a racist supporter of brutal right-wing regimes who turned obstructionism into a foreign policy by Barry Yeoman

 * The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights.
 * WRAL-TV commentary, 1963 cited in Media Downplay Bigotry of Jesse Helms

 * It is interesting to note that the Nobel Peace Prize won't be awarded this year. When one recalls that Martin Luther King got the prize last year, it may be just as well that the committee decided not to award one this year. Perhaps it was too difficult to choose between Stokely Carmichael and Ho Chi Minh.
 * Television commentary (1966) quoted in The New York Times (1994)

 * Look carefully into the faces of the people participating. What you will see, for the most part, are dirty, unshaven, often crude young men and stringy-haired awkward young women who cannot attract attention any other way.
 * (1968) The New York Times (2008) in reference to Viet Nam war protestors.

Report on Anita Bryant (1977)

 * Report sent out to Helms' constituents in 1977, reprinted in full by Anita Bryant, The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation's Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality, p. 101-102.

 * During the past few weeks, I have talked by telephone on numerous occasions with a fine, Christian lady whose face and voice are familiar to most Americans. Her name is Anita Bryant. She has stood beside Billy Graham during his televised crusades. No doubt you have seen her also as she appeared on television commercials advertising Florida orange juice. She is a lovely person, deeply committed to Christianity. She is also a concerned American- concerned about the erosion of moral principles and indecency in all of the forms spreading out across America. She has warned that unless America returns to basic principles, our freedoms are in jeopardy. Not so long ago, she spoke out against America's growing tendency to give respectability to homosexuality. And that's where her troubles began.

 * In particular, she condemned legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 4 by Congressman Edward I. Koch (pronounced "Kosh"), a member of the New York delegation in Congress. Mr. Koch was nominated by both the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party of New York. The bill that he introduced bears the number H.R. 2998. The title of Mr. Koch's bill states that its purpose is to prohibit discrimination on the basis of affectional or sexual preference... Specifically, the bill would amend the so-called Civil Rights Act of 1964 in several ways. Among other things, employers would be required by federal law to seek out and hire homosexuals on a quota basis. This would include schools, hospitals and other institutions. Failure to comply with the requirement (to hire homosexuals) would result in the loss of federal aid. When Anita Bryant dared to speak out against this bill she found herself in deep trouble. In Miami, her home city, the homosexuals (who call themselves "gays" organized, and began a pressure campaign to intimidate the Singer Sewing Machine Company, whch was to have been the sponsor of a television series featuring Anita Bryant. Anita's contract for the television series was abruptly canceled. An official of the Singer Company made clear that, all of a sudden, Anita Bryant was "controversial."

 * Controversial? Here was a fine and decent lady, a dedicated Christian, who had dared to speak out. And because she did, her contract was canceled. Small wonder that business people in America today are so rapidly losing the respect of the citizens of this country. If this is an example of those who are the greatest beneficiaries of the free enterprise system, it is a clear indication that if and when the free enterprise system dies, it will be suicide, not murder. Proud- I am proud of Anita Bryant. In my several conversations with her in recent weeks, I have pledged my full support to her. I don't know whether the Koch bill will be approved by the House of Representatives. But this much I do know: If and when it gets to the U.S. Senate, I will fight it with every means at my command, with every bit of strength I can muster. Maybe you'd like to drop Miss Anita Bryant a note of encouragement. If so, send it to me, and I'll make certain she receives it. She is fighting for decency and morality in America- and that makes her, in my book, an All-American lady.

1980s

 * Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are facts of life which must be faced.
 * New York Times interview (1981)

 * [Voters] "sent me to Washington to vote no against excessive Federal spending, against forced busing of little schoolchildren, and to vote no against the forces who have driven God out of the classroom.
 * News & Observer, June 26, 1983 quoted in The New York Times (1994)

 * I didn't come to Washington to be a 'yes man' for any president, Democrat or Republican. I didn't come to Washington to get along and win any popularity contests.
 * In 1989, as quoted in The New York Times (2008)

1990s

 * I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries. [in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate]
 * Chicago Sun-Times (1993)

 * I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine.
 * In response to the nomination of to be Assistant Secretary of  (The Washington Post, 1993-05-07)

Department of State Authorization Act (January 1994)

 * Senate speech on Department of State Authorization Act (25 January 1994)

 * Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I, of course, thank my friend, the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. It has always been a pleasure to work with him. He and I have managed a number of bills in the years that we have been here. He has been here longer than I have, and he has managed more bills. But I have to say, Mr. President, that none of the pieces of legislation with which I have dealt in my 21 years in the Senate have met with the cooperation and the effective working together by all Senators and all staff members to produce this bill that we call the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal years 1994 and 1995. The short form on that is, of course, the State Department authorization bill. I say to my friend from Rhode Island, it is a pleasure to work with him always. Mr. President, every committee has to make some tough choices in an effort to save the taxpayers money at a time when this Congress has run up a total of nearly $4.5 trillion in debt. I am pleased that the Foreign Relations Committee did an adequate job in connection with this bill in that respect.
 * In committee, I offered an 8.5 percent budget reduction amendment designed to require the State Department to review its organizational and operational requirements seriously. You know how bureaucrats in this town operate. They hear a mandate or presumed mandate of Congress and then they go about doing what they want to do instead of what Congress has asked them to do. My amendment, as perfected by Senator Kerry and Senator Pressler, cut the administration's fiscal year 1994 request by $504 million, out of a $6.4 billion request. It cut it down to about $5.9 billion in terms of an authorization bill. And it reduced the administration's fiscal year 1995 budget authority by almost $450 million. That is a $950 million reduction over 2 years. As the saying goes, that is not exactly chopped liver. The authorized levels in this bill are $253 million below last year's actual level for the State Department, the USIA, and related agencies. S. 1281--this bill--also includes authorization for the Peace Corps at virtually no-growth levels in terms of expenditures. Ordinarily, the Peace Corps is authorized as a separate bill or included in the foreign aid authorization bill. It is a little bit different this year. In addition to the budget reduction, there are some positive legislative provisions in this bill. For the first time, this bill caps--puts a cap on--the end strength of the Foreign Service officers who can be hired. I intend to offer a technical amendment giving the Secretary of State authority to RIF--that means reduction in force--the Foreign Service office employees if he finds it necessary to do so. The bill eliminates Foreign Service performance pay. It ensures adherence to statutory pay ceilings so that nobody can make more than the Secretary of State. And it provides mandatory reassignment or retirement of Presidential appointees within 90 days.
 * I am going to seek to eliminate the "hall walkers" at the State Department, that is to say, those Foreign Service employees who refuse to accept new assignments to meet urgent personnel needs. If they are offered an assignment they do not want, they turn it down and they walk the corridors of the State Department still being paid by the taxpayers, and I think that is an outrage. I wish to stop that. The bill creates a capital investment fund, a much needed management tool, to encourage investment in information technologies to improve and modernize the State Department's functions. This bill promotes cost-effective property management techniques. It proposes to ensure that rewards may be provided for information about acts of terrorism, and it proposes to reduce the number of mandated reports, which nobody reads in the first place. The Foreign Relations Committee also agreed to direct the President of the United States to conduct a Government-wide review of all Government-sponsored international educational and cultural exchange programs. This year the American taxpayers will spend, or be forced to furnish more than $800 million in exchange programs managed by 22 different Federal agencies. That, too, is an outrage. These programs have been expanded and enlarged by 45 percent in just the past 3 years and have doubled since 1980. Nobody even knows how many programs there are. Nobody knows how much money is being spent. You try to get the information from anybody in this Government, and they say, "Well, we don't know. We will look it up." And you never get a return telephone call.
 * Now, Mr. President, the point is this. We cannot tolerate and the American taxpayers ought not to be required to finance such unbridled growth. I suggest that anybody who may doubt what I am saying should look at the figures. I cannot justify to my constituents--and no other Senator can really--the spending of almost $1 billion of the taxpayers' money to educate foreign students when we have such tight budget constraints here at home. So there are many, many things that we need to look at, and this bill addresses most of what I had in mind. The rest of them I am going to try to do by amendment. Now, title III authorizes the international broadcasting activities of VOA, RFE/RL, TV and Radio Marti, Radio Free Asia, and other broadcasting elements under the new International Broadcasting Bureau to be guided and directed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. This kind of broadcasting effort has been fraught with great controversy, and I intend to listen carefully to the debate on all the provisions. My mind is pretty well made up, but I wish to hear both sides of the argument.
 * In June of last year, the administration contended that the only way to save $250 million over the next 4 years was to consolidate VOA and RFE/RL. And today, January 1994, the administration contends that it can accede to the Senate--what do you know--and permit there to be true surrogate broadcasting, that is to say, keep RFE/RL and Radio Free Asia and still save $250 million. So you might say that saving $250 million in a budget like ours is not a giant step, but it is a step in the right direction. Either Mr. Duffey was wrong in June or he is wrong now, and I look forward to the debate on this issue. We will have friendly debate, and I hope that the Senate will carefully measure the information on both sides. Now, Mr. President, I do not think I have ever been more disappointed in the good-intentioned efforts announced at the beginning of this administration a year ago to restructure the State Department. Oh, I had bureaucrat after bureaucrat come up to see me saying, "Senator, you are going to love this." And I did like what they were saying. But nothing happened. Nothing happened. The administration and Congress deserve a D minus on this matter.
 * When the Foreign Relations Committee heard from Secretary-designate Christopher on January 13-14 last year, 1993, the Secretary-to-be said: "We need to do more with less." I am sitting there applauding, saying, "Praise the Lord." But subsequently, his Deputy Secretary, Cliff Wharton, and his Under Secretary for Management, Brian Atwood--two nice fellows--appeared before the committee and--I am quoting them exactly--they promised to "streamline the bureaucracy, consolidate responsibilities, reduce personnel, and reinvigorate management." What happened? They were off in the stratosphere, wild blue yonder, or whatever you want to call it. Now, we heard the Secretary and Deputy Secretary announce with great fanfare a broad-based reorganization to, guess what, reduce excessive layering, that is, bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy. The State Department would, according to the Secretary a year ago, "do its fair share" to participate in, guess what, "reductions and cutbacks that President Clinton would impose on the entire Federal Government." Promises, promises.
 * But I could not believe my ears when I heard all that good news a year ago. I remember pulling out my hearing aid to see if it was working right. I thought finally somebody had acknowledged that the State Department was a topheavy, bloated, inefficient bureaucracy in need of massive reorganization and reductions. No wonder I said, "Glory, glory, hallelujah," because that had been something on my agenda for a long time, at least 21 years or more. But what happens? Mr. President, as we have seen in endless and countless instances over the years, the State Department's rhetoric far exceeded its actions. One year later Secretary Atwood with his good intentions to reorganize the State Department--and I have no doubt about his good intentions. I believe that he meant what he said a year ago. Anyway, Secretary Atwood is gone--promoted, I guess you might call it, to AID, the Agency for International Development, to tackle that behemoth of a mess.
 * Dr. Wharton may be a good and decent man, praised for his organizational abilities a year ago to spend substantial efforts on reorganizing and restructuring the State Department. But to the dismay of a lot of us, we waited a much "ballyhooed" reorganization report which was delayed, rewritten, scrubbed, and never materialized beyond another document that was leaked to the press. A year later, here we are. We find Dr. Wharton in a caretaker status dismissed supposedly because of a lack of attention to policy matters. One of the only substantive records we have of the administration's reorganization effort is the administration request for a 33 percent increase in the number of Assistant Secretaries, from 18 to 24 in number, and an increase in the number of Executive Level IV positions in the State Department. Mr. President, what an incredible response to the promise last year to streamline the bureaucracy. Maybe all of this has been reported in the media, but I have not seen it. They are too busy with other things.
 * Bureaucratic costs associated with such needless additional jobs, if you want to call them jobs, is astounding. The cost of the salaries for these 12 additional political appointee positions is more than $1.2 million a year--a small amount. It depends on where you are from. To the taxpayer down there in Chinquapin, NC, it is not a small amount of money, and I certainly do not think it is small. Every new bureau at the U.S. State Department will mean at least $2 million per year in additional costs, and support costs. You have to have secretaries, and you have to have all of the rest that goes with it--more people to sit around and say, "Oh, I have to clip this fingernail before I do anything else." The administration request is antithetical I think to our purpose in being here today. Mr. President, in committee I offered an amendment to remove all statutory requirements for the creation of Assistant Secretaries. We have enough of them. They fall all over each other. The most important thing they do, most of them, in today's time, is arrange where they are going to have lunch. Over time Congress has mandated six such positions. And my amendment authorizes the Secretary of State to organize as may be necessary within the ceiling of 16 Assistant Secretaries. Lord knows that ought to be enough. It is the same number Mr. Christopher had when he was with the State Department in the Carter administration.
 * The committee rejected my amendment, and further rejected the administration's request to repeal the six mandatory positions. But not a word of that was in the paper. Nobody on television mentioned it. The committee's majority told Secretary Christopher, "We don't trust your promise to keep our favorite Assistant Secretary positions, but we will give you two more Assistant Secretary bureaucracies to grow on." That is what the committee did with the vote that defeated my proposal. The other body, the House of Representatives, did the administration one better. The House guys provided three new bureaucracies which is totally unacceptable. And during consideration of this bill I intend to offer an amendment and have the Senate vote on it to rectify the Foreign Relations Committee's judgment on this matter, and thereby prevent the further bloating of the Federal bureaucracy. I do hope that Senators will support that.
 * One other area that deserves our closest attention is the funding level reporting requirements and approval for U.S. participation in the United Nations and other international organizations. Sometimes, Mr. President, I wonder if the U.S. Government has the slightest idea what goes on in the United Nations and the other international organizations. The United States voted in the U.N. Economic and Social Council Organization to grant consultative status to self-proclaimed homosexual pedophiles. How about that? I do not recall anything in the Washington Post about that, or even in the Washington Times, as far as I know. This group, a known homosexual pedophile organization, was elevated to consultative status by the United Nations and the State Department as well. What is new? I intend to offer an amendment to correct this grotesque embarrassment to the United States, and particularly the people back home. But we tried to encourage reform in the U.N. budget process and mandate timely reports to Congress when this administration uses U.S. funds for international peacekeeping activities.
 * My intent is, as a manager of this bill, to strongly support Senator Dole and Senator Pressler when they offer major amendments to restructure the U.S. participation in the U.N.-sponsored activities and require withholding of U.N. assessments until an inspector general is appointed at the United Nations. Mr. President, Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti are all disasters, every one of them, disasters that must not be repeated. The answer is not in rewriting the War Powers Resolution. Forget that. The answer is better decision-making, a much closer scrutiny of U.N. actions, and a more thoughtful understanding of the practical consequences of pursuing a policy of what they call aggressive multilateralism. The same people who throughout the 1980's wanted to blame America first have now written a new draft of a Presidential decision, Directive PD-13, that is intended, and I quote, "sacrifice Americans first." This new invented game of surrender your sovereignty is to be played out in the United Nations by the nonelected officials committing the U.S. Treasury and the troops of the United States to U.N. objectives without congressional approval. They just go ahead and do what they want to do. I do not know about other Senators. But this Senator says no, not with my vote would it happen.
 * In some respects, the authorized levels for the U.N. peacekeeping operations in this bill are nothing short of disingenuous. The Department of State, the U.S. Mission of the United Nations and OMB have known for just about a year now that U.S. peacekeeping assessments in 1994 will be $1 billion more than Congress has authorized and appropriated, and there will be $1 billion more than authorized for next year, fiscal year 1995. In fact, the U.S. State Department has already spent all of the fiscal year 1994 funds that were appropriated, and we are only 3 months into the fiscal year. As they say in North Carolina, "How do you like them apples?" If the American people had a vote on it, we would find out pretty quickly. This administration continues to write the United Nations blank checks every time we vote in the U.N. Security Council to approve another peacekeeping mission. Thus far, the State Department has been sucking hundreds of millions of dollars from the Department of Defense every year to support U.N. peacekeeping operations.
 * Mr. President, the money is drying up. We the people--and I consider myself one of the people--of the United States populace have spent in excess of $2 billion in Somalia, over $800 million in direct support to the U.N. mission. And when the United States pulls out, watch it; the United Nations is going to send the American taxpayers a bill for over $500 million more to pay the 31.7 percent assessed cost for U.N. peacekeeping in Somalia. How dumb can we get? This cannot continue, and it must not continue, and will not continue after Senator Dole's amendment, of which I am a cosponsor, is enacted. It is an amendment to the U.N. Participation Act. Again, I hope all Senators and their staffs will take note of the Dole amendment and what it means and stands for and what it calls for. There is one provision in this bill that every Senator should know something about. Senators should familiarize themselves with the dangerous impact of section 170(a) relating to the creation of an international criminal court. I remember Sam Ervin sitting over there warning us about this. He was disturbed about the so-called genocide treaty, and I tried to pick up when he departed and do the best I could. We finally defanged the genocide treaty so that it amounted to nothing. But here they go again.
 * Efforts to establish such an international criminal court drives right to the core of our basic constitutional liberties and guarantees. But you will not read that in the press. They will say, "What is that fellow talking about?" If they say anything at all. Well, the constitutional lawyers know what I am talking about, and you watched Sam Ervin talk about it. This court, Mr. President, has the potential of sitting in judgment of American citizens, U.S. corporations, the U.S. Government, and, yes, even the legislative acts of Members of Congress. So it does matter. It does need and deserve and cry out for consideration of the implications of such a court. This provision should not be included in this bill in any shape, fashion, or form--not one. I wish Sam Ervin were back here. The committee reported a freestanding resolution some months ago to find its way to the other committees' jurisdictions. I hope the Senate anticipates that the Senate Judiciary Committee will conduct a thorough, careful review of the impact that this proposal threatens to our constitutional prerogatives. We will ignore this issue at our own peril, and worse, at the peril of the governance of the American people.
 * The Armed Services Committee may wish to explore the legal advisers' concerns that the draft of the international criminal court statute pending before the sixth committee of the United Nations could impact in an extremely negative way upon "the status of forces' agreements or the prosecution of war crimes." These are not just words, they have meaning and they have implications, a constitutional question. The Finance and Energy and Commerce Committees may be interested in the potentially devastating impact that this proposal may have on the cost to U.S. companies doing business overseas. The jurisdictional authority of such a court is expansive and its impact is unknown. We are flying blind by the seat of our britches. It should be excluded from this bill. It is totally unwise. It is dangerous to act precipitously on this provision, and I hope that my efforts to strike this provision will be supported by a majority of the Senate. I hope the public will require their Senators to explain why they oppose it or not.
 * Mr. President, before I conclude, I feel obliged to comment briefly on two amendments that I intend to offer, designed to assist U.S. citizens who have had their property confiscated--that is to say illegally stolen--by foreign governments receiving foreign aid from the taxpayers of the United States. The Senate passed one of these amendments 96 to 4. I stood down there during the vote and Senators came in and said, "good amendment" and all of the rest of it. The State Department, however, and other U.S. officials turned a deaf ear to U.S. citizens whose property had been unlawfully taken from them. Unfortunately, the Senate must again send a wakeup call to the U.S. State Department. That message must go to the countries abusing the rights of U.S. citizens, and those countries ought to be denied even one dime of foreign aid money until they cut this out.
 * In closing, I reiterate my appreciation to Senator Pell and Senator Kerry and Senator Pressler and their respective staffs for their stewardship in guiding this legislation through subcommittee and to floor debate. I say again, as I have said so many times publicly, I am most grateful for the consideration and cooperation of Claiborne Pell for his efforts to accommodate the concerns of Senators on this side of the aisle. I do hope we can move this legislation on to conference in an expeditious fashion. That concludes my statement, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.

2000s

 * I reject that criticism because this is indeed another kind of holocaust, by another name. At last count, more than 40 million unborn children have been deliberately, intentionally destroyed. What word adequately defines the scope of such slaughter? [After 9/11] the American people responded with shock, sadness and a deep and righteous anger — and rightly so. Yet let us not forget that every passing day in our country, more than three thousand innocent Americans are killed [through abortion].
 * As quoted in Here's Where I Stand (2005)

Quotes about Helms

 * Praise is in order for legislators like U.S. Senator Jesse Helms (R, N.C.) who are watchdogging what is happening in Washington, faithfully reporting their findings, and calling upon the American people who believe in decency and morality to stand up and let their voices be heard. A report which Senator Helms sent out to his constituency was widely circulated and brought tremendous response our way... it is representative of the kind of unsolicited support we received.
 * Anita Bryant, The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation's Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1977), p. 100-101

 * I’m not saying that as a blanket description for all those crusty old men back in those days. Clearly, there were some in the House of Representatives, like the evil William Dannemeyer, and in the Senate, with the despicable Jesse Helms, who seemed to revile gay people. And many members piled on the LGBTQ+ community because they felt their constituency didn’t support us, so in the desperation to get elected and maintain incumbency, they bashed the gays. It was not fair. It was not right.
 * John Casey in Was Bob Dole an LGBTQ+ Ally? (8 December 2021)

 * I think he got a lot of admiration for telling it like it is and I think there was some appreciation for that.
 * Nicholas Galifianakis, as quoted in LOCAL NEWS Former Helms opponent remembers 1972 senate race (4 July 2008)

 * I think he had concluded that you reach the largest number of people through that media. Whereas in my campaign, I was getting up at 4:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. and going to factories and trying to meet people.
 * Nicholas Galifianakis, as quoted in LOCAL NEWS Former Helms opponent remembers 1972 senate race (4 July 2008)

 * When Sen. Jesse Helms attempted to maneuver his way onto the 1980 presidential ticket, Republicans considered it a joke. Helms, even then, was not taken seriously by most national Republican elites, and the concept of this Tar Heel rabble-rouser accompanying Ronald Reagan into November provoked RNC delegates to dismiss the proposal outright. Why, then, do today’s adore Florida’s version of the old Carolina bigot? Governor Ron DeSantis boasts a profile given far more respect than Helms ever managed to win even when Helms wielded influence as a major committee chair. Perhaps it’s his educational pedigree or the innate stature of an executive. Whatever the case, DeSantis in fact practices a style of truculent cultural demagoguery that resembles Jesse Helms and that may nix his prospects for attaining the Republican presidential nomination. Much has changed about the Republican Party since Jesse Helms joined it in the late 1960s, but certain threads of right-wing populism have remained constant. We see them in DeSantis’s relentless campaigns against the types of cultural foes Helms presented as a menace to the good order of the Southern home.
 * Alexander H. Jones in A NC perspective on Ron DeSantis (2 March 2023)

 * If "Don’t Say Gay" was DeSantis’s signature policy, his bullying posture toward the media is what has made him famous. DeSantis berates reporters, usually female ones, and in his aggression delights conservative voters. Here, again, Helms was the trailblazer. Despite a background in television commentary, Jesse Helms demonized the press and used this cynical hypocrisy to build a bond with voters at a time when trust in journalism was collapsing. The broad picture that emerges here is one of a DeSantis who has built his career on scapegoating and contempt —just like Jesse Helms. This is hardly auspicious for the Florida governor’s presidential dreams. Helms, despite his following on the New Right, could never have won the presidency. He was too mean-spirited, too much of a zealot. If Helms’ radicalism exceeded what Reagan would tolerate, DeSantis seems unlikely to win the presidency in a country far kinder, and far better, than the one Jesse Helms sought to transform.
 * Alexander H. Jones in A NC perspective on Ron DeSantis (2 March 2023)

 * Why Won't Jesse Helms Just Hurry Up and Die?
 * Ken Lawrence, "Why Won't Jesse Helms Just Hurry Up and Die"

 * Jesse Helms represents the primary obscenity that is crushing not only black people but this country and the world into dust. It is called white patriarchal power. There is nothing obscene about my life nor the art that I create out of my experiences. But by the same token Jesse Helms knows that my writing is aimed at his destruction, and the destruction of every single thing he stands for...The visions that move me through my life and through my work are diametrically opposed to whatever vision moves Jesse Helms. If he approves it, I certainly won't. Of course I believe that art should enjoy public funding in this wealthy country. The NEA should exist. I can devote a certain amount of my energy to fighting for it, but I cannot devote all my energy to that alone. Jesse Helms's real threat is not just because he wants to muzzle artistic culture in this country, which of course he does. His real threat is because he wants to muzzle or destroy any people-centered culture worldwide. I fight Jesse Helms because he wants to destroy Black people in Angola and North Carolina and Cuba and South Africa, and eradicate the babies of the South Pacific Rim, and starve school children to support R. J. Reynolds and the tobacco industry, and deny women control over their own bodies. I mean, I can run right down the line of obscenities Jesse Helms represents and why he must be stopped.
 * 1990 interview in Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004)

 * The function of the erotic is to deepen the experience of the life force; the function of pornography is to deaden or destroy what is living. When Jesse Helms reads safe sex pamphlets on the Senate floor and calls them obscene, he is being pornographic. He is taking something whose aim is to preserve life and trying to turn it into filth.
 * 1990 interview in Conversations with Audre Lorde (2004)

 * when we speak of gender taboos in the USA, Latin@, or Latin American culture, or taboos within any one of our cultures in general, let us not, as academicians, assume a lily white and pristine innocence because of an M.A. or Ph.D. after our names. The "P" in Ph.D. may well stand for "prejudice." Let us address the taboos that are "ours" and which are more harmful in real ways and practical ways than those of Jesse Helms. Jesse Helms can be fought openly through ballots, political campaigns, and organized movements of opposition. He is open about his taboos. But the taboos engendered in our men, in our women, as Latin@ or Latin American academicians or scholars of any Minority group do us far more harm on a daily basis as Latina Lesbian writers and academicians.
 * Luz María Umpierre "Manifesto: Whose Taboos? Theirs, Yours, or Ours?" (1996)

 * I'll be honest, when it was reported that Michael said "Republicans buy sneakers too," for somebody who was at that time preparing for a career in civil rights law and public life, and knowing what Jesse Helms stood for, you would have wanted to see Michael push harder on that.
 * Barack Obama, as quoted in 'The Last Dance': Barack Obama weighs in on Michael Jordan's 'Republicans buy sneakers, too' comment (15 May 2020)

 * Hardly a day went by when I didn’t serve some of the most powerful people in the world. Men like Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy, John Glenn and Bob Dole were with us on a regular basis.
 * Ray Sanders in SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT: REAL HEROES (22 November 2007)

 * While liberals appeared to be safely in power, feminists could perhaps afford the luxury of defining Larry Flynt or Roman Polanski as Enemy Number One. Now that we have to cope with Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms, a rethinking of priorities seems in order.
 * Ellen Willis "Lust Horizons: Is the Woman's Movement Pro-Sex?" (1981), No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992)

title: Jesse Helms


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Harry Blackmun

Harry Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. Appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon, Blackmun ultimately became one of the most liberal justices on the Court. He is best known as the author of the Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade

Quotes

 * This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
 * Writing for the court, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 153 (1973)

 * In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.
 * Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978)

 * Poor Joshua! Victim of repeated attacks by an irresponsible, bullying, cowardly, and intemperate father, and abandoned by respondents who placed him in a dangerous predicament and who knew or learned what was going on, and yet did essentially nothing except, as the Court revealingly observes, ante, at 193, "dutifully recorded these incidents in [their] files." It is a sad commentary upon American life, and constitutional principles - so full of late of patriotic fervor and proud proclamations about "liberty and justice for all" - that this child, Joshua DeShaney, now is assigned to live out the remainder of his life profoundly retarded. Joshua and his mother, as petitioners here, deserve - but now are denied by this Court - the opportunity to have the facts of their case considered in the light of the constitutional protection that 42 U.S.C. 1983 is meant to provide."
 * Dissent in DeShaney v. Winnebago County, 489 U.S. 189 (1989)

 * I fear for the future. I fear for the liberty and equality of the millions of women who have lived and come of age in the 16 years since Roe was decided. I fear for the integrity of, and public esteem for, this Court. [...] For today, at least, the law of abortion stands undisturbed. For today, the women of this Nation still retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the signs are evident and very ominous, and a chill wind blows.
 * Concurrence/Dissent in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490 (1989), at 538 and 560.

 * From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than 20 years, I have endeavored - indeed, I have struggled - along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue to coddle the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.
 * Dissent from the denial of certiori, Callins v. Collins, 510 U.S. 1141 (1994)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Harry Blackmun


text:
Talk:Alex Haley

excellent page! ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 13:27, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Should we create a page for the miniseries, Roots? Several famous actors were in it, and its the greatest miniseries yet. --71.224.19.29 17:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Alex Haley


text:
User talk:195.210.210.193

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 13:44, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:195.210.210.193


text:
User talk:Shawnc

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 13:44, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Shawnc


text:
User talk:ShadowGuardian~enwikiquote

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User talk:Aeneas~enwikiquote

Thanks for your addition to Politics. Please note that by convention, edits which add a quote are not usually marked as "minor" edits. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 14:20, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

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Talk:Fascism

This page appears to be largely hijacked by ideologues who have selectively chosen quotes, many from little-known or non-authoritative sources, in order to draw a link between fascism and the left. It needs a thorough review and overhaul. As it stands, it is not a useful document.

The following quotes were moved here from the page because the source has no apparent notability. If he is notable, please create a wp page, a wq page or add evidence of notability here. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 14:48, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

"I wouldn't call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either." ~ Edward Zehr

Is there a source for the Sinclair Lewis attribution? I've tried to find it but am unable. Most people reference It can't happen here but the quote does not exist. The text is available at either http://reactor-core.org/cant-happen.html or http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html. 72.40.154.213

The Lewis quote seems to be attributed incorrectly. Information here: http://shii.org/knows/Fascism_comes_wrapped_in_the_flag

For what it's worth, I would like to offer the following response from Dr. Sally E. Parry of the Sinclair Lewis Society in response to my question regarding an authoritative reference to the quote: "When fascism comes to America..." usually attributed to Mr. Lewis: - This quote sounds like something Sinclair Lewis might have said or written, but the Sinclair Lewis Society has never been able to find this exact quote although we've been asked a number of times. Here are passages from two books Lewis wrote that at least hint at the quote attributed to him.

From It Can't Happen Here: "But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty."

From Gideon Planish: "I just wish people wouldn't quote Lincoln or the Bible, or hang out the flag or the cross, to cover up something that belongs more to the bank-book and the three golden balls." - BornRightTheFirstTime 20:17, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced

 * Published sources should be provided before moving these back into the article

 * Fascism is capitalism in decay
 * Vladimir Lenin

 * Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.
 * Benito Mussolini

 * Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time."
 * Ronald Reagan

 * Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims but by the way it kills them.
 * Jean-Paul Sartre

 * Fascism is capitalism plus murder.
 * Upton Sinclair

 * To define fascism is to write its history.
 * Angelo Tasca

 * Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.
 * Leon Trotsky

Recommended Additions
"Huey Long once said, 'Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.' I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security." - Jim Garrison [Playboy interview, October 1967.

Why does this page about a movement most heavily associated with Europe open with images of an American and an American voting sign?
I recently reorganized the images on fascism and got a revert, which led me to realize images are a lot harder to justify both adding and deleting than quotes are as I'm really not sure who is right and who is wrong or why. Unless the image has nothing to do with the subject matter, which can generally be ascertained at a glance, the actual process of determining what images to include on Wikiquote is a matter of personal taste and getting community approval, and not going through a detailed checklist for notability and counting instances of a word being used, like it often is with contesting quotes. Personally I think trying to sum up fascism with one or two images at the top is a bit overly simplistic and suggests these are the definitive authorities on this subject, so leaving the top of the page blank and having images organized alphabetically comes across less reductionist in our reasoning and less POV. I think Peter1c chooses some amazing images to include on Wikiquote for the most part, it's just the placement of these images which is problematic as they often use them to create niche and misleading intros that fail to accurately summarize the subject. Other editors have noted this behavior is a problem for Peter regarding political pages, as it is being discussed on the talk page for America. I also think that having the two dictators most closely associated with the concept displayed close to the top is better than having an image of socialist baptist minister Tommy Douglas and an image from a Super Tuesday voting sign that seems to associate America with fascism much more strongly than it does Italy or Germany, which is somewhat misleading for anyone wanting to learn more about the subject in general and not just a specific aspect of it, e.g. American fascism and American anti-fascism, currently just red links, but potentially ultra specialized quote graveyards that will be hard to search for. '''How well known is Tommy Douglas in America, much less Europe where fascism is generally regarded as first taking root? This page seems pretty heavily Americanized, per the norm.''' CensoredScribe (talk) 16:23, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Global Research
I know that Wikiquote is an indiscriminate collection, including of bullshit, but Global Research is a Canadian website recknowned for pushing conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda, divisive disinformation, etc. PaleoNeonate (talk) 19:43, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Fascism


text:
User talk:Cjmarsicano~enwikiquote

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title: User talk:Cjmarsicano~enwikiquote


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Talk:Anne Rice

Source for quotations http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9785289/site/newsweek/ ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 17:03, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Anne Rice. --Antiquary 18:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * "This book (Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt) means more to me than anything I've ever done, I'm not offering agnostic explanations. He is real. He worked miracles. He is the Son of God! And there is so much more to write."
 * "Anyone can write a book about an off-the-wall Jesus, a magician. That's easy. But if we really believe the angel came to Mary, that there were shepherds, what was it like? It was more and more exciting to think about."
 * "Christians have been arguing with each other for 2,000 years. … What I hope for is that we can love one another, no matter how much we disagree; that we can embrace one another, no matter how tough the arguing becomes. … If we love, we can overcome much of what divides us as people."
 * To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.
 * We're frightened of what makes us different.
 * The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.
 * I got to the point where the vampire began describing his brother's death, and the whole thing just exploded! Suddenly, in the guise of Louis, a fantasy figure, I was able to touch the reality that was mine. It had something to do with growing up in New Orleans, this strange, decadent city full of antebellum houses. It had something to do with my old-guard Catholic background. It had something to do with the tragic loss of my daughter and with the death of my mother when I was fourteen. Through Louis' eyes, everything became accessible. But I didn't ask when I was writing what it meant; I only asked if it felt authentic. There was an intensity--an intensity that's still there when I write about those characters. As long as it is there, I will go on with them. In some way they are a perfect metaphor for me.
 * To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.
 * I like mainly to be invisible, to sort of drift around unseen in the world.
 * I was particularly stunned by the casting of [Tom] Cruise, who is no more my Vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler.
 * A writer can’t know everything about what she writes. It’s impossible. You reach deep down and you bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book but you don’t know everything about it. You can’t.
 * Once I returned to the Church and began to see the universe as a place that really did incorporate redemption and really tried to understand the implications of there being a God, my identification with the vampires as outcasts, as outsiders and lost souls began to totally wane. It no longer worked for me. I had done it. It had led me to this point.
 * I promised that from now on I would write only for the Lord.

removed references to other quote archive
Sites that are compendiums of quotes (much like Wikiquote) are not primary sources, and should not be used as references in Wikiquote (it would be rather circular to reference a quote on one quote compendium with a another compendium). This is discussed in Sourcing if you'd like to read more about it.

title: Talk:Anne Rice


text:
User talk:Technogeek~enwikiquote

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Mignon McLaughlin

Mignon McLaughlin (June 6, 1913 – December 20, 1983) was an American journalist and author.

Unclassified

 * No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves.

 * Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those changes that would make all the difference.

 * Don't be yourself-be someone a little nicer.

 * Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.

 * Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.

 * We are all born brave, trusting, and greedy, and most of us manage to remain greedy.

 * Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality.

 * You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.

 * There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.

 * Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.

 * Our strength is often composed of the weakness that we're damned if we're going to show.

 * We hear only half of what is said to us, understand only half of that, believe only half of that, and remember only half of that.

 * The fear of being laughed at makes cowards of us all.

 * We'd all like a reputation for generosity, and we'd all like to buy it cheap.

 * It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.

 * Despair is anger with no place to go.

 * Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.

 * For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.

 * The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime.

 * Nobody really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

 * What we forgive too freely doesn’t stay forgiven.

 * If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.

 * Others follow patterns; we alone are unpredictable.

 * If it came true, it wasn’t much of a dream.

 * A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.

 * Courage can't see around corners but goes around them anyway.

 * The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.

 * It does not undo harm to acknowledge that we have done it; but it undoes us not to acknowledge it.

 * Anything you lose automatically doubles in value.

 * What you can't get out of, get into whole-heartedly.

 * If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn't be so anxious.

 * Nostalgia for what we have lost is more bearable than nostalgia for what we have never had, for the first involves knowledge and pleasure, the second only ignorance and pain.

 * We all dream of being the darling of everybody's darling.

 * Beauty often fades, but seldom so swiftly as the joy it gives us.

 * Groups of girls are pretty, or not; they are seldom mixed.

 * If you're a gifted flirt, talking about the price of eggs will do as well as any other subject.

 * Boredom is often the cause of promiscuity and always its result.

 * On stage and off, we care what happens to a beautiful woman, whether she can act well or not.

 * I'm afraid to win, and afraid to lose; I hate a draw and can't stop competing; otherwise I'm fine.

 * The real is very real to him, the unreal even more so.

 * A hypochondriac is one who has a pill for everything except what ails him.

 * My thoughts, I guess, are bitter; who but the bitter have thoughts?

 * Life marks us all down, so it's just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.

 * I'm always there to tell people that their life is not that bad. I wish it was easy to follow that advice.

 * It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time.

 * The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.

 * Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition.

 * There are whole years for which I hope I’ll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.

 * We are irritated by rascals, intolerant of fools, and prepared to love the rest. But where are they?

 * We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.

 * If he suddenly falls in love with someone else, a husband may not start wanting a divorce; but if he suddenly makes a lot of money, he usually will.

 * The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.

 * It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

 * Many are saved from sin by being so inept at it.

 * It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.

 * Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers.

 * Irrelevant things may happen to you, but once they have happened they all become relevant.

 * We welcome passion, for the mind is briefly let off duty.

 * The time to begin most things is ten years ago.

 * If you have to do it every day, for God’s sake learn to do it well.

 * True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive.

 * Most of us can easily do two things at once; what’s all but impossible is to do one thing at once.

 * Anything you do from the heart enriches you, but sometimes not till years later.

 * In retrospect, our triumphs could as easily have happened to someone else; but our defeats are uniquely our own.

 * When children are bored, it reflects on us all.

 * A childhood can be judged sheltered or not according to which was learned first, the four-letter word or the euphemism.

 * There are children born to be children, and others who must mark time till they can take their natural places as adults.

 * We tell our children things which we know are not so, but which we wish were so.

 * If you had an unhappy childhood, you will always want to sleep late in the morning.

 * One of life's few really reliable pleasures: to have a family you love, and to leave them for a week.

 * The family unit is man's noblest device for being bored.

 * The fault no child ever loses is the one he was most punished for.

 * Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.

 * Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.

 * Your children tell you casually years later what it would have killed you with worry to know at the time.

 * Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.

 * It’s easy enough to get along with a loved and loving child–at least till you try to get him to do something.

 * There's no way to repay a mother's love, or lack of it.

 * Mama does everything for the baby, who responds by saying Dada first.

 * The ideal home: big enough for you to hear the children, but not very well.

 * It is always safe to tell people that they’re looking wonderful.

 * 'Pull yourself together' is seldom said to anyone who can.

 * One day you are an apprentice, and everybody's pet; the next, you are coldly expected to deliver. There is never sufficient warning that the second day is coming.

 * People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fiber called courage.

 * A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.

 * Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom.

 * We catch frightful glimpses of ourselves in the hostile eyes of others.

 * Throughout our lives, we see in the mirror the same innocent trusting face we have seen there since childhood.

 * We are all such a waste of our potential, like three-way lamps using one-way bulbs.

 * Age is a slowing down of everything except fear.

 * Failure can get to be a rather comfortable old friend.

 * The past is rich in lessons from which we would greatly profit except that the present is always so full of Special Circumstances.

 * What you were sure of yesterday, you know now to be false, but what you are sure of today is absolutely true.

 * Sooner or later, they govern who are determined to.

 * The plague of government is senile delinquency.

 * Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't.

 * We have to call it "freedom": who'd die for "a lesser tyranny"?

 * How strange that the young should always think the world is against them when in fact that is the only time it is for them.

 * If everyone gave a tenth of his worldly goods to the person he most admired, the rich would just get richer.

 * When threatened, the first thing a democracy gives up is democracy.

 * The poor have the same basic pleasures as the rich, and the rich will always resent it.

 * Money is the best counterfeit money.

 * Money is much more exciting than anything it buys.

 * An artist is a socially unattractive person whom socially attractive people make money out of.

 * There are a handful of people whom money won't spoil, and we all count ourselves among them.

 * Cash is the one gift everyone despises and no one turns down.

 * Injure a businessman and he'll try to make you sorry; injure an artist and he'll try to make you immortal.

 * Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

 * There's little enough to be said for nationalism, so let's say it and have done.

 * The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it.

 * Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.

 * Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense.

 * We come late, if at all, to wine and philosophy; whiskey and action are easier.

 * We work for praise, and dawdle once we have it.

 * The fault we admit to is seldom the fault we have, but it has a certain relationship to it, a somewhat similar shape, like that of a sleeve to an arm.

 * If you are brave too often, people will come to expect it of you.

 * The proud man can learn humility, but he will be proud of it.

 * There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.

 * When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting that we have just had one.

 * If you can tell anyone about it, it's not the worst thing you ever did.

 * Many things can make you miserable for weeks; few can bring you a whole day of happiness.

 * The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol.

 * Air that has been much quarreled in becomes very hard to breathe.

 * The best work is done with the heart breaking, or overflowing.

 * We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still.

 * When a stranger identifies you from a friend's description, it's just as well you didn't hear the description.

 * Charity is a good way of reminding God that if we can do it, He can.

 * In church, sacred music would make believers of us all—but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance.

 * Those who turn to God for comfort may find comfort but I do not think they will find God.

 * We climb mountains because they are there, and worship God because He is not.

 * My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I'm willing to give Him the chance.

 * "Your money or your life." We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does.

 * Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing.

 * Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something.

 * How tired God must be of guilt and loneliness, for that is all we ever bring to Him.

 * I often pray, though I’m not really sure Anyone’s listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case He’s literary.

 * Most sermons sound to me like commercials — but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.

 * Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else.

 * A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.

 * An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.

 * There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write.

 * We sometimes feel that we have been really understood, but it was always long ago, by someone now dead.

 * In every group of intimidated people, each thinks "I will rebel," but each waits for the others.

 * Every group of six or more has its inner circle, its outer circle, and its hangers-on.

 * Every group feels strong once it has found a scapegoat.

 * Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest!

 * What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.

 * Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to weave.

 * If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.

 * Every now and then you run across radiantly attractive people and you're delighted to find they adore you, till you realize that they adore just about everybody- and that's what's made them radiantly attractive.

 * Forget about calories - everything makes thin people thinner, and fat people fatter.

 * Did that leave an undesirable taste in your mouth? Let’s take a swig.

 * Luck: when your burst of energy doesn't run afoul of someone else's.

 * Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.

 * Revenge leads to an empty fullness, like eating dirt.

 * To smoke or not to smoke: I can make of either a life work.

 * The soul may sleep and the body still be happy, but only in youth.

 * Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix.

 * Life's most painful condition: to be almost a celebrity.

 * Young lovers and young nations face the same problem: after orgasm, what?

 * Mumps, measles, and puppy love are terrible after twenty.

 * We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence.

 * My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I’m ashamed of what I think of doctors in general.

 * There’s an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than.

 * If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.

 * Insult, not flattery, is the great aphrodisiac.

 * Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions.

 * Good food, good sex, good digestion, good sleep: to these basic animal pleasures, man has added nothing but the good cigarette.

 * Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.

 * I do not trust those who are above name-dropping. The suppression of small vices always exacts too high a toll.

 * I have seen messed-up people of forty who still seemed salvageable, and children of six or seven who almost surely were not.

 * You never realize how tacky your furniture is till you try to give it to the Salvation Army and they won't take it.

 * There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that.

 * What a shame that allowances have to stop with the teens: both those that are paid to us and those that are made for us.

 * The woman just ahead of you at the supermarket checkout has all the delectable groceries you didn't even know they carried.

 * Being Irish is, no matter how real, a pose.

 * A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.

 * Whether or not you love television, you've got to admit that it certainly loves itself.

 * If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they'll stop making it tomorrow; if it's all three, they stopped making it yesterday.

 * I'm glad I don't have to explain to a man from Mars why each day I set fire to dozens of little pieces of paper, and then put them in my mouth.

 * It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn't.

 * People who won't have a TV set in their house get more pleasure from their refusal than most of us get from TV.

 * Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.

 * Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and difficult as that.

Love

 * No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.

 * Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.

 * In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.

 * Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before.

 * No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it.

 * When we first fall in love, we feel that we know all there is to know about life, and perhaps we are right.

 * Love is the silent saying and saying of a single name.

 * The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.

 * It is a feeling at once stimulating and flat, to know that someone you do not love is in love with you.

 * When we have been humiliated by someone we love, it takes all our strength to pretend to recover from it.

 * When a man comes to love a woman exactly as she had dreamed, she decides he is a weakling.

 * The excesses of love soon pass, but its insufficiencies torment us forever.

 * We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. People might not return it; or worse, they might.

 * "I am as I am" is another way of saying "I can do without your love."

 * Love is often gentle, desire always a rage.

Marriage

 * What we love about love is the fever, which marriage puts to bed and cures.

 * If the second marriage really succeeds, the first one didn't really fail.

 * A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

 * The marriage of convenience has this to recommend it: we are better judges of convenience than we are of love.

 * After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6 degrees of marriage!

 * If you made a list of the reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a hell of a lot of overlapping.

 * How can a man marry wisely in his twenties? The girl he's going to wind up wanting hasn't even been born.

 * A husband only worries about a particular Other Man; a wife distrusts her whole species.

 * When a woman reaches forty, she must wait twenty years for her husband to catch up.

 * Between two married couples there are five possibilities for friendship: man to man, woman to woman, each man to the woman not his wife, and couple to couple. It's seldom that more than two of these will actually materialize.

Neurotics and neurosis

 * As we are human, we can't do what we can't do; as we're neurotic, we can't do what we can.

 * No good neurotic finds it difficult to be both opinionated and indecisive.

 * The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which.

 * The neurotic doesn't know how to cope with his emotional bills; some he keeps paying over and over, others he never pays at all.

 * Others settle for small rewards; the neurotic must always go for broke.

 * The neurotic longs to touch bottom, so at least he won't have that to worry about that anymore.

 * The neurotic circles ceaselessly above a fogged-in airport.

 * The neurotic thinks himself both Hamlet and Claudius, in a world that belongs to Polonius.

 * The neurotic is always half-drowning in anxiety, and always being half-rescued.

 * Neurosis is no worse than a bad cold; you ache all over, and it's made you a mess, but you won't die from it.

 * Neurotics would like to sleep all the time, and to be awakened only when there is good news.

 * At the beginning of a love affair, not even the neurotic is neurotic.

 * There are three iron links in the neurotic's chain: unloving, unlovable, unloved.

 * The neurotic listens to weather reports about Small Craft Warnings, and he thinks: They're talking about me.

 * Naturally, the neurotic wants you to love him twice as much, for he's going to cut it in half anyway.

 * The neurotic feels as though trapped in a gas-filled room where at any moment someone, probably himself, will strike a match.

 * Neurotics dream of a good life, or a great suicide note.

 * Neurotics always feel as though they were going way up or way down, which is odd in people going sideways.

 * The neurotic usually obeys his own Golden Rule: Hate thy neighbor as thyself.

 * Being neurotic is like shooting fish in a barrel, and missing them.

 * Neurotic: Someone who can go from the bottom to the top, and back again, without ever once touching the middle.

 * Neurotics are sure that no one understands them, and they wouldn't have it any other way.

 * The way the neurotic sees it: bars on his door mean that he's locked in; bars on your door mean that he's locked out.

 * The neurotic keeps minute track of his enemies; it is only his friends he is careless about.

 * The neurotic always wishes people would let him alone - until they do.

 * Neurotics make poor patriots; if you're ashamed of something as big as yourself, it's hard to be proud of something as small as your country.

 * A doctor recently described to me "benign positional vertigo": it means you get dizzy in certain positions, but you can get over it without necessarily changing the position. Change "vertigo" to "anxiety," and you've summed up the neurotic's plight.

 * Humiliation is a vast country of imprecise boundaries. If you think you're there, you are.

 * The neurotic rule: when in doubt, go ahead and feel humiliated.

 * Neurotics are always looking for something new to overdo.

 * Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice.

 * Neurotics are anxiety prone, accident prone, and often just prone.

 * The mark of the neurotic: to imagine that you're the only one who cares deeply for anything.

 * The neurotic believes that life has meaning, but that his life hasn't.

 * The neurotic lies awake at night, composing letters to those he hates. He seldom thinks of dropping a line to those he loves.

 * Neurotics think of the past with resentment, and the future with dread; the present just doesn't exist.

 * Neurotics expect you to remember all the things that they tell you, and many that they don't.

Theater

 * Broadway audiences are dependably square. "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch" always gets a laugh; spoken by a little old lady, it brings down the house.

 * Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his part, and does not believe in the play.

 * Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn’t either.

 * In the theatre, as in life, we prefer a villain with a sense of humor to a hero without one.

 * Theatre audiences can't be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry.

Women & men

 * Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.

 * Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite.

 * Few women care what a man looks like, and a good thing, too.

 * Women are never landlocked: they’re always mere minutes away from the briny deep of tears.

 * An attractive woman likes feminine company until she's twenty, and after she's twenty-five.

 * Women are good listeners, but it’s a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there’s something specific you want him to do.

 * Many beautiful women have been made happy by their own beauty, but no intelligent woman has ever been made happy by her own intelligence.

 * Most women would like to dress imaginatively, but they glare at any woman who does.

 * It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily.

 * There’s nothing wrong with most men’s egos that the kowtowing of a headwaiter can’t cure.

 * Women are the right age for just a few years; men, for most of their lives.

 * A young woman can live off the folly of men; a man of any age can live off the folly of women.

 * All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men.

 * Good-looking girls break hearts, and good-hearted girls mend them.

 * Men feel that women somehow drag them down, and women feel that way about men. It's possible they are right.

 * A woman telling her true age is like a buyer confiding his final price to an Armenian rug dealer.

 * Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.

 * Men who don't like girls with brains don't like girls.

 * Bored with your present enemies? Make new ones! Tell two of your women friends that they look alike.

 * Women flirt to keep their stock high, men to get somewhere.

 * Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets.

 * With men, as with women, the main struggle is between vanity and comfort; but with men, comfort often wins.

 * He's in for trouble—the man whose wife is detested by all women and desired by all men.

 * Women gather together to wear silly hats, eat dainty food, and forget how unresponsive their husbands are. Men gather to talk sports, eat heavy food, and forget how demanding their wives are. Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.

 * All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men.

 * A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine.

 * Any woman can talk herself into being in love with any man, for a while anyway.

 * Some women love only what they can hold in their arms; others, only what they can't.

 * Between a man and a woman both aged fifty there are two full generations, for she might well wed a man in his seventies, and he a girl of twenty.

title: Mignon McLaughlin


text:
User talk:206.53.181.30

Deliberate vandalism can result in IP addresses being blocked from editing. ~ Kalki 17:32, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:206.53.181.30