Sunday, October 5. 2008 – Faking It (the Debates)
Respectful dialog, in the interest of searching for more complete truth, is considerably more productive than arguing for the purity of position. ~ Gerard Vanderhaar
To achieve respectability, to be admitted to the debate, they must accept without question or inquiry the fundamental doctrine that the state is benevolent, governed by the loftiest intentions, adopting a defensive stance, not an actor in world affairs but only reacting to the crimes of others… If even the harshest of critics tacitly adopt these premises, then the ordinary person may ask, who am I to disagree? ~ Noam Chomsky
People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history. ~ Dan Quayle
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. ~ Herman Melville
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing. ~ Oscar Wilde
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
If you’re a Thanksgiving dinner, but you don’t like the stuffing or the cranberry sauce or anything else, just pretend like you’re eating it, but instead, put it all in your lap and form it into a big mushy ball. Then, later, when you’re out back having cigars with the boys, let out a big fake cough and throw the ball to the ground. Then say, “Boy, these are good cigars!” ~ Jack Handy
The hair is real; it’s the head that’s fake. ~ Steve Allen
Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical. ~ Joey Skaggs
He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan
After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life. ~ Joseph Brodsky
When one is pretending, the entire body revolts. ~ Anais Nin
The only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody. ~ Booth Tarkington
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical. ~ John Fowles
It’s silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons. ~ Henry Miller, Op-Ed page, New York Times, September 7, 1974
Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them. ~ Mitch Hedberg
Nonsense and beauty have close connections. ~ E. M. Forster
Nonsense, when earnest, is impressive, and sometimes takes you in. If you are in a hurry, you occasionally mistake it for sense. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
No one is exempt from taking nonsense; the misfortune is to do it solemnly. ~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Essays (bk. III, ch. I)
You can’t find any true closeness in Hollywood, because everybody does the fake closeness so well. ~ Carrie Fisher
It’s better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. — Matt Damon
The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed. ~ Anita Loos
The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake. ~ H. L. Mencken
Nonsense is an assertion of man’s spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance. ~ Aldous Huxley
Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense. ~ Robert Frost
People are always talking about tradition, but they forget we have a tradition of a few hundred years of nonsense and stupidity, that there is a tradition of idiocy, incompetence and crudity. ~ Hugo Demartini
There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate government action. ~ Bertrand Russell
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others. ~ Samuel Butler
Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter. ~ Max Beerbohm
Don’t talk to me about a man’s being able to talk sense; everyone can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense? ~ William Pitt the Elder
Hudibras has defined nonsense, as Cowley does wit, by negatives. Nonsense, he says, is that which is neither true nor false. These two great properties of nonsense, which are always essential to it, give it such a peculiar advantage over all other writings, that it is incapable of being either answered or contradicted. ~ Joseph Addison
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. ~ Max Beerbohm
Just Above Sunset 