Any excuse will serve a tyrant

Aesop

I don’t have to attend every argument I’m invited to.

W. C. Fields

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

Isaac Asimov

But has any little atom,
While a-sittin’ and a-splittin’,
Ever stopped to think or CARE
That E = m c**2 ?

Unknown

The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together.

Sir Peter Medawar

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

Henry Kissinger