Favorite Quotes

[jeriddian]

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ~ John Adams, 2nd President of the United States.

Of course, then you've got John Adam's really nasty smear campaign against Jefferson.....

Now, now.... ....Jefferson was no saint either in that campaign.

Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."
In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."

As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.

The key difference between the two politicians was that Jefferson hired a hatchet man named James Callendar to do his smearing for him. Adams, on the other hand, considered himself above such tactics. To Jefferson's credit, Callendar proved incredibly effective, convincing many Americans that Adams desperately wanted to attack France. Although the claim was completely untrue, voters bought it, and Jefferson won the election.

Jefferson paid a price for his dirty campaign tactics, though. Callendar served jail time for the slander he wrote about Adams, and when he emerged from prison in 1801, he felt Jefferson still owed him.
After Jefferson did little to appease him, Callendar broke a story in 1802 that had only been a rumor until then -- that the President was having an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. In a series of articles, Callendar claimed that Jefferson had lived with Hemings in France and that she had given birth to five of his children.

Our founding fathers were brilliant and dedicated men who gave us one of the greatest gifts possible in terms of our government and freedom, but they were by all means mortal men with their own weaknesses and vices as well.

[NinjaNaco]

I see someone else reads Mental Floss...

[jeriddian]

I see someone else reads Mental Floss...

True.......although it is slightly slanted towards the Adams position, I must say. It depends on whose version of history you read. But I chose it because the facts are described fairly accurately. Jeffersonian scholars tend to think our third president was rather innocent of these activities, that they were done by underlings without his actual knowledge. In the end I think it was just hullabaloo. This, I think, is realized by the fact that the two of them actually reestablished a relationship as friends and corresponded together quite amicably for the last ten years of their lives.

[campy]

"The most distinctive characteristic of the theatre is simply that it's alive. A play can't be put into a can like a movie or television program to be taken out and shown without change. Theatre exists only when there are real people on both sides of the footlights, with audiences and actors providing mutual stimulation."

~ Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages (1975)

[Cody MacArthur Fett]

Natani: Good, I don't think she suspects anything.
Keith: Of course she does! She thinks I'm gay now!
Natani: Well, that's not important. What's important is that she doesn't think I'm a girl.
Keith: But you are . . . oh, forget it.
-- Two Kinds, strip 282

[lunchmeat]

"I don't think so, Mr. Witte, the Army doesn't like to have more than one disaster in a day"

"Looks bad in the newspapers and upsets civilians at their breakfasts"

Lt. Chard (Stanley Baker) and Lt. Bromhead (Michael Caine) Zulu (1964)

[TransWarpDrive]

Tonight's local weather reminded me of this one:

"Ain't a fit night out for man or beast."

~ W.C. Fields (1880-1946), in the comedy short feature The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933)

[Cody MacArthur Fett]

"Happiness depends more on the internal frame of a person's mind than on the externals in the world."
-George Washington, 1787

[lunchmeat]

It's from a movie, but quite true of this work:

"I hear he's cold as a witch's heart...

I want a man that's cold, I'd prefer one with no heart at all, just an enormous brain.

The Battle of the Atlantic is a grim business, it won't be won with charm and personality, we've had far too much of that around here already."

Chief of Naval Staff to his Assistant Chief of Naval Staff regarding the Captain, Western Approaches, Sink The Bismarck (1960).

In a side note: the actor playing the captain of HMS Prince of Wales during the Battle of the Denmark Strait in the movie was, in fact, the gunnery officer of that ship during the actual battle. Must've been a strange feeling playing that part.

[Rob]

Why Transformers Animated is so awesome, once you get over the Teen Titans art style:

"I am Wreck-Gar! I dare to be stupid!"
- Wreck-Gar, voiced by "Weird Al" Yankovic, S2 Ep. 4, "Garbage In, Garbage Out"