On the Attack

Sunday, July 15, 2012 – On the Attack

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more. ~ General George S. Patton

The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is. ~ Winston Churchill

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics. ~ Newt Gingrich

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack. ~ Sun Tzu

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities. ~ Oscar Wilde

My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack. ~ Marshall Ferdinand Foch

We’re not retreating, Hell! We’re just attacking in different direction! ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. ~ Frederick Douglass

The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule. ~ Miguel de Unamuno

No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live. ~ Mark Twain

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule. ~ Lord Melbourne

Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth. ~ William Warburton

Man learns more readily and remembers more willingly what excites his ridicule than what deserves esteem and respect. ~ Horace

I have always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: “My God, make our enemies very ridiculous!” God has granted it to me. ~ Voltaire, Letter to M. Damilaville, May 16, 1767

Mockery is the weapon of those who have no other. ~ Hubert Pierlot

We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects. ~ William Hazlitt

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right. ~ H. L. Mencken

Take our politicians: they’re a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés the first prize. ~ Saul Bellow

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. ~ John Quinton

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country – and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians. ~ Charles Krauthammer

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. ~ Franklin P. Adams

The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a devil in history, it is this power principle. ~ Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled. ~ F. F. Bosworth

Politics, like theater, is one of those things where you’ve got to be wise enough to know when to leave. ~ Richard Lamm

One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark, its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs. ~ George Orwell

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong, nothing can surpass it. ~ Lao Tzu