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The Wit and Wisdom of Will Rogers
Mar 16, 2017 14:20:13   #
pafret Loc: Northeast
 
"The Wit and Wisdom of Will Rogers"

Posted: 15 Mar 2017 06:29 PM PDT

by Tom Purcell

"Things are mighty heated these days. Tempers are flaring and minds are closed. Here’s the solution: the wit and wisdom of Will Rogers.

“The short memory of voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”

“We’ve got the best politicians that money can buy.”

“A fool and his money are soon elected.”

Rogers spoke these words during the Great Depression, but they’re just as true today. With 24-hour news channels, our memories are shorter than ever. And in the mass-media age, the politician who can afford the most airtime frequently wins.

“Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.”

“Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing.
That was the closest our country has ever been to being even.”

“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”

Today, unfortunately, we’re getting more government than we’re paying for. We cover the difference by borrowing billions every year. As the king of the velvet-tipped barb, Rogers never intended to be mean, but to bring us to our senses. One of his favorite subjects was to remind the political class that it worked for us, not the other way around.

“When Congress makes a joke it’s a law, and when they make a law, it’s a joke.”

“You can’t hardly find a law school in the country that don’t,
through some inherent weakness, turn out a senator or congressman from time to time…
if their rating is real low, even a president.”

“The more you observe politics,
the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.”

That’s for certain. Rogers’ thinking on American foreign policy really hits home today:

“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”

“Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it.
You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.”

“Liberty doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in speeches.”

Rogers was born and raised on a farm in Oklahoma. His wit reflected the heart of America — the horse sense, square dealing and honesty that were the bedrock of our success:

“When a fellow ain’t got much of a mind, it don’t take him long to make it up.”

“This country is not where it is today on account of any one man.
It’s here on account of the real common sense of the Big Normal Majority.”

Franklin Roosevelt, a frequent target of Rogers’ barbs, understood how valuable Rogers’ sensibility was during the years of the Depression: “I doubt there is among us a more useful citizen than the one who holds the secret of banishing gloom… of supplanting desolation and despair with hope and courage. Above all things… Will Rogers brought his countrymen back to a sense of proportion.”

A sense of proportion is clearly what we’re lacking right now. We need to get it back quickly. What we need now more than ever is the calm, clear perspective of Will Rogers. He offered some sound advice on how we can get started: “If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?”
- http://www.cagle.com/

Excerpt from:
“Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!” by Tom Purcell



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Mar 16, 2017 14:49:02   #
slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
 
More from Will Rogers....

The best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter--he's got to just know.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

There is nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

There ought to be one day--just one--when there is open season on senators.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

There's the one thing no nation can ever accuse us of and that is secret diplomacy. Our foreign are an open book, generally a check book.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.

We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.

Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.

There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

Reply
Mar 16, 2017 14:55:20   #
slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
 
slatten49 wrote:
More from Will Rogers....

The best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter--he's got to just know.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

There is nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

There ought to be one day--just one--when there is open season on senators.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

There's the one thing no nation can ever accuse us of and that is secret diplomacy. Our foreign are an open book, generally a check book.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.

We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.

Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.

There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
More from Will Rogers.... br br The best doctor i... (show quote)


And, yet, some more...I love Will Rogers.


An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.

An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.

Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it.

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.

I have always noticed that people will never laugh at anything that is not based on truth.

I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do today.

I was not a child prodigy, because a child prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up.

I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.

If you want to know how a man stands, go among the people who are in his same business.

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

Nothing you can't spell will ever work.

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.

Politics is applesauce.

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

That's the trouble with a politician's life-somebody is always interrupting it with an election.

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Mar 16, 2017 15:36:39   #
missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore
 
Could you imagine being in the same room as he and Samuel Clemen's ?

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Mar 16, 2017 16:29:01   #
slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
 
missinglink wrote:
Could you imagine being in the same room as he and Samuel Clemen's ?


Rogers and Clemens are the two primary sources for my oft-posted quotes.

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Mar 16, 2017 16:34:40   #
slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
 
missinglink wrote:
Could you imagine being in the same room as he and Samuel Clemen's ?


Twenty of Samuel Clemen's, aka Mark Twain's most notable quotes.....(There are many, many more)

1. Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.

2. Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

3. The average American may not know who his grandfather was. But the American was, however, one degree better off than the average Frenchman who, as a rule, was in considerable doubt as to who his father was.

4. Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass.

5. There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him.

6. There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he less savage than the other savages.

7. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.

8. The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass.

9. The report of my illness grew out of his (James Clemens) illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.

10. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

11. Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink.

12. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

13. Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.

14. I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.

15. I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much more of it.

16. In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made school boards.

17. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

18. Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

19. To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

20. It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.

Reply
Mar 16, 2017 16:38:35   #
pafret Loc: Northeast
 
missinglink wrote:
Could you imagine being in the same room as he and Samuel Clemen's ?



I would want one other to be present, H. L. Mencken. For instance, his take on the practice of Chiropractic was that it was a good thing, it gave decent employment to strapping farm boys, and removed mental defectives from the gene pool.

https://www.chirobase.org/12Hx/mencken.html

PS got to make room for Ambrose Bierce, the man who was too mean to die. See his Devils Dictionary.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

Reply
 
 
Mar 16, 2017 16:58:14   #
slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
 
pafret wrote:
I would want one other to be present, H. L. Mencken. For instance, his take on the practice of Chiropractic was that it was a good thing, it gave decent employment to strapping farm boys, and removed mental defectives from the gene pool.

https://www.chirobase.org/12Hx/mencken.html

PS got to make room for Ambrose Bierce, the man who was too mean to die. See his Devils Dictionary.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
I would want one other to be present, H. L. Mencke... (show quote)

Fair enough, Pafret. Here are some quotes by H.L. Mencken...

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.

My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes without having a single original thought.

Never let your inferiors do you a favor - it will be extremely costly.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

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Mar 17, 2017 13:02:10   #
THUNDERBOLT
 
Thank you all...
I just wanted to reply & save this to go on my watch list.
Again,THANX,
ThunderBolt

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