Sometimes it seems as if other people can say things much more elegantly than I can. It especially helps when this happens on days when I'm suffering from temporary shortage of time, thought, or get-up-and-go. Like today. Herewith a few really good comments I wish I would have made:
Orson Welles, in the film The Third Man, offered this perceptive comment: “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed; but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
The great American comic Groucho Marx was a perceptive observer well worth quoting in an election year: "In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people."
Few people remember Franklin P. Adams, the American satirist and newspaper columnist who wrote under the pen name of FPA. He had a lot of great comments, but at this time of insane economic bad news, this is one of the best: "There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel."
Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, etc. It really doesn't matter in the end because, as Stephen Millich points out: "Democracy is the most equitable form of government because, in it, greed and corruption are most widely spread."
Most of the time I can take Woody Allen or leave him, but I really liked this quip: "I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."
Have a good day. More thoughts - of my own - tomorrow.
Bilbo
Gotta love Orson and Groucho!
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