From here:
• Lloyd George could not see a belt without hitting below it. (Margot Asquith)
• [Benjamin Disraeli] is a self-made man and worships his creator. (John Bright)
• I only wish I knew [Bill Vander Zalm] before his lobotomy. (Kim Campbell)
• [Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. (Winston Churchill)
• Clement Attlee is a modest man, who has a good deal to be modest about. (Winston Churchill)
• [William Gladstone] is a sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his verbosity. (Benjamin Disraeli)
• In a disastrous fire in president Reagan’s library both books were burned. And the tragedy is he hadn’t finished colouring one. (Jonathan Hunt)
• [Gerald Ford] is so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time. (Lyndon Baines Johnson)
• He compresses the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know. (Abraham Lincoln)
• When they circumcised Herbert Samuel they threw away the wrong bit. (David Lloyd George)… William Shakespeare –
• His brain is as dry as the remaining biscuit after voyage. (As You Like It)
• [You are] one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. (Coriolanus)
• God has given you one face and you make yourself another. (Hamlet)
• What is this quintessence of dust? (Hamlet)
• Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter! (King Lear)
• [You are] an index and prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts. (Othello)
• Ajax, that wears his brain on his belly and his guts in his head. He hath not so much brain as earwax. (Troilus and Cressida)
A few more random tidbits:
- He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others. – Samuel Johnson
- I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. – March Twain
- Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go – Oscar Wilde
- He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends – Oscar Wilde
A lost art these days, I fear.
You left out the Lady Astor quotes:
Sir, you’re drunk.
Yes, but you are ugly, and tomorrow I’ll be sober.
——————————–
“If I was your wife, sir, I would poison your coffee.”
“If I was your husband, I would drink it,” answered Churchill…
The reference to the Reagan library is a typical liberal jest. But the fact that Reagan got the Embassy hostages freed without firing a shot and without any loss of life is indisputable. Same for Reagan bringing an end to the cold war. Truly great accomplishments by one of the greatest Presidents in American history.
Now as far as President Carter goes…
“President Jimmy Carter proved that the White House is no place for on the job training.”
And we Canadians must never forget the immortal words of such “great” liberal Prime Ministers as:
Jean Creatan
““A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It’s a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it’s because it’s proven.”
and Saint Pierre Smell-a-lot Trudeau (the only Canadian Prime Minister to implement Martial Law during peace time)
“Just watch me”
Ronald Regan bringing an end to the cold war? Presided over and escalated more like.
June 12, 1987 President Ronald Reagan visits Berlin and urges Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
November 9, 1989 Berlin Wall is opened
December 22, 1989 Brandenburg Gate is opened
October 3, 1990 Germany is reunited
Source:
http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/history/berlinwall-timeline.htm
1983 President Reagan proposes Strategic Defence Initiative
1983: October : U.S. troops invades and overthrows regime in Grenada
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of the Soviet Union initiating a campaign of openness called “glasnost” and restructuring called “perestroika”
1986 October : President Reagan and Gorbachev resolve to remove all intermediate nuclear missiles from Europe
1987 October : Reagan and Gorbachev agree to remove all medium and short-range nuclear missiles
1989 January : Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan
June : Poland becomes independent
September : Hungary becomes independent
November : Berlin Wall is demolished and East Germany allows unrestricted migration to West Germany
December : Communist governments fall in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Rumania
Decline of the Soviet empire
1990 March : Lithuania becomes independent
May 29 : Boris Yeltsin elected as President of Russia
October 3 : Germany reunited
1991 August : End of Soviet Union and the Cold War Ends
Source
http://www.history-timelines.org.uk/events-timelines/03-cold-war-timeline.htm
The liberals always want to portray Reagan as a war monger, but the facts of history is that his strength and unyielding resolve is what was needed to make this world a safer place. During the Reagan Presidency, there were real reduction in nuclear weapons, an opening of European borders and on overall improvement in American/Soviet(Russian) relations.
You can’t argue with the facts of history.
What would you have had Trudeau do, during the October Crisis? The RCMP did take advantage of the War Measures act in other parts of the country, which they should not have done, but as someone who lived in Montreal during that time – I believe he did what needed to be done. The FLQ were terrorists, don’t forget. They used bombs, and they murdered. Nobody knew at the time that there were so few of them.
The FLQ crises of October 1970 occurred after about 7 years of liberal government in Canada (Pearson 1963-68, Trudeau 1968-79). It was during the liberal tenure that Quebec separatist were allowed to flourish to the point that a small and radical group felt that they could resort to terrorist acts.
I will be the first to proclaim that the War Measures Act was the correct thing to do once terrorism reared its ugly head in this country. The liberal failure is that the situation was allowed to get to this state.
The roots of the FLQ crisis go back a heck of a lot further than that. The whole of the blame does not lie at the feet of Pearson and Trudeau. What do you think that they could have done to prevent the crisis? What do you think the PCs would have done differently?
The fall of the iron curtain had a lot more to do with the inherent unworkableness of communism, the people of the Soviet block having had enough of dictatorship and with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms than with anything Ronald Regan did.
Poland has Solidarity, Lech Walensa and Pope John Paul to thank for her freedom.
The Soviets withdrew from Afganistan because the Taliban beat them.
Your list of historical facts is just that; a list. It doesn’t prove anything about Regan’s effects on history.
My point, I suppose, is that historical facts can’t be argued with – your interpretation of them, can.
I agree that history is open to interpretation.
My interpretattion is that President Reagan was an incredibly strong President, whose policies were the direct impetus for the breaking of communism. Of course he does not deserve all of the creidt, and the people you mention are most certainly deserving of a great amount of it.
And mine is that he came within a wisker of blowing us all to kingdom come.
I have to wonder upon what historical incident do you base this interpretation?
The only time during the Reagan Presidency that the US reached a DEFCON 2 status was during the K219 incident.
http://www.signsofthetimes.org.au/archives/2007/june/article3.shtm
But this pails in comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Kennedy Presidency, and the countless Americans who died in the Vietnam War, which by the way excalated during the Johnson Presidency, and was ended during the Nixon Presidency.
It never ceases to amaze me how the Republican Presidents are always portrayed as “war mongers” when history clearly shows that wars end and times become more peaceful during the times of Republican Presidents. Bush junior being an obvious exeption.