I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history
mountains
(and three or four rivers).

ON U.S./NATO BOMBING OF YUGOSLAVIA: "I write this as multimillion-dollar missiles and bombs are falling yet again, unleashed far from America's bustling, indifferent shopping malls and decaying inner-city schools, which can't even afford books. How, in this century of Picasso's great 1937 protest painting, Guernica, can American and European bureaucrats still so blithely order terror tactics from the air? Barbarism deployed against tyrants makes us equally barbaric." - Camille Paglia, "ASK CAMILLE: 'Elizabeth Dole is not man enough to be president," Salon Magazine (March 1999)

"What is most disgusting about current political correctness on campus is that its proponents have managed to convince their students and the media that they are authentic Sixties radicals. The idea is preposterous. Political correctness, with its fascist speech codes and puritanical sexual regulations, is a travesty of Sixties progressive values." - Camille Paglia (b. 1947), Vamps & Tramps (p. 118); U.S. "anti-feminist" feminist, educator, lecturer, writer

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." - Thomas Paine (1737-1809), English-born U.S. writer, reformer

"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." - Thomas Paine

"Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself; that is my doctrine." - Thomas Paine

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine

"There is something that governments care far more for than human life, and that is the security of property." - Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst (1858-1928), My Own Story (1914); English suffragist, founder of Women's Social and Political Union

"I am going to fight capitalism even if it kills me. It is wrong that people like you should be comfortable and well fed while all around you people are starving." - Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960), speech (1921); English artist, suffragist, editor, social reformer

"Empire as it exists today is seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and political leaders. When not ignored outright, the subject of imperialism has been sanitized, so that empires are called 'commonwealths,' and colonies become 'territories' or 'dominions.' Imperialist military interventions become matters of 'national defense,' 'national security,' and maintaining 'stability' in one or another region." - Michael Parenti, Against Empire (1995), Chap. 1, "Imperialism 101"

"Imperialism is older than capitalism. The Persian, Macedonian, Roman, and Mongol empires all existed centuries before the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. Emperors and conquistadors were interested mostly in plunder and tribute, gold and glory. Capitalist imperialism differs from these earlier forms in the way it systematically accumulates capital through the organized exploitation of labor and the penetration of overseas markets. Capitalist imperialism invests in other countries, dominating their economies, cultures, and political life, and integrating their productive structures into an international system of capital accumulation." - Michael Parenti, Against Empire (1995), Chap. 1, "Imperialism 101"

"Third World poverty, called 'underdevelopment,' is treated by most Western observers as an original historic condition. We are asked to believe that it always existed, that poor countries are poor because their lands have always been infertile or their people unproductive. In fact, the lands of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have long produced great treasures of food, minerals, and other natural resources. That is why Europeans went through so much trouble to steal and plunder them. One does not go to poor places for self-enrichment. The Third World is rich. Only its people are poor - and it is because of the pillage they have endured." - Michael Parenti, Against Empire (1995), Chap. 1, "Imperialism 101"

"Empires do not emerge naturally and innocently 'in a fit of absentmindedness,' as was said of the British Empire. They are welded together with deliberate deceit, greed, and ruthless violence. They are built upon the sword, the whip, and the gun. The history of imperialism is about the enslavement and slaughter of millions of innocents, a history no less dreadful for remaining conveniently untaught in most of our schools." - Michael Parenti, Against Empire (1995), Chap. 2, "Imperial Domination Updated"

"The enormous gap between what U.S. leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great accomplishments of the dominant political mythology." - Michael Parenti

"The National Security State uses fascism to protect capitalism while they say they're protecting democracy from communism." - Michael Parenti

Alice Park; U.S. suffragist, journalist, feminist, pacifist

Long I fought the driving lists,
  Plume a-stream and armor clanging;
Link on link, between my wrists,
  Now my heavy freedom's hanging.

Albert Parsons

Lucy Parsons

"Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience." - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Pier Paolo Pasolini

"Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich." - Alan Paton (1903-1988); South African novelist

"If you can't get them to salute when they should salute and wear the clothes you tell them to wear, how are you going to get them to die for their country?" - Patton (U.S. film, 1970), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (1920-1989)

"Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women." - Alice Paul; author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923)

Linus Pauling (1901-1994), "The Peace Movement in Historical Perspective: Conversation with Linus Pauling," by Harry Kreisler (Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley; January 18, 1983); Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1954), Nobel Peace Prize (1963)

"The European [i.e., white North American] considers Mexico to be a country on the margin of universal history and everything that is distant from the center of his society strikes him as strange and impenetrable." - Octavio Paz (1914-1998), "The Sons of Malinche"; Mexican writer, poet, essayist, Nobel Prize winner

"My freedom begins with the recognition of the freedom of others." - Octavio Paz

There is light.  We neither see nor touch it.
In its empty clarities rests
what we touch and see.
I see with my fingertips
what my eyes touch:

                   shadows, the world.
With shadows I draw worlds,
I scatter worlds with shadows.
I hear the light beat on the other side.

"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty, now we bleat like sheep for security." - Norman Vincent Peale

"Those cruel men...by violence broke open the [jail] door, and entered with the utmost fury...When the poor wretches [Native American Indians] saw they had no protection...nor could possibly escape...they divided into their little families, the children clinging to the parents...Men, women, and the little children were every one inhumanly murdered! - in cold blood!...The bodies of the murdered were then brought out and exposed in the street, till a hole could be made in the earth, to receive and cover them. But the wickedness cannot be covered, the guilt will lie on the whole land...The blood of the innocent will cry to heaven for vengeance." - John Penn, in From the Heart: Voices of the American Indian (edited by Lee Miller); Pennsylvania governor

"As soon as a person sells his labor to a capitalist and accepts only a part of his product as a payment for that labor, he creates conditions for the purchase and exploitation of other people. No man would willingly give his arm or his child in exchange for money; yet when a man deliberately and consciously sells his working life in order to acquire the necessities for life, he not only reproduces the conditions which continue to make the sale of his life a necessity for its preservation, he also creates conditions which make the sale of life a necessity for other people." - Fredy Perlman (1934-1985), "The Reproduction of Daily Life" (1969); Czech-born U.S. social critic, activist, writer

"Despite beautification campaigns..., the story of the Rise of Civiliation in American will remain ugly beyond description. No amount of talk about Empty Continents that were filled with teeming life will be able to erase the memory of the teeming life that was turned into empty continents. There will be talk of horses, or gunpowder and of rum. There will talk of a superior technology and of a superior culture. There will be talk of everything but Death. Yet Death is the Conquistador, whether mounted on the horses or streaming from the guns. Death is the unspoken name of the superior technology. Death is the only superior culture of the communitly-less invader. And Death is no culture at all; it is the anti-culture, the eater of culture, Leviathan." - Fredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!

"The invaders are not ignorant of what they destroy...They are distant successors to communities that once resisted with music and myth. Themselves grandchildren of victims, they've been turned, like many before them, into passionate victimizers. They destroy with passion precisely because they know what they destroy. Themselves re-pressed, or in their own language Fallen, deprived of Eden, confined to a life of Sin, they are impassioned to repress the free, to universalize the Fall, to destroy Eden as irreversibly as Romans destroyed Carthage..." - Fredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!

"The ruins of abandoned architectural wonders will be found in our day by so-called Archeologists, who will be dazzled by the grandeur of what they find, and even more by the abandonment of places so ideally suited to being university campuses. The Arche- and Anthropologists will fill libraries explaining the abandonment in terms of every cause except human resistance. The prospect of their own academic centers reverting to what they call weeds will fog the Anthropologists' imaginations." - Fredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!

"His-torians will of course focus on military might as the force that destroys the communities, and they will paint pictures of youthful Alexander-like heroes storming the walls of cannibalistic monsters. But His-torians will shy away from any mention of communities, and they will become knownothings or experts of other fields rather than admit that their heroes perpetrate unprecedented chemical and biological warfare against untold living beings." - Fredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!

"The premediated poisoning of human beings, of soils and of other living species can only by the grossest hypocrisy be considered an 'accident.' Only the wilfully blind can claim that this consequence of Technical Progress was 'unforseen.' " - Fredy Perlman, "Progress and Nuclear Power: The Destruction of the Continent and Its Peoples (Fifth Estate Magazine, April 8, 1979)

Fredy Perlman, "The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism"

"That's the definition of poverty. The less choice you have, the poorer you are." - Carrie Saxon Perry (b. 1931), in Brian Lanker's I Dream a World (1989)

Rose Pesotta

"America is a country that doesn't know where it is going, but is determined to set a speed record getting there." - Laurence J. Peter

"America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation." - Laurence J. Peter

"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to." - Laurence J. Peter

"Our men…have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up…Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to 'make them talk,' and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later…stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses." - Philadelphia Ledger newspaper, 1901, carried a dispatch from its Manila [Philippines] correspondent during the US war with Spain

"I am a member of the Communist Party...I'm no politician. I'm not technically proficient in such matters. But Communism stands for certain ideals I believe in...You'll ask me, 'what about Stalin?' Well, what about him? You would have said he was no good - but you didn't know that; you only thought it. Well, I thought he was. It turned out that I was wrong. But is that any reason why I should renounce the ideals I believe in? Let's say I were a Catholic and I met a priest who was no good - a worthless type in every sense of the word. He's all the bad things you can think of. Is that any reason why I should give up believing in Christianity?" - Pablo Picasso (1882-1973), "Picasso Speaking," by Carlton Lake (The Atlantic Monthly, July 1957)

"Obviously, nature has to exist so that we may rape it!" - Pablo Picasso, quoted in "Picasso: Creator and Destroyer," by Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, The Atlantic Monthly, June 1988

William Pickens (b. 1881), The Heir of Slaves. An Autobiography (1911)

Derek Pike

"The American military was not defeated in Vietnam. The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence. From a military standpoint, it was almost an unprecedented performance." - Douglas Pike, quoted by General William C. Westmoreland, in "Statistics about the Vietnam War"; U.S. educator

"Sometimes you look back in recent history and you ask: Did all that really happen? Were half a million 'Communists' massacred in Indonesia in 1965 (the rivers clogged with corpses)? Were 200,000 people killed in East Timor in 1975 by the Indonesian invaders? Have 300,000 people died in Central America since 1960? Has the persecution of the Kurdish people in Turkey reached levels approaching genocide? Are countless Iraqi children dying every month for lack of food and medicine brought about by UN sanctions? did the military coups in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Chile result in levels of repression and depth of suffering comparable to Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and the Khmer Rouge? Has the U.S. to one degree or another inspired, engendered, subsidized, and sustained all these states of affairs? The answer is yes. It has and it does. But you wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them..." - Harold Pinter, "It Never Happened" (Z Magazine, February 1997), British playwright

Don't look.
The world's about to break.

Don't look.
The world's about to chuck out all its light
and stuff us in the chokepit of its dark,
That black and fat suffocated place
Where we will kill or die or dance or weep
Or scream or whine or squeak like mice
To renegotiate our starting price.

Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

Jill. Fred phoned. He can't make tonight.
He said he'd call again, as soon as poss.
I said (on your behalf) OK, no sweat.
He said to tell you he was fine,
Only the crap, he said, you know, it sticks,
The crap you have to fight.
You're sometimes nothing but a walking shithouse.

I was well acquainted with the pong myself,
I told him, and I counselled calm.
Don't let the fuckers get you down,
Take the lid off the kettle a couple of minutes,
Go on the town, burn someone to death,
Find another tart, giver her some hammer,
Live while you're young, until it palls,
Kick the first blind man you meet in the balls.

Anyway he'll call again.

I'll be back in time for tea.

Your loving mother.

"The young people who have spent their formative years within the tranquil, non-threatening confines of suburbia, the prospect of leaving can be daunting and even traumatic. Having the courage to make the leap often means the difference between a life of fulfilled potential and one of tragic stagnation." - Chris Pizzello, "Suburban Blight" (American Cinematographer, March 1997)

"Whence comes war and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lust of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the same and service of the body." - Plato (428-348 BCE); Athenian philosopher

"Oligarchy? A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it." - Plato, The Republic - Book VIII

"The village, which had stood for maybe a thousand years, didn't know we were coming that day. If they had, they would've run." - Platoon (U.S. film, 1986), directed by Oliver Stone (b. 1946, U.S.)

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." - U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, written by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931; Baptist minister, Christian Socialist) in 1892. Children from the beginning of compulsory education to the end recite this every school day of their lives.

Val Plumwood, "Noam Chomsky and Liberation Politics"

"The Bostonians are really, as a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond mere intellect to any other set upon the continent of North America. They are decidedly the most servile imitators of the English it is possible to conceive." - Edgar Allan Poe

"I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago." - Edgar Allan Poe

"All films about crime are about capitalism, because capitalism is about crime. I mean 'quote unquote,' morally speaking. At least that's what I used to think; now I'm convinced." - Abraham Polonsky, Red Hollywood (documentary film, directed by Thom Andersen and Noel Burch); film director (blacklisted for being a communist)

- Abraham Polonsky, "... and director Abraham Polonsky," by David Walsh, World Socialist Web Site, 24 February 1999

"The trouble in corporate America is that too many people with too much power live in a box (their home), then travel the same road every day to another box (their office)." - Faith Popcorn (b. 1947), The Popcorn Report (1991); U.S. marketer, trend forecaster

"We can never give up the belief that the good guys always win. And that we are the good guys." - Faith Popcorn, The Popcorn Report (1991)

"There is no just political, economic or social life without respect for the dignity of each person." - Pope John Paul II, "Pleas for Peace in Balkans, End of Death Penalty in Europe" (29 March 1999)

ON U.S. BOMBING IN KOSOVO: "I ask insistently that everything be undertaken to establish peace in the region and that people be able to live in fellowship in their land. Answering violence with violence is never the way to get out of a crisis. What must be done is to silence arms and acts of vengeance in order to undertake negotiations." - John Paul II, ibid.

"I add my voice to that of the Council of Europe in asking that the most basic right, the right to life for every person, be recognized throughout Europe and that the death penalty be abolished. This premier right ... not only implies that every person must be able to survive, but that each can live in just and dignified conditions." - John Paul II, ibid.

Esther Popel (1896-1958); African-American Harlem Renaissance poet

"We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely good intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell." - Karl Raimund Popper (b. 1902), philosopher

"...It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness." - Karl Raimund Popper

Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), "The Never-Ending Wrong" (The Atlantic Monthly, June 1977); U.S. Pulitzer Prize-winning author

"In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves...How delighted would be all the kings, czars and furhrers of the past (and commissars of the present) to know that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourse takes the form of a jest." - Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1984)

The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
       Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
      Troubles my sleep.
Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,
Now lettest thou thy servant
       Depart in peace.
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation...
       Oh well!
       It troubles my sleep.

O generation of the thoroughly smug
      and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
      and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
      and do not even own clothing.

Come, my songs, let us speak of perfection--
We shall get ourselves rather disliked.

LOQUITUR: En Bertrans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug him up again? The scene is at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiols" is his jongleur. "The Leopard," the device of Richard Coeur de Lion.

I

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

II

In hot summer I have great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace,
And the lightning from black heav'n flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies God's swords clash.

III

Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,
Spiked breast to spiked breat opposing!
Better one hour's stour than a year's peace
With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!
Bah! there's no wine like the blood's crimson!

IV

And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
And I watch his spears through the dark clash
And it fills all my heart with rejoicing
And pries wide my mouth with fast music
When I see him so scorn and defy peace,
His long might 'gainst all darkness opposing.

V

The man who fears war and squats opposing
My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in womanish peace
Far from where worth's won and the swords clash
For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;
Yea, I fill all the air with my music.

VI

Papiols, Papiols, to the music!
There's no sound like to swords swords opposing,
No cry like the battle's rejoicing
When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
And our charges 'gainst "The Leopard's" rush clash.
May God damn for ever all who cry "Peace!"

VII

And let the music of the swords make them crimson!
Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
Hell blot black for always the thought "Peace!"

              -- Ezra Pound

When the man in orange polyester pants,
thongs in November, red beard and crazy hair,
asked me for money to buy a drink,
swearing he wouldn't dream of buying breakfast,
my hand sifted the change like a bad idea.
Pity is so sudden, bleary,
it loves the pocket it dives into
as much as the coins sliding off the edge
of the hand. He smiled and let smoke
unfurl from his lips, his green mermaid flexed
under a rolled-up sleeve.
He wanted nothing from me, but money.

Thinking we are all earnest oddities
nobody really wants, I gave him that change.
His laugh afterwards rippled, a scornful glee.
We walked our opposite ways, clumsily,
struggling up some imaginary hill.
Generosity loves the hand outstretched,
the poor, poor heart knocking back
the careless hours like shots of booze.
Strange doorways looked on. Alleys reeked
of human waste, dead dead-ends.
Giving small change exacts a change, also small.
My shadow walked through valleys of plate glass
as if reading a long invisible scroll.

"Property is theft." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), French social philosopher

- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property? (1890)

"Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century

"Whoever puts a hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "Les Confessions d'un Revolutionnaire" (1849)

"Imagination is the human mind's central life strategy. It is how we anticipate danger, pleasure, threat. The imagination is how our expectations are raised and formulated; it excites and ennobles our purpose in life. The imagination blocks out hunger, bodily harm, bad luck, injury, loneliness, insult, the condition of the marooned person or the orphan, grief and disappointment, restlessness, desperation, imprisonment, and approaching death. And from the imagination spring the ideas, the actions, and the beliefs that we hold. For many people - for me, certainly - the life of the mind, the realm of the imagination, is a more brilliant and compelling one than the world we live in. So this question - 'Is imagination only good, then, for transition rather than transformation' - doesn't even begin to get in on the same train with what I feel imagination does. It is everything. Imagination is the central pivot of human life." - E. Annie Proulx, "Imagination is Everything: A Conversation with E. Annie Proulx," by Katie Bolick, November 12, 1997 (The Atlantic Monthly); U.S. Pulitzer-winning novelist

"Day to day, America eats it's young." - Public Enemy, "Revolutionary Generation"

"Instead of peace the police just wanna wreck and flex." - Public Enemy, "Anti-Nigger Machine"

"If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." - Thomas Pynchon

"As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as they massacre animals, they will kill each other". - Pythagoras

"The United States is the best planet on the earth." - Dan Quayle

"The U.S. condones violence in El Salvador." - Vice President Dan Quayle (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

"We expect them [Salvadoran officials] to work toward the elimination of human rights in accordance with the pursuit of Justice. " - VP Dan Quayle (Chicago Tribune, 2/4/89)

"I was recently on a tour to Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people. " - VP Dan Quayle

"The U.S. victory in the Gulf War was a stirring victory for the forces of aggression. " - VP Dan Quayle (Exquire, 8/92)

"You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be. " - VP Dan Quayle, to the American Samoans, whose capital Quayle pronounces "Pogo Pogo" (Esquire, 8/92). [An offer they can't refuse?]

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is. " - VP Dan Quayle speaking to the United Negro College Fund (5/9/89)

"Tobacco exports should be expanded aggressively because Americans are smoking less. " - VP Dan Quayle (IPS, 8/14/92)

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. " - VP Dan Quayle

"I was known as the chief grave robber of my state." - VP Dan Quayle

"It was just a job. It wasn't any special interest in consumer affairs. I needed a paycheck and the Attorney General said that I would be best to go down there, because he knew I was anti-consumer. " - VP Dan Quayle talking about his job as Chief Investigator, Consumer Protection Division of the Indiana Attorney General's Office from 1970-1971

"The global importance of the Middle East is that it keeps the Near East and the Far East from encroaching on each other. " - VP Dan Quayle

"Those same asteroids which promise material riches can be a threat as well. " - VP Dan Quayle (Esquire, 8/92)

"It's a very valuable function and requirement that you're performing, so have a great day and keep a stiff upper lip. " - VP Dan Quayle speaking to oil spill clean-up workers at Prince William Sound (May 1989)

"We are leaders of the world of the space program. We have been the leaders of the world of our...of the space program and we're not going to continue where we're going to go, not withstanding the Soviet Union's demise and collapse - the former Soviet Union - we now have independent republics which used to be called the Soviet Union. Space is the next frontier to be explored. And we're going to explore. think of all the things we rely upon in space today: communications from...Japan, detection of potential ballistic missile attacks. Ballistic missiles are still here. Other nations do have ballistic missiles. How do you think we were able to detect some of the Scud missiles and things like that? Space, reconnaissance, weather, communications - you name it. We use space a lot today. " - VP Dan Quayle (What a Waste it Is to Lose One's Mind - the Unauthorized Autobiography)

"The U.S. has a vital interest in that area of the country." - VP Dan Quayle referring to Latin America

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. " - Senator Dan Quayle (The New Yorker, 10/10/88)

"It's wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago." - VP Dan Quayle (4/30/91)

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe. " - VP Dany Quayle

"Right now we have a theory of mutually assured destruction that supposedly provides for peace and stability, and it's worked. But that doesn't mean that we can't build upon a concept of MAD where both sides are vulnerable to another attack. Why wouldn't an enhanced deterrent, a more stable peace, a better prospect to denying the ones who enter conflict in the first place to have a reduction of offensive systems and an introduction to defensive capability. I believe that is the route this country will eventually go. " - VP Dan Quayle (NY Times, 9/9/88)

"I, like many, many other Americans, had particular problems about the way the war was being fought. But yes, I supported my President and I supported the goal of fighting Communism in Vietnam. " - VP Dan Quayle (High Times, 11/92)

"Our future competitiveness demands that true environmentalists and responsible leaders not allow the well-intentioned concerns of the American public to be manipulated and exploited as a means to re-establish unnecessary regulatory, economic and social controls. " - VP Dan Quayle

"What you guys want, I'm for." - Senator Dan Quayle to farmers (The Clothes Have No Emperor)

"We have to do more than just elect a new president if we truly want to change this country. " - VP Dan Quayle

"I can identify with steelworkers. I can identify with workers that have had a difficult time. " - Sen. Dan Quayle

"I love California; I practically grew up in Phoenix." - VP Dan Quayle

"I can see the hate that was there; I can see the bigotry. I can see it from his perspective. " - VP Dan Quayle discussing his impressions of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (The Wall Street Journal, 6/8/92)

"I would guess that there's adequate low-income housing in this country. " - VP Dan Quayle (Esquire, 8/92)

"We're goint to have the best-educated American people in the world. " - VP Dan Quayle (Esquire, 8/92)

"My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will never surrender to what is right. " - VP Dan Quayle, is a speech to the Christian Coalition

"[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system." - VP Dan Quayle on the concept of a manned mission to Mars

"They asked me to go in front of the Reagans. I'm not used to going in front of Ronald Reagan, so we went out behind the Bushes. " - VP Dan Quayle after the swearing-in ceremony on Inauguration Day (NY Daily News, 1/21/89)

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and a child. " - VP Dan Quayle (US News and World Report, 10/10/88)

"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change. " - VP Dan Quayle (Esquire, 8/92)

"I want to be Robin to Bush's Batman." - Senator Dan Quayle

"Our party has been accused of fooling the public by calling the tax increases, 'revenue enhancement.' Not so. No one was fooled. " - VP Dan Quayle

"Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement. " - VP Dan Quayle

"I am not a part of the problem. I am a Republican." - VP Dan Quayle

MORE DAN QUAYLE QUOTATIONS!

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Quotations: R
i fratelli de Socio