Quotes and Quips

that might be as brilliant as we have been led to believe, or maybe they are

"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

-Samuel Johnson, devout Anglican and a staunch Tory, deeply rooted in tradition and the established order.

Abraham Lincoln wrote in a letter to H.L. Pierce on April 6, 1859, "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it".

Abraham Lincoln never considered blacks to be equal to white men. On his first meeting with Lincoln on August 10, 1863 Frederick Douglass was in the Capital City. While in town, he visited many prominent officials. As he entered the white house ,the 54th Massachusetts – soldiers Douglass had helped recruit, had recently been cut to pieces at Fort Wagner His oldest boy Lewis was lingering in a hospital from a devastating wound in that battle. His youngest boy Charles was fighting disease and illness. When the father of these wounded warriors arrived, he was immediately taken to see the President. “I was an ex-slave, identified with a despised race, and yet I was to meet the most exalted person in this great republic.”

As he entered, Lincoln stated, “I know who you are Mr. Douglass. Sit down. I am glad to see you.” Douglass explained why he was here. He told the President he was no longer recruiting due to unequal pay, no promotions, and no protections.

One year later, President Lincoln invited Frederick Douglass back to the White House. On August 19, 1864 Douglass and Lincoln were together again. The President was facing re-election soon and told Douglass he did not expect to win. If he lost, there would be a new President. With this in mind, Lincoln wanted Douglass to help with a special mission. Secretly, a revolution was afoot. Since the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln hoped for a mass exodus of enslaved individuals out of the states in rebellion. This had not happened on the scale he hoped. Now, Lincoln asked Douglass to lead a network of folks into the rebellious states to help every last soul possible escape enslavement. In language that must have reminded Douglass of his conversations years before with John Brown, the President of the United States was tasking him to help save thousands of lives, if not more. Douglass was asked to help destroy what remained of slavery. As a biographer observed, “Over night, Frederick Douglass went from frustrated outsider and fierce critic to special presidential advisor and organizer of a radical military mission.” After their meeting, Lincoln won re-election and this mission was unnecessary, but “for those hours at least the former slave from the Tuckahoe and the Indiana dirt farmer’s son were making a revolution together.” Though it never happened, it was now clear to Frederick Douglass that President Lincoln realized what was at heart of this war: the millions enslaved.

"Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing."-Edmund Burke, the conservative British parliamentarian and writer who remains the cornerstone for those who believe society is based served by authority. The hypocrisy Burke refers to is the hypocrisy of the benefits of spreading authority to many.

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”-Patrick Henry

Letter from Patrick Henry to John Alsop January 13, 1773

HANOVER, Va., Jan. 13, 1773.

“DEAR SIR:—I take this opportunity to acknowledge the receipt of ANTHONY BENEZET’s book against the slave trade. I thank you for it. It is not a little surprising that Christianity, whose chief excellence consists in softening the human heart, in cherishing and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a practice so totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong. What adds to the wonder is, that this abominable practice has been introduced in the most enlightened ages Times that seem to have pretensions to boast of high improvements in arts, sciences and refined morality, have brought into general use, and guarded by many laws, a species of violence and tyranny which our more rude and barbarous, but more honest, ancestors detested.” …"General inconvenience of living without them": In 1773, Henry admitted, "I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them".

“Why is it odd? Democracy, strictly meant as rule by the majority, voting, etc. by itself is not freedom. Majority can oppress minority in a very democratic manner. Of course, modern democracy implies many freedoms built in, so when we say "democracy" we should be aware which meaning we consider.” -PeterThiel

“"I would say that we lived in a world in which bits were unregulated and atoms were regulated."-Peter Thiel

Bishop Asbury pessimistically recorded in his diary: “I am brought to conclude that slavery will exist in Virginia perhaps for ages; there is not a sufficient sense of religion nor of liberty to destroy it; Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, in the highest flights of rapturous piety, still maintain and defend it.”

"The defence of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail."-John C. Calhoun

Freedom exists for some, but as Johnson also quipped, those who most argue for their own rights do not think others worthy of the same rights,

“Moreover, the judgments of this Court are collective judgments. They are neither solo performances nor debates between two sides, each of which has its mind quickly made up and then closed. The judgments of this Court presuppose full consideration and reconsideration by all of the reasoned views of each. Without adequate study there cannot be adequate reflection. Without adequate reflection there cannot be adequate deliberation and discussion. And without these, there cannot be that full interchange of minds which is indispensable to wise decision and its persuasive formulation.”-Felix Frankfurter

Or at least the ideal. Liberal Justices William O. Douglas and Hugo Black refused to speak to Frankfurter. Probably no justice ever made the status quo seem so right.-KT

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar was a diplomat for the confederacy and attempted to get support for the southern cause as a special envoy of Jefferson Davis. Lamar had developed a reputation during the 1870s and 1880s as a leading contributor to the Democratic Party's opposition to the predominantly Republican African-American officeholders in Mississippi. Lamar's testimony before the 42nd United States Congress's Joint Committee to Inquire into the Conditions of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States reveals that he was a passionate defender of the Southern social order and the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society which had developed in response to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments and the events of Reconstruction. In May 1887 Grover Cleveland appointed Lamar to the Supreme Court.

No comment.

“When dealing with two-faced people, it is difficult to know which face is uglier, the real one or the manufactured one.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo

“In a world full of cynics, critics and competitors, we get to choose instead to be cheerleaders for others.” ― Shelley Hendrix

“Sharks don’t eat fish because of anything the fish do. They don’t eat fish because those fish aren’t good enough fish, or because those fish aren’t nice enough to the sharks. Sharks eat fish because they are sharks.” ― Drenda Keesee

Nothing more to say.

"In business, when two people always agree, one of them is irrelevant." — William Wrigley Jr.,chewing gum king.

Debt and equity are broad terms for two categories of investments. The debt (or bond) market is where loan assets are bought and sold. There's no single physical exchange for bonds. Transactions are mainly made between brokers, large institutions, or individual investors.

The equity (or stock) market is where stocks are bought and sold. This includes well-known exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the London Stock Exchange, and many others.

Equity, or stock, is a share of ownership in a company. The owner of an equity stake may profit from dividends which are a percentage of company profits returned to shareholders. The equity holder may also profit from the sale of the stock if the market price increases.

The owner of an equity stake can also lose money. For example, if a company declares bankruptcy, shareholders may lose their entire stake.

Shares of equity can experience substantial price swings, sometimes having little to do with the stability or finances of the corporation that issued them. This is called market volatility.

Volatility can be caused by social, political, governmental, or economic events. A large financial industry exists to research, analyze, and predict the direction of individual stocks, stock sectors, and the equity market in general.

The equity market is considered inherently risky, yet it has the potential to deliver higher returns than other investments.

Inherently though markets are a form of slot machine that always reinforces the wealth of the casino which has no money beyond what they can induce others to stick money in the machine. It is not money the corporate owns but the total sum of the debt it owns.-kt

And so for the sum of the ridiculous of it all, I might refer to one of the smartest quotes anyone ever uttered (my opinion), "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin