Great Throughts Treasury

"Health care's like any other product or service: if the consumer is in charge of spending his money on it, then the market will make sure that it is affordable."

"Here are some of the nitty-gritty details about what really happened in the so-called ?Decade of Greed.? Average real family income grew by well over 15% from 1982 to 1989. For the poorest fifth of Americans, real income grew almost 12%. The proverbial misery index took a nosedive: We experienced sustained economic growth without inflation, low unemployment, and low interest rates. Some 20 million new jobs were created, 82% of which were in higher-skilled occupations. The 1980s was a decade of greatly increased personal and corporate charitable giving."

"he minute you say that conservatism includes people who are pro-choice, you've destroyed conservatism, because conservatism stands for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and without life, there is nothing else, is there?"

"Health care, that's 1/6--1/6!--of the US economy, 1/6 of our GDP," he declared in July 2009. "You take that out of the private sector. That means the private sector has shrunk by 1/6. That means there's less capital for people to compete for and earn, and there's less opportunity for that remaining 5/6 (and it's going to be less than that because all this other stuff's going to take even more of the private sector) to grow."

"He's one fry short of a Happy Meal."

"Hillary Clinton is attempting to solve a phony crisis-health care. Yes, we?ve got a problem, but it is not a crisis, and its solution should not be concocted in a crisis atmosphere. It?s the usual liberal modus operandi. They overstate a problem and work society into a frenzied state in order to justify their invariable, big-government solution. What Hillary and Bill are about to do is undermine the best health-care system in the world in the name of fairness and equity."

"Human beings are the primary species on this planet. Animals and everything else are subspecies whose position is subordinate to that of humans. Humans have a responsibility toward lower species and must treat them humanely. Humanely. Why not treat them animally? Because that would mean killing them."

"How can people be so stupid? I marvel at that. See, I think you have to work as being ignorant - and if you're gonna work at being ignorant, why not work at being informed?"

"Human nature fascinates me."

"Holocaust? Ninety million Indians? Only four million left? They all have casinos ? what?s to complain about?"

"I am addicted to prescription pain medication."

"I am here to offer and to assist. I can... I could bring these two guys together. I've been there, folks, and I could do this, and I'm serious in my desire to do it."

"I am opposed to Obama's efforts to destroy the American economy. I'm opposed to Obama's efforts to so-called fix the health care system. I'm opposed to the way Obama wants to go about fixing unemployment."

"I am the Doctor of Democracy. I am America's Truth Detector. And as the Doctor of Democracy, the deal you have with your doctor isn't changing. You get to keep your doctor. You get to keep your plan. You get to keep your station. Nothing's changing, and it really never was gonna change."

"I am convinced that, despite what you think of Obama, I don't think Obama has a person-to-person connection with people. I think people love him because of his race and feel sorry for him, object of sympathy. I think people feel he's a victim, he portrays himself as a victim of America; he gets sympathy that way."

"I can't give money away to buy listeners. I can't pay listeners off with phones or food stamps or anything. I can't come by my audience by buying it."

"I can't believe that he actually chose to make a big deal about this, although I do think it was not spontaneous, ... Obviously, there was some strategy to this."

"I can't figure Twitter out. The way Twitter is formatted, I can't tell who is saying something and who's replying to something. I don't know who the tweeter is and who's responding to the twit."

"I cannot emphasize enough how excited they are at the prospect of taxes going up on everybody and the defense budget being cut and nobody has to do anything. There's no political price to be paid, it's already signed as part of the raising the debt limit last time, sequestration, all that."

"I believe that life begins at conception and that killing that human life is justifiable only when it's necessary to save the mother's life."

"I do not believe that Obama is smarter than anybody else. I do not believe he has cut a new path and is a politician unlike any we've ever seen regarding his intellect. I don't believe any of this hocus-pocus. I didn't believe it when they said it about Hillary, Smartest Woman in the World."

"I challenge the fundamental premise of the animal rights movement that animals are superior to human beings. [That premise] is inescapable when you examine the policies they advocate and their invariable preference for the well-being of animals, and their disregard for humans and their livelihoods. [But] let me make it perfectly clear that my belief that animals have no fundamental rights is not equivalent to saying that human beings have no moral obligation to protect animals when they can. The animal rights movement knew what it was doing when it deliberately adopted the label ?animal rights.? The concept of ?rights? is very powerful in the American political lexicon."

"I can't tell you the number of times in high school I was allowed to be disappointed for not making the grade; it's a part of life. So the young students who are being taught by radical leftists in this country today are going to end up growing up in a world for which they are totally unprepared and unequipped."

"I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there's a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve."

"I don't have an ego that makes me believe the world revolves around me. I am not self-absorbed."

"I don't think it's written in the clouds, written in stone, written in the beach. Hillary is not going to president. The Republican nominee will be, and that is why, folks, we have to be careful about who's nominated on our end."

"I don't understand what we're so worried about. These are the people that are trying to kill us. What do we care what is the most humiliating thing in the world for them? There's also this business of them all wearing hoods and how that?s also very humiliating. You can see more guys wearing hoods at a [Sen.] Robert Byrd birthday party 40 years ago than we've seen in these prisoner photos."

"I don't think it is deniable: whenever we, I, conservative media, are really interested in something, the mainstream media purposely avoid it."

"I guess politicians can be excused for thinking the electorate is stupid because they keep winning reelection. If you were Barbara Boxer or Harry Reid and you kept being reelected, you'd have to think, 'Half of my state is stupid.' But then you wouldn't be smart enough to think that if you had their brains."

"I had to learn early on that where conservatives are concerned, the truth about them is the last thing anybody wants to report. It's the lies and distortions, the mischaracterizations, the character assassinations, that people want to report."

"I hate charts. I just despise 'em."

"I have an institutional fear of big government. I have an institutional opposition to bureaucracy."

"I have never said, whatever number are here illegally, "Round 'em up and deport 'em." It isn't realistic. We have to stop the influx. So you can't pose a question to me, "Okay, Mr. Limbaugh, after we secure the borders..." the borders are key. And then we come up with a plan, I could give you two or three of them that would help legalize these people if they're willing to assimilate. We don't want a Balkanized America, and that's what this is leading to. It's just a matter of following the law"

"I have no interest in being wrong, so if I am, please correct me. I don't want to be wrong. There's nothing in it for you or for me to be wrong."

"I live in Realville, and my problem is that I'm governed by logic. And some of the claims that are made by people on the left just don't hold up."

"I love listening to myself!"

"I have to tell you, every day is a roller coaster."

"I know it when I don't know it. Sometimes I know it when I don't think I know it. I need to trust myself in these moments, these rare moments of self-doubt."

"I mean, Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett, ... Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There's nothing about it that's real, including the mainstream media's glomming onto it. It's not real. It's the latest effort made by the coordinated left."

"I never try to get noticed. It just happens. I never try."

"I never, ever have seen media this way. It's almost indescribable. Making up stories, refusing to run real stories. It's making themselves look like utter fools. There's no journalism, there is no media. There's pure, full-fledged advocacy here."

"I never open the newspaper, never. I never go to a website; I never turn on the T.V. hoping to find something I can attack. It isn't what I do. I defend."

"I must be honest. I can only read so many paragraphs of a New York Times story before I puke."

"I never turn on the news over the weekend, short of a nuclear detonation somewhere. I just don't. I don't learn anything from it anymore."

"I reject most conventional wisdom."

"I say what I mean. I don't speak in code. That's why I am a star and ace communicator."

"I sometimes wish I weren't as logical as I am and I wish I weren't as smart as I am, because I'd be happy."

"I think I'm becoming a psychologist in explaining the Republican Party. It's the only way you can explain 'em. It's psychological."

"I tell you, Bono may have a point. South Africa needs a Walmart."

"I suppose we're not supposed to judge people."