Lofgren Congress Quotes & Sayings

...More to the point, do their representatives and senators in Washington deliberately prioritize the stated requirement of the Pentagon and CIA above the most basic need of their constituents? Yes, if those legislators have developed the unfortunate tendency to go into a trance every time someone utter the magic phrase "national security." In truth, it happen often enough, and many times of the course of my career I saw Congress respond to that occult incantation like iron filing drawn to a magnet. p 64 — Mike Lofgren

In the end, being the writer on set is a bit like having organised a big party, but you're not allowed to eat or drink anything. You just have to stand in the corner. — John Niven

I'm not afraid to fail. I'm afraid to be mediocre. — Junior Seau

To make use of your mind to think conceptually is to leave substance and attach yourself to form — Huangbo Xiyun

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner. — Mike Lofgren

I think live music is really, really important. And I think it's very important to do together. It's much more fun to play to music together than the one person listening to their lone iPod Shuffle. I think it's an amazing way to build community and have children do things that are funded that's not a videogame. — Sandra Tsing Loh

Every time General David Petraeus appeared before a congressional committee, whether to testify about Iraq or Afghanistan or to be confirmed as CIA director, the hearings were largely a waste of time. Members of Congress burned through large segments of their time-limited question periods by tossing verbal kisses to the witness and going on about what a patriot Petraeus was. There was little time to ask serious questions about the strategy of our trillion-dollar military engagement in the Muslim world and to explore alternatives. The fawning of military cheerleaders such as Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham reached such extravagant lengths as would have made Caesar blush. — Mike Lofgren

The true art of being young is knowing how to defy gravity and upset as many people as possible while doing it. How to penetrate the great secrets of the universe and damn the torpedoes. How to stir the demons of our destiny ... — Mick Rock

I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hallowness,
the futility of the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd
seemingly the leading actor of the piece ;
but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.
I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.
He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of sahib.
For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives", and so in every crises he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. — George Orwell

If you turn the other cheek, you can be enslaved for 1,000 years. — Malcolm X

He [Jimmy Connors] has one weakness. He can never say his opponent played well. That's why it feels good to beat him and that's why other players would rather beat him than any other player. — Bjorn Borg

[I]f the public wants the military to perform better, give more prudent advice to its civilian leadership, and spend taxpayer money more wisely, it must elect a Congress that will dial down a few notches its habitual and childish 'we support the troops!' mantra and start asking skeptical questions - and not accepting bland evasions or appeals to patriotism as a response. — Mike Lofgren

This dilettantish inability to comprehend the essential issues of the conduct of production affairs is not only manifested in the writings of Marx and Engels. It permeates no less the contributions of contemporary pseudo-economics. — Ludwig Von Mises

Great faith surfaces in great problems - have faith — Ikechukwu Joseph

The way I saw it, that was the real mistake the Barrow gang had made.
It seemed to me that they'd have been a lot less likely to get gunned down if Bonnie had just had the sense to be Clyde. — Saundra Mitchell

I didn't like it when he looked at me like that. I could never escape the feeling that i was being compared to someone else. — Jojo Moyes

At last, the golden orientall gate Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre, And Phoebus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his dewie hayre; And hurls his glistring beams through gloomy ayre. — Edmund Spenser