Curmudgeonly Quotations
Beer, Pubs and Drinking"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves
"There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as a good tavern or inn."
"What two ideas are more inseparable than Beer and Britannia?"
"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."
"It was a swing door. You can't bang a pub door. The pubs know a lot, almost as much as the churches. They've got a tradition."
"Saint George he was for England,
"I'm not a heavy drinker, I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop."
"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's the best they're going to feel all day."
"I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake. Which I also keep handy."
"Brewers and legislators have created a society where regular social drinking is unfashionable, impractical and undesirable; but acute drunkenness one night a week is the opposite. And we're surprised at the results?"
Liberty and Lifestyle Freedom"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"
"Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It's impossible to be alive and safe."
"A Puritan is someone who lives in mortal fear that somewhere, sometime, someone is enjoying himself."
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."
"All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good."
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism."
"But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. "They that can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither Liberty nor safety."
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
"It is dangerous to be right, when the government are wrong."
"When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church, and there was nobody left to be concerned."
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion to their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding”.
"Measure what is important, don't make important what you can measure."
"Laws are for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools."
"The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free." "The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of civilisation in any country." "The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
"Just as it is the duty of all men to obey just laws, so it is the duty of all men to disobey unjust laws."
"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was 'illegal'."
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
|