"Football combines the two worst features of American
life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings."
-- George F. Will
America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin
for one dollar and use it up in two weeks.
-- John Barrymore
"It saddens Norwegians that America still honors the Italian
Columbus, who arrived late in the New World and by accident, who
wasn't even interested in New Worlds but only in spices. Out on
a spin in search of curry powder and hot peppers - a man on a
voyage to the grocery - he stumbled onto the land of heroic Vikings
and proceeded to get the credit for it. And then to name it 'America'
after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian who never saw the New World
but only sat in Italy and drew incredibly inaccurate maps of it.
By rights, it should be called Erica, after Eric the Red, who
did the work five hundred years earlier. The United States of
Erica. Erica the Beautiful. The Erican League."
-- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
"The American Republic will endure, until politicians
realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
Last Modified: May 5th, 1998
Patri Friedman / patri@izzy.com