Quotes

"Fascism and communism both promise "social welfare," "social justice," and "fairness" to justify authoritarian means and extensive arbitrary and discretionary governmental powers." - F. A. Hayek"

"Life is a Bungling process and in no way educational." in James M. Cain

Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. Sir Winston Churchill

"summum ius summa iniuria" ("More laws, more injustice.") Cicero

As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.”

"Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan

"Law is where you buy it." Raymond Chandler

"Why did God make so many damn fools and Democrats?" Clarence Day

"If I feel like feeding squirrels to the nuts, this is the place for it." - Cluny Brown

"Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have." Owen Wister "The Virginian"

Oscar Wilde said about the death scene in Little Nell, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Thomas More's definition of government as "a conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of a commonwealth.” ~ Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” ~ Jonathon Swift

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Times change, but she and Churchill are both formidable

Speaking of English Dictionaries ...

Margaret Thatcher eclipses Churchill in Dictionary of National Biography

New biography added to authoritative reference work gives the UK’s first female prime minister more space than anybody but Shakespeare and Elizabeth I

Margaret Thatcher has been added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, commanding more space in the venerable reference work than any other Briton apart from Shakespeare and Elizabeth I. Eclipsing records for Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill and Henry VIII, historian David Cannadine’s biography of Britain’s first female PM is the third longest of the 60,000-plus entries in the 72m-word work.
Thatcher’s listing details her rise to power, from Lincolnshire grocer’s daughter to global political force during the cold war. Cannadine is robust in his 30,000-word assessment of Thatcher’s career, noting that as well as being one of the few politicians to lend their name to a political doctrine – Thatcherism – her blunt approach to leadership led to ferocious clashes from the miners’ strike to the poll tax riots. Her front and backbenchers in parliament knew a leader who it was punishing to cross.
Cannadine, who is the ODNB’s general editor, concludes his assessment: “There are times when nations may need rough treatment. For good and for ill, Thatcher gave Britain plenty of it.”
As with the other 214 lives recorded in the latest additions to the ODNB, Thatcher died in 2013. Entries are always posthumous and feature persons of note from Roman Britain to the 21st century. Editors wait four years after the death of a notable figure to assess whether they are worthy of a place in what is effectively the canon of British public life, whose first edition was in 1885.

-go to links


No comments:

Post a Comment