The occasional, often ill-considered thoughts of a Roman Catholic permanent deacon who is ever grateful to God for his existence. Despite the strangeness we encounter in this life, all the suffering we witness and endure, being is good, so good I am sometimes unable to contain my joy. Deo gratias!


Although I am an ordained deacon of the Catholic Church, the opinions expressed in this blog are my personal opinions. In offering these personal opinions I am not acting as a representative of the Church or any Church organization.

Showing posts with label Quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quotes. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Remarkable utterings

Just thought I'd share a few interesting comments made during the past few years by some of our great thinkers. Enjoy!

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) finds a way to apply her deep religious beliefs to the U.S. Supreme Court's eminent domain decision (Chicago Sun Times, July 24, 2005): “It is a decision of the Supreme Court. So this is almost as if God has spoken."


Actor Sean Penn, eschewing all thoughts of personal responsibility, blames President Bush for his smoking habit (Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2006: “It makes it very difficult to quit smoking under this administration.” Hmmm...I wonder I he's still smoking. Anyone know?


Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), special friend of the men and women serving our nation in a time of war, offers a glimpse of his deep strategic insight in the midst of a speech to a North Miami audience (South Florida Sun Sentinel, June 25, 2006): "American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran." 


Former Governor Howard Dean (D-VT), while describing his personal political manifesto, includes one of Marxism's basic tenets (Patriot Post, July 5, 2006): "We know that no one person can succeed unless everybody else succeeds.”


In an August 24, 2008 interview, Tom Brokaw told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the Catholic Church “feels very strongly” that life begins at conception. The speaker dug deeply into her vast theological and historical knowledge and replied, “I understand. And this is like maybe 50 years or something like that. So again, over the history of the Church, this is an issue of controversy.”



Actress Rosie O'Donnell reacting to all those aircraft flown into buildings by radical Christians (mediaresearch.org, September 13, 2006): "Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.”

Former Vice President Al Gore, who apparently has a hobby of generating and joining together random words, graciously shared the fruits of this hobby with those attending the opening of the Tribeca Film Festival, April 27, 2007: “Art, music, film, dance, poetry — all the arts — have long been our greatest tools to explore the regions of imagination that defy our efforts to think rationally about subjects that our emotions tell us are too painful to contemplate.” 

And, of course, no list would be complete without the inclusion of Vice President Teflon Joe Biden, Washington's greatest thinker, a man who lives and breathes a heartbeat from the presidency...


In an interview with CBS News in September 2008, Senator Biden rewrote history by making FDR the president in 1929, almost four years before he first took office. He also gave the television industry an early stimulus package by creating it long before it existed: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'look, here's what happened.'"

In January 2007 presidential candidate Joe Biden gave the nation a straight-from-the-heart description of his opponent, Senator Barack Obama (for which Joe later apologized): "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man." Articulate, bright and clean...I'm just trying to imagine what would have happened to any Republican who made such a statement.

Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden criticizingJohn McCain's economic policies at a rally in October 2008: "Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S."

And finally...in a conversation with an American-Indian political activist in 2006, Senator Biden made the following comment (for which he apologized later): "In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking."

I restricted my selections above to Democrats and those on the left as a small (very small) counterweight to the list prepared by ABC News which included only Republicans and folks on the right.

Enough...

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

A Few Favorites

The following are a few of my favorite quotes, words of wisdom that seem to be particularly relevant today. I've repeated a few by memory and so they may not be word-for-word accurate, but they're close enough to the original to make the point.

"Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P. J. O'Rourke

"Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production." - Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." -- William F. Buckley

"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right." - G. K. Chesterton

"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." - G. K. Chesterton

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - G. K. Chesterton

“Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.” - Richard John Neuhaus

“The job of the university is giving students a clear, solid, organic knowledge of Catholic doctrine based on Holy Scripture. They are places where churches must mobilize resources...” - Avery Cardinal Dulles

"I did not expect it at all because for me it is evident that we come from the roots of Israel and that their Bible is our Bible and that Judaism is not just one of many religions, but is the foundation, the root of our faith. We share the faith of Abraham." - Pope Benedict XVI

“God is not solitude, but perfect communion. For this reason the human person, the image of God, realizes himself or herself in love, which is a sincere gift of self." - Pope Benedict XVI

"Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language." - Hilaire Belloc