126 quotes found
"[Coldplay is] a British pop group whose success derives from their ability to write melodramatic alt-rock songs about fake love. It does not matter that Coldplay is the shittiest fucking band I've ever heard in my entire fucking life, or that they sound like a mediocre photocopy of Travis (who sounds like a mediocre photocopy of Radiohead), or that their greatest fucking artistic achievement is a video where the blandly attractive frontman walks on a beach on a cloudy afternoon. None of that matters. What matters is that Coldplay manufactures fake love as frenetically as the Ford fucking Motor Company manufactures Mustangs. . . "For you I bleed myself dry," sang the blockhead vocalist, brilliantly informing us that stars in the sky are, in fact, yellow."
"Important things are inevitably cliché."
"Psychologically, the internet is very marxist. Everyone with a modem has access to the same information, so we all get jammed into a technological middle class."
"Even eternally free people are enslaved by the process of living."
"This is the kind of shit that would prompt Tyler Durden to hit somebody in the face."
"Whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack."
"Were there really this many women in 1985 saying to their husbands, "Gee, honey, I'd love to have random strangers masturbate to a jpeg image of me deepthroating a titanium dildo, but there's no medium for that. Guess we'll have to watch 'Falcon Crest.'"
"This SimChuck is one suave bastard."
"We smooch hardcore."
"But the bottom line is that I am still willing to die a painful public death, assuming my execution destroys the game of soccer (or - at the very least - convinces people to shut up about it)."
"In fact, there may be a day in the near future when you find yourself in a conversation about this book, and someone will ask you what the story is really about, beyond the rudimentary narrative of a cross-country death trip based on a magazine article. And it's very likely you will say, "well, the larger thesis is somewhat underdeveloped, but there is this point early in the story where he takes a woman to Ithaca for no real reason, and it initially seems innocuous, but - as you keep reading - you sort of see how this behaviour is a self-perpetuating problem that keeps reappearing over and over again." In all probability, you will also complain about the author's reliance on self-indulgent, postmodern self-awareness, which will prompt the person you're conversing with to criticize the influence of Dave Eggers on the memoir-writing genre. Then your cell phone will ring, and you will agree to meet someone for brunch."
"Seeing no resolution to my existential recognition of loss, I decide to eat lunch."
"We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person who you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real--but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else."
"If rain was God crying, I think God was drunk and his girlfriend just slept with Zeus."
"We all concede that 'they' rule 'us'. But here is the secret shame of that amorphous entity that makes us all cower in shame: 'they' are losers. 'They' are failures. 'They' don't realize that life is-almost without exception-an absolute meritocracy, and everyone who succeeds completely deserves it. (The exceptions being Dale Peck, MTV on-air personalities who aren't Kurt Loder, Al Franken, and myself)"
"The Joker was Batman's nemesis, but-ironically-his archenemy was Superman, since Superman made Batman entirely mortal and generally nonessential. Nobody likes to admit this, but Batman fucking hated Superman; Superman is the reason Batman became an alcoholic."
"At some point in the past, this person was (arguably) your best friend."
"You and this person once competed for the same woman, and you both failed."
"You have punched this person in the face."
"If invited, you would go to this person's wedding and give them a spice rack, but you would secretly hope that their marriage ends in a bitter, public divorce."
"People who barely know the two of you assume you are close friends; people who know both of you intimately suspect you profoundly hate each other."
"If your archenemy tried to kill you, this person would attempt to stop him."
"Every time you talk to this person, you lie."
"If you meet someone who has the same first name as this person, you immediately like them less."
"This person has done at least two (2) things that would be classified as "unforgivable.""
"The satisfaction you feel from your own success pales in comparison to the despair you feel from this person's personal triumphs, even if those triumphs are completely unrelated to your life."
"If this person slept with your girlfriend, she would never be attractive to you again."
"Even if this person's girlfriend was a hateful bitch, you would sleep with her out of spite."
"If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader really isn't sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend that they're amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the “form of funny,” which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness."
"Within the context of life, I am the centrist pragmatist who doesn't even vote; within the context of sports, I am a potential war criminal."
"Dave Barry:: Are you really Dick Armey? Dick Armey:: Yes, I am Dick Armey. And if there is a dick army, Barney Frank would want to join up."
"America’s Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small-government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big-government sympathizers who want to impose their version of 'righteousness' on others through the hammer of law.... Our movement must avoid the temptations of power and those who would twist the good intentions of Christian voters to support policies that undermine freedom and grow government."
"Paintings are memories. Memories of the painter who painted them. Memories that can be shared as well. Paintings are things to remember things by."
"In many ways my paintings are about energy — both in how they are created and the image itself."
"It fascinates me to create beautiful paintings with the simplest means."
"From early on I developed an attraction for the incongruous. I had no wish to try to resolve visual contradictions. I felt that aesthetic disparities were actually questions, questions that I did not need to answer. By leaving the meaning up in the air I could provoke responses in the viewer that would trigger further questioning. What are these things I'm looking at and what do they mean? Each person seeing the painting will come away with a different idea."
"The best works are often those with the fewest and simplest elements.. ..until you look at them a little more, and things start to happen."
"[These are] not paintings in the usual sense, they are life and death merging in fearful union."
"Through them [his paintings] I breathe again."
"We are now committed to an unqualified art, not illustrating outworn myths or contemporary alibis. One must accept total responsibility for what he executes. And the measure of his greatness will be in the depth of his insight and his courage in realizing his own vision."
"The observer usually will see what his fears and hopes and learning teach him to see. But if he can escape these demands that hold up a mirror to himself, then perhaps some of the implications of the work may be felt. But whatever is seen of felt it should be remembered that for me these paintings had to be something else. It is the price one has to pay for clarity when one’s means are honoured only as an instrument of seduction or assault."
"..the light suggests no particular time of day or night [in the paintings of Paul Cézanne ]; it is not appropriated from morning or afternoon, sunlight or shadow."
"I held it imperative to evolve an instrument of thought which would aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate, and truly free vision could be achieved, and an idea be revealed with clarity. To acquire such an instrument, however... demanded full resolution of the past, and present through it. No shouting about individualism, no capering before an expanse of canvas, no manipulation of academic conceits or technical fetishes can truly liberate.."
"The work itself, whether thought of as image of idea, as revelation, or as a manifest of meaning, could not have existed without a profound concern to achieve a purpose beyond vanity, ambition or remembrance, for a man’s term of life. Yet, while one looks at his works, a warning should be given, lest one forget, among the multitude of issues, the relation I bear to those with 'eyes'. Although the reference is in a different context and for another purpose, a metaphor is pertinent as William Blake set it down: THE Vision of Christ that thou dost see – Is my Vision’s Greatest Enemy: - Thine is the friend of All Mankind, - Mine speaks in parables to the Blind: 'Therefore, let no man under-value the implications of this work or its power for life; - or for death, if it is misused'."
"I am not an action painter. Each painting is an act. The result of action and the fulfillment of action.. .No painting stops with itself, is complete of itself. It is a continuation of previous paintings and is renewed in successive ones.."
"I do not have a comic or tragic period in any real sense. I have always painted dark pictures; always some light pictures. I will probably go on doing so.. .Orchestral. My work in its entirety is like a symphony in which each painting has its part."
"I felt it necessary to evolve entirely new concepts (of form and space and paintings) and postulate them in an instrument that could continue to shake itself free from dialectical perversions. The dominant ones, Cubism and Expressionism, only reflected the attitudes of power or spiritual debasement of the individual."
"I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man’s 'time' limits him; it does not truly liberate him. Our age – it is of science – of mechanism – of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogance the compliment of graphic homage."
"As for 'taste' as a criterion of painting I find that it is most frequently applied to work that is essentially insensitive, brutal or vulgar beyond question. Could it now be a term with political undertones to seduce, or cover profounder motives of exploitation? I propose it be kept to the wine cellar. There it deceives no one but him who over-indulges."
"I do not want other artists to imitate my work – they do even when I tell them not to – but only [ imitate] my example for freedom and independence from all external, decadent and corrupting influences.."
"..the idea that an artist is nothing unless he accepts the total responsibility for everything that he does.. ..by making a responsible move that he makes a statement.. .You can make a picture out of truth."
"His work [of Clyfford Still] has a visceral impact, the paintings stare back at me and the viewer. I don’t know many other artists who induce quite the same kind of electric charge – a true frisson. Yet it’s not just this kind of high voltage drama that grabs me, what I also find remarkable is that Still managed to combine this intensity with a rare degree of subtlety and delicacy."
"There were two, epic, landmarks in Still’s pictorial trajectory. The first is a painting known as '1944' – probably the first largest radical statement of tendencies that would later be hallmarked as Abstract expressionism. Even in Pollock and Rothko certainly there is nothing to match the precocity and extremism of this huge black field canvas.. .Perhaps Still’s second landmark painting is in Albright - Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, known as '1957-D'. I choose this [for the show] because it’s in a public collection and has become one of the most iconic statements of Abstract expressionism."
""In The 1950's he [Clyfford Still] began to take a great dislike to all art critics. He specifically singled out w:Emily Genauer, the art critic for the New York Herald Tribune. He mailed Genaurer a pair of baby rubber pants tagged with the note Hoping this will help conceal your Sunday afflictions', yours sincerely, Clyfford Still. She kept them and eventually donated the rubber incontinence pants to the Archive of American Art. I’d love to see an artist do that to say a critic like Roberta Smith or Andrew Graham Dixon. It takes a heck of a lot of spunk to burn your bridges behind you in that intractable way. What Still effectively did by his example was to throw the money lenders out of the temple."
"The important thing is that Clyff Still – you know his work? – and Rothko, and I – we’ve changed the nature of painting.. .I don’t mean there aren’t any other good painters. Bill [= Willem de Kooning ] is a good painter, but he’s a "French" painter. I told him so, the last time I saw him after his last show.. ..all those pictures in his last show start with an image."
"Among the best art museum experiences anywhere."
"It is imperative that Christians be like Jesus, by living freely within the culture as missionaries who are as faithful to the Father and His gospel as Jesus was in His own time and place."
"You have been told that God is a loving, gracious, merciful, kind, compassionate, wonderful, and good sky fairy who runs a day care in the sky and has a bucket of suckers for everyone because we're all good people. That is a lie... God looks down and says 'I hate you, you are my enemy, and I will crush you,' and we say that is deserved, right and just, and then God says 'Because of Jesus I will love you and forgive you.' This is a miracle."
"I study the Bible all week, pray to the Lord, and then I speak from my heart. It's all about brutal honesty."
"…the truths of Christianity are constant, unchanging, and meant for all people, times, and places. But the methods by which truth is articulated and practiced must be culturally appropriated, and therefore constantly translated …if doctrine is constant and practice is constantly changing, the result is living orthodoxy."
"Ultimately I think the difference between reading the Bible and studying it is making the connections between who Jesus is and what he's done."
"I'll preach anywhere. If it's a round trip ticket to preach in hell, I'll take it—as long as it's round trip."
"A pacifist has a lot of difficulty reconciling pacifism with scripture."
"Everyone is sinning, so it's no longer rebellious to sin. You're just a conformist if you're drunk; and naked; driving around in a loud motorcycle; smoking cigarrettes; breaking commandments; getting pregnant out of wedlock. Everyone's done that. That's so tired!"
"If you really want to be a rebel get a job, cut your grass, read your bible, and shut up. Because no one is doing that."
"For the most part, these are not new lessons, but lessons learned in different circumstances and surroundings. The fact that they are not new is of course a lesson in itself — we must continually strive to benefit from past experiences and structure our management so that past related experience can be brought to bear on current problems."
"Another lesson comes to mind and that is the need for continued hard review of design requirements. In retrospect, the requirement that led to the provision of a meteoroid shield was questionable. The shield was required in order to meet the arbitrary numerical design goal with the limited environmental knowledge then existing. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight, however, the shield was not necessary."
"It is important to plan for maximum utilization of contingent capability."
"It’s an appropriate title. It’s called Rolling Papers, like the papers that you roll, the papers that I roll, the papers that we smoke. But it’s deeper than that too. I thought of this before I even started recording the album and before it was a full idea. It’s not just about the weed thing. It’s bigger than that. My career really took off when I started smoking papers.The second reason I called it Rolling Papers is when I left Warner Bros., I sort of got my ‘rolling papers.’ I got my contract, fucking rolled up, and smoked. And I was able to walk and I was able to leave and I was able to do my thing and I was able to capitalize off that. So that’s another pair of papers that I really needed in my life.The third reason why I named it Rolling Papers, I quit writing a long time ago. I stopped physically writing it down or putting it in my BlackBerry or iPhone. I write notes down, but I don’t write whole verses, so it was like saying goodbye to the paper. The paper’s rolling out too. So everything is real natural. The first thing that came to my head is how I really, really feel. I feel like this is my most natural sound. I paid the most attention to this shit when I did it. I was real focused. I was real keyed in on this shit when I was working on it and I didn’t use any paper, except for [the rolling papers]."
"Sometimes we waste too much time to think about someone who doesn’t even think about us for a second."
"Yeah, Uh-huh you know what it is,(black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow)"
"And you and got nothin' on but the t-shirt I left over at your house the last time I came and put it on ya."
"No analysis of the limits of economic freedom or the uses of coercion by government, labor unions, or organizations of any kind can do justice to the complexity of the subject without taking account of the distinction between collective and noncollective goods."
"The spontaneous individual optimization that drives the theories with which I began is important, but it is not enough by itself. If spontaneous Coase‐style bargains, whether through laissez-faire or political bargaining and government, eliminated socially wasteful predation and obtained the institutions that are needed for a thriving market economy, then there would not be so many grossly inefficient and poverty-stricken societies."
"A theory of power has long been the Holy Grail for political science, but the Grail has not been found."
"If you take the story I've given you, if you recognize that the traditional way we looked at politics had a lot of romance in it, then Public Choice comes along and removes the romance. I think the natural outcome of that is you're going to be more skeptical about government than you would have been otherwise. Mancur Olson, a good friend of mine, has been influential in Public Choice and objects very strongly to this argument that there is this conservative bias. There is no bias in it as such. But Mancur himself has necessarily had to look at politics differently because of that, despite the fact that his natural proclivity would be more left than mine. There's nothing inherently biased about it. It's just that the fact that if you start looking at the political sector or politics from a non-romantic view, you come to a different view on what has been traditional."
"In this study the term "abolitionist" will be applied to those Americans who before the Civil War had agitated for immediate, unconditional, and universal abolition of slavery in the United States. Contemporaries of the antislavery movement and later historians have sometimes mistakenly used the word "abolitionist" to describe adherents of the whole spectrum of antislavery sentiment. Members of the Free Soil and Republican parties have often been called abolitionists, even though these parties were pledged officially before 1861 only to the limitation of slavery, not to its extirpation. It is a moot question whether such radical anti-slavery leaders such as Charles Sumner, John Andrew, George Julian, Thaddeus Stevens, or Owen Lovejoy were genuine "abolitionists". In their hearts they probably desired an immediate end to slavery as fervently as did William Lloyd Garrison. But they were committed publicly by political affiliation and party responsibility to a set of principles that fell short of genuine abolitionism."
"The Alabama Democratic convention [instructed] its delegates to walk out of the national convention if the party refused to adopt a platform pledging a federal slave code for the territories. Other lower-South Democratic organizations followed suit. In February, Jefferson Davis presented the substance of southern demands to the Senate in resolutions affirming that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common territories."
"What were these rights and liberties for which Confederates contended? The right to own slaves; the liberty to take this property into the territories."
"To a good many southerners the events of 1861–1865 have been known as 'The War of Northern Aggression'. Never mind that the South took the initiative by seceding in defiance of an election of a president by a constitutional majority. Never mind that the Confederacy started the war by firing on the American flag. These were seen as preemptive acts of defense against northern aggression."
"Slavery was at the root of what the Civil War was all about. If there had been no slavery, there would have been no war, and that ultimately what the Confederacy was fighting for was to preserve a nation based on a social system that incorporated slavery. Had that not been the case, there would have been no war. That's an issue that a lot of Southern whites today find hard to accept."
"Powerful racial prejudices? That was not true of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, or Norwood P. Hallowell, or George T. Garrison, or many other abolitionists and sons of abolitionists who became officers in black regiments. Indeed, the contrary was true. They had spent much of their lives fighting the race prejudice endemic in American society, sometimes at the risk of their careers and even their lives. That is why they jumped at the chance of help launch an experiment with black soldiers which they hoped would help African Americans."
"Rioters were mostly Irish Catholic immigrants and their children. They mainly attacked the members of New York's small black population. For a year, Democratic leaders had been telling their Irish-American constituents that the wicked Black Republicans were waging the war to free the slaves who would come north and take away the jobs of Irish workers. The use of black stevedores as scabs in a recent strike by Irish dockworkers made this charge seem plausible. The prospect of being drafted to fight to free the slaves made the Irish even more receptive to demogogic rhetoric."
"There are all kinds of myths that a people has about itself, some positive, some negative, some healthy and some not healthy. I think that one job of the historian is to try to cut through some of those myths and get closer to some kind of reality. So that people can face their current situation realistically, rather than mythically. I guess that's my sense of what a historian ought to do."
"What has changed is that I've gained a lot more sympathy for Lincoln. At the time I was doing my dissertation I tended to take the Wendell Phillips view of Lincoln. Why didn't he move more quickly? Why was he so conservative on some of these issues? Why didn't he seize this revolutionary moment? The more I've learned about it, the more I realize that Lincoln was under extraordinary pressure from all sides. In his position he could not have acted like Wendell Phillips. He would have lost the whole war."
"The great crisis facing the country was the rebellion and anybody in the North who wanted to preserve the Union now found the principal enemy to be those Southern slave owners who had broken up the country. The institution which sustained them and the institution they went to war to defend was slavery. And more and more northerners became convinced of that. As a consequence, a lot of them went the whole way over, from being conservative, pro-Southern, pro-slavery Democrats to becoming radical Republicans. Benjamin Butler is a good example, and Edwin M. Stanton is another one."
"General Sherman, who had lived in the South, liked Southerners and did not at all sympathize with Northern racial views, yet became the most hated and feared destroyer of the South and its whole civilization. And I think he did so because he saw that as necessary to win the war. And I think Lincoln made some of his decisions—issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, for example, or turning Sherman loose — because he saw that as necessary to win the war."
"The risk of making a decision that's wrong is so enormous that sometimes it just crushes people so that they can't make any decision at all because they're afraid of making the wrong decision. And that's exactly what McClellan's problem was."
"People are going to dislike you if you make a decision, even if it turns out to be the right one."
"Lincoln. His commitment to preserving the United States was so strong and so deep that he was willing to do whatever it took to succeed. Would you like to be in his shoes? Just think about that for a moment. Not just Lincoln. There are hundreds of examples in history."
"These soldiers were using the word slavery in the same way that Americans in 1776 had used it to describe their subordination to Britain. Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their own liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and the right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought."
"It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. In fact, only 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from nonslaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern 'rights' and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, none at all dissented from that view. But even those who owned slaves and fought consciously to defend the institution preferred to discourse upon liberty, rights, and the horrors of subjugation."
"The bottom line in the Civil War, after all is said and done, showed that every Confederate state was a slave state and every free state was a Union state. These facts were not a coincidence, and every Civil War soldier knew it."
"Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time."
"The unending quest of historians for understanding the past — that is, 'revisionism' — is what makes history vital and meaningful."
"Defeat would blot the Confederate States of America from the face of the earth. Confederate victory would destroy the United States and create a precedent for further balkanization of the territory once governed under the Constitution of 1789."
"By the time of the Gettysburg Address, in November 1863, the North was fighting for a 'new birth of freedom' to transform the Constitution written by the founding fathers, under which the United States had become the world's largest slaveholding country, into a charter of emancipation for a republic where, as the northern version of 'The Battle Cry of Freedom' put it, 'Not a man shall be a slave'."
"While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage groups, few professional historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the states' rights argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, states' rights for what purpose? States' rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means than an end, an instrument to achieve a certain goal more than a principle."
"Southern political leaders were threatening to take their states out of the Union if a Republican president was elected on a platform restricting slavery."
"Lincoln was the only president in American history whose administration was bounded by war."
"If Lincoln had been a failure, he would have lived a longer life."
"Scorned and ridiculed by many critics during his presidency, Lincoln became a martyr and almost a saint after his death. His words and deeds lived after him, and will be revered as long as there is a United States. Indeed, it seems quite likely that without his determined leadership the United States would have ceased to be."
"More than any other American, Lincoln's name has gone into history. He gave all Americans, indeed all people everywhere, reason to remember that he had lived."
"James M. McPherson has helped millions of Americans better understand the meaning and legacy of the American Civil War. By establishing the highest standards for scholarship and public education about the Civil War and by providing leadership in the movement to protect the nation's battlefields, he has made an exceptional contribution to historical awareness in America."
"My first 100 days was also marked by upholding promises I made on the campaign trail. I was proud to fight for Second Amendment rights and against misguided gun control bills. I’ve stood up for life, cosponsoring pro-life bills and signing the discharge petition to force a House vote on critical protections for infants born alive after a failed abortion. I’ve also pushed to build the wall and solve the humanitarian and national security crisis on the southern border. The first 100 days went quickly, but I’ll approach the remaining 632 days of my first term with the same enthusiasm. I’ll continue to give North Dakota a strong voice in Congress and fight to make our state the best state in the country."
"It’s been an honor. Time to go home."
"Senate Bill 2307 represents a misguided attempt to legislate morality through overreach and censorship."
"Disclosure is not absolution."
"Codifying legislative immunity in this context undermines that principle. Moreover, this immunity provision sends the wrong message to North Dakotans: that legislative disclosure, however minimal or selective, is enough to avoid the legal consequences that any private citizen would face under similar circumstances."
"We try to give a voice to not just the writers or our directors, but even the story artists. We make it in a way that they also get to be participants in the writing and in the brainstorming so that they can put their contributions in. It becomes this amazing hive mind of, how can we make this as authentic of a feeling and experience as possible? I do think a lot of that is just getting the right team that gets along and just cares enough about the show or the movie. That even extends to the art team and the production. It really makes a difference when they care about what’s being said and what the message is."
"If you’re a parent, you want to teach your kids to be kind, you want to teach them to care about other people and you want to teach them not to discriminate for no reason."
"I think everyone will tell you that we live in a time that technology has given everyone the ability to make their own things and create exposure through the internet and social media. Those things weren’t available when I was starting out. So, without question, you should take advantage of those things. What everyone neglects to mention is the importance of personal growth and development. So much of what you create is shaped by your background and the things that shaped you. The better you understand your background, the sharper your voice will become."
"We are committed as followers of Jesus to respect life, for the whole of life. That’s what it means to be pro-life. It means that, when seeking the common good, we help expectant mothers and their babies, support marriages and families and care for the elderly who have given so much to us. We reverence life and the dignity of each person from birth to a natural death."
"We don’t want to be Venezuela. We don't want to be another country where people don’t trust the elections, where there's really no reason to go vote if you don’t know if the integrity of the elections is good. And I think in these states where you have all these mail-in ballots, where you don't have a photo ID and you don't know for sure who’s voting, and on top of that, you don't even verify signatures. You've got a real problem having any credibility in your elections and that harms democracy."
"I've seen enough of the Biden administration. Whether we're looking at Afghanistan or the border or what's going on with inflation, I don't have confidence in his ability to do the simplest of things. If you can't protect our citizens and get them out of Afghanistan after 20 years, how do I know that you're doing a good job with bringing in Afghans that we know nothing about?"
"We won’t even know if they've done anything, and so, they'll be dropped wherever the federal government wants to drop them, and they'll disappear into our society. We'll never know, until something bad happens, if we have a terrorist."
"Anytime you create a cause of action there, you could call anybody that has the right to go to court a bounty hunter, because they're going in there for damages, which means they're going in to get some type of payment. So you could say that about any cause of action created by any legislature, whether it was federal or state, it could be viewed that way, if you don’t like the actual law."
"It's frustrating because they should first help the people on the border who are citizens the United States and who are suffering, who are at greater risk of having harm done to their property or harm done to them or to their families. It seems like if you cared about the American people, you would address that problem first, before you spend billions of dollars on Central American countries."
"Should we try what some of the opponents to this have been saying "just trust the system, keep trying to elect a congressman that will have out interests ahead of their own that the lobbyists cant influence and maybe theyll return the power someday to us" and with twenty trillion dollars in debt, nobody willing to buy that debt anymore, the Federal Reserve instead stealing from us by revaluing our currencies in various ways. There's really no tricks left for accounting for that so we really dont have another thirty forty fifty a hundred years left to turn these things around and I do not want to be judged by history as being one who stood idle and let my childrens future fell by the wayside."
"It is time that we limit the length of service of members of Congress and return to concept of elected officials being public servants. We are at a crossroads in our country and I believe we can either take steps to save our country or watch it decline into irrelevancy."
"I am a national defense guy. I spent 25 years in the army. I lost a leg in combat. I've served my country in uniform for a long, long time, and we need more veterans in Congress who will take a very skeptical eye towards the kind of nonsense nation-building that we've been doing for a long time, and that goes for both parties' administrations, Republicans and Democrats, and it goes for all kinds of members of Congress."
"Special interests oppose the project, but the American public supports the project."
"We can't be trying to stop Russia at the same time that our allies in Europe are buying energy from Putin. We need to work with Europe and get our American energy over there and get energy from other parts of the world to Europe. Impose the sanction by excluding Russia from SWIFT, cut off his source of revenue, and make it painful for him right away."
"Doug has done more for Indian relations in North Dakota than any governor in my lifetime, for sure, and maybe ever."
"Early Christianity was primarily an urban movement. The original meaning of the word pagan (paganus) was "rural person," or more colloquially "country hick." It came to have religious meaning because after Christianity had triumphed in the cities, most of the rural people remained unconverted."
"Contempt is not a scholarly virtue."