People From North Dakota

"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."

"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."

"A theory of power has long been the Holy Grail for political science, but the Grail has not been found."

"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."

"Sometimes we waste too much time to think about someone who doesn’t even think about us for a second."

"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."

"Yeah, Uh-huh you know what it is,(black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow)"

"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]."

"It is important to plan for maximum utilization of contingent capability."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Among the best art museum experiences anywhere."

"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."

""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."

"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."

"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."

"..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."

"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.."

"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 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."

"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 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 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.."

"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 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 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."

"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."

"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."

"Through them [his paintings] I breathe again."

"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."

"In many ways my paintings are about energy — both in how they are created and the image itself."

"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."

"It fascinates me to create beautiful paintings with the simplest means."

"Paintings are memories. Memories of the painter who painted them. Memories that can be shared as well. Paintings are things to remember things by."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Even if this person's girlfriend was a hateful bitch, you would sleep with her out of spite."