J > J's Quotes

“We can write morals into law, and enforce those morals harshly, or we can return to a true Free Enterprise System, which has the sink-or-swim justice of Caesar Augustus built into it. I emphatically favor the latter alternative. We must be hard, for we must become again a nation of swimmers, with the sinkers quietly disposing of themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“Eliot had only one pair of shoes, black ones. They had a crackle finish as a result of an experiment. Eliot once tried to polish them with Johnson’s Glo-Coat, which was a floorwax, not intended for shoes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“World War II and the loss of Robin had taught him that life was “unpredictable and fragile,” a truth that meant those who were spared owed debts of service to others. He had come of age as a businessman and as a father under Eisenhower, whose conservative centrism had created the conditions for Bush’s own prosperity and happiness in postwar Texas. As a politician Bush had apprenticed in Johnson’s Washington, where presidents were neither angels nor demons but sometimes right and sometimes wrong. Under Nixon and Ford, he had learned about diplomacy, national politics, and intelligence gathering firsthand. And Reagan had given him an impressive model of leadership to which to aspire, even if Bush knew he could never match the Gipper as a presidential performer.”
― Jon Meacham, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush

“I won’t be captured. The finest way to die is in the excitement of fighting the enemy.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965

“Make a claim that is directionally accurate but has a big exaggeration or factual error in it. Wait for people to notice the exaggeration or error and spend endless hours talking about how wrong it is. When you dedicate focus and energy to an idea, you remember it. And the things that have the most mental impact on you will irrationally seem as though they are high in priority, even if they are not. That’s persuasion.”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

“Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason. I’ve”
― Scott Adams, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter