Quotes by John McCarthy

• Suicidal terrorists may have short shelf lives.
• Of course, Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins, you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance.
• It is said that man doesn't live by bread alone. Sometimes this is unfortunate, because people who cannot live by bread alone too often kill other people in consequence of the fights they get into.
• Inside of many liberals is a fascist struggling to get out.
• Language is froth on the surface of thought.
• In human history, the desire for revenge and the desire for loot have often been closely associated.
• My hobby of not attending meetings about recycling saves more energy than your hobby of recycling.
• My opinion is that he's a swindler and you're a sucker.
• Never abandon a theory that explains something until you have a theory that explains more.
• Once a person has killed other people on behalf of an ideology, he becomes rather devoted to it.
• Proposals to forbid golf courses have about the same motivations as proposals to forbid skate boarding, although the rationalizations are different.
• Self-righteousness has killed more people than smoking.
• If I owned Marseilles and Hell, I'd rent out Marseilles and live in Hell.
• When thugs by nature meet thugs by political conviction, 5-0 is not surprising.
• Foolishness is rarely a matter of lack of intelligence or even lack of information.
• The peace movement is a great force for peace. Some of the world's most quarrelsome people act out their aggressions through the peace movement.
• The slogan was 'Don't trust anyone over thirty'. Sixty years later the slogan became, 'Don't trust anyone over ninety'.
• There is only one thing more harmful to society than an elected official forgetting the promises he made in order to get elected; that's when he doesn't forget them.
• We modern Marxists regard socialism as a historically brief transitional stage between feudalism and capitalism, necessary only in backward countries.
• Slogans rarely convince the unconvinced. However, they do rally the troops already on your side.
• Asking a critic to name his favorite book is like asking a butcher to name his favorite pig.
• The difference between a contemporary liberal and a socialist is that to a liberal the most beautiful word in the English language is 'forbidden', whereas to a socialist the most beautiful word is 'compulsory'.
• When I see a slippery slope, my instinct is to build a terrace.
• A declining institution often experiences survival of the unfittest.
• A true intellectual is a man who, after reading a book and being convinced by its arguments, will shoot someone or, more likely, order someone shot.
• Alas few socialists are either benevolent enough to work hard at these occupations out of benevolence or self-interested enough to work hard at them for money.
• Amateur bureaucrats are often even worse than professional bureaucrats.
• Hardly anyone has noticed that in the Northern Hemisphere people stir their drinks counterclockwise, whereas the same people stir their drinks clockwise when visiting the Southern Hemisphere.
• An extreme optimist is a man who believes that humanity will probably survive even if it doesn't take his advice.
• If a person can be said to have the wrong attitude, there is no need to pay attention to his arguments.
• Both politicians and journalists face situations which strain their honesty and humanity. My opinion is that politicians on the average stand up somewhat better than journalists.
• Committing genocide on behalf of an institution generates greater loyalty to it than merely getting people fired from their jobs on its behalf.
• Compassion is contempt with a human face.
• Don't try to talk anyone out of concentrating his hatred on Ayn Rand or any other dead person. It can't harm the dead. Diverted to a living person, it might actually do harm.
• Hard distinctions make bad philosophy.
• He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
• His ambition is to be the spider in the World Wide Web.
• Honor among thieves is the ancestor of all honor.
• An excessive knowledge of Marxism is a sign of a misspent youth.
• Soccer riots kill at most tens. Intellectuals' ideological riots sometimes kill millions.
• Success is just an alley that makes it easier to pay your dues.