“This side of the Kingdom of God upon Earth, it is a melancholy human fact that those who beat their swords into plowshares end up doing the plowing for those who kept their swords.”

“In keeping with the Laws of the Prophet Bubba and the Code of the UIL, as set forth in the Book of First Downs, as the sun sets on Friday nights the rites of the Texas state religion are celebrated: high school, smash-mouth football. ‘And lo, the children of Jim Bob do take to the roads in caravans and they do go up unto the stadium by tribes, the Indians of Groveton, the Panthers of Lufkin, the Mustangs of Overton, and the very Wildcats of Palestine, and who shall withstand the traffic jams thereof?’ Thus is it written, and so it is and shall be.”

“It was left to the Progressive movement in America (as to the Fabians in Britain) to promote eugenics, Prohibition, dietary fads, the compulsory sterilisation of those they deemed ‘unfit’, and preferential treatment in immigration law of ‘Nordic’ (and preferably Protestant) immigrants.”

“In the past few years, genetics have confirmed that the hunter-gatherers were not overwhelmed by the new wave of sedentary farmers, and that the first agricultural revolution spread well in advance of its first users, by contact and trade in ideas. Nice to see science catching up with economics and military history. Any economist could tell you technology spreads beyond its first adopters, even if they stay at home. And any military historian could tell you that, in a contest between people who hunt and kill aurochs and farmers armed with hoes, the smart money is on the hunters.”

“My mother was widely loved, and rightly so – and widely regarded as too sweet for words. Well, she had them buffaloed. Any woman who could out-stubborn a dachshund deserved to be accorded the wary and respectful affection the dachshund gave her.”

“Chili is one of those marvelous-simple, elemental, all-important, and fundamental concepts that has been elaborated out of all recognition: rather like justice, or objective reality, or ‘being’ (ens) in Aquinas. Lean closer and I will whisper to you a horrific, soul-shattering secret: there are actually people so lost to any sense of decency that they put beans in chili. (I hope you sent the children of tender years out of the room before we discussed that horror, lest they be warped for life).”

“Over the course of human history, many items have briefly flourished as means of exchange, only to be demonetarized. Now, we have demonetarized money.”