“Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.” – Adam Przeworski (quoted by Gabe Fleisher in “Why Today Is So Extraordinary,” Wake Up to Politics, January 20, 2025
Month: November 2025
“The Defendants’ bar serves a wide variety of food and liquor, including premium scotches and bourbons. The menu items range from appetizers to full entrees. Live music is regularly featured at the bar, and the bar claims to be the first cigar bar in Houston. Its decor includes velvet paintings of celebrities and female nudes, including ones of Elvis and a bare-chested Mona Lisa. Other ‘eclectic’ decorations include lava lamps, cheap ceramic sculptures, beaded curtains, and vinyl furniture. Playboy centerfolds cover the men’s room walls. In addition to the velvet painting of Elvis, the bar’s menu and decor include other Elvis references. The menu includes ‘Love Me Blenders,’ a type of frozen drink; peanut butter and banana sandwiches, a favorite of Elvis’s; and ‘Your Football Hound Dog,’ a hotdog.” – Circuit Judge King, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. v. Capece, 141 F.3d 188 (1998).
“Commercial agreements traditionally are the domain of state law. State law is not displaced merely because the contract relates to intellectual property which may or may not be patentable; the states are free to regulate the use of such intellectual property in any manner not inconsistent with federal law…. In this as in other fields, the question of whether federal law pre-empts state law involves a consideration of whether that law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress. If it does not, state law governs.” – United States Supreme Court, Aronson v. Quick Point Pencil Co., 440 U.S. 257 (1979), as quoted by the United States District Court for the District of Oregon in Smith v. Healy, 744 F.Supp.2d 1112 (2010)
“Once a trade secret is posted on the Internet, it is effectively part of the public domain, impossible to retrieve. Although the person who originally posted a trade secret on the Internet may be liable for trade secret misappropriation, the party who merely down loads Internet information cannot be liable for misappropriation because there is no misconduct involved in interacting with the Internet.” – District Judge Brinkema, United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division, Religious Technology Center v. Lerma, 908 F.Supp. 1362 (1995)
“The Court finds that the motivation of plaintiff in filing this lawsuit against The Post is reprehensible. Although the RTC brought the complaint under traditional secular concepts of copyright and trade secret law, it has become clear that a much broader motivation prevailed—the stifling of criticism and dissent of the religious practices of Scientology and the destruction of its opponents. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, has been quoted as looking upon the law as a tool to ‘[h]arass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.’ (Declaration of Mary Ann Werner).” – District Judge Brinkema, United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division, Religious Technology Center v. Lerma, 908 F.Supp. 1362 (1995)
“The over-weening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities, is an ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their absurd presumption in their own good fortune, has been less taken notice of. It is, however, if possible, still more universal. There is no man living who, when in tolerable health and spirits, has not some share of it.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“It may be that little more is needed, but falling a little short is still falling short.” – Judge Zagel, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Teradyne, Inc. v. Clear Communications Corp.
“In the instant case, the district court adopted PepsiCo’s proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law verbatim as the text for most of its opinion. As we have stated before, it is acceptable for a district court laboring under the time pressures of a preliminary injunction in addition to its already busy docket to adopt ‘many or most of the parties’ proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, particularly if skillfully and wisely drafted.’ That the district court so acts does not alter our basic standard of review. This action does, however, cause us some pause where, as here, the court changed nothing in a party’s submissions and even repeated that party’s typographical errors.” – Judge Flaum, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, PepsiCo, Inc. v. Redmond, 54 F.3d 1262 (1995), fn. 4 (internal cites omitted).
“Essentially, to be remembered as a U.S. president, you have to need to do one of three things: Be one of the first presidents; Be one of the most recent presidents; Be Abraham Lincoln.” – Gabe Fleisher, “Why It’s Pointless to Guess at Biden’s Legacy,” Wake Up to Politics
“No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since the world it opens is always a place formerly unsuspected. A world lost, a world unsuspected beckons to new places and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory of whiteness.” – William Carlos Williams, Paterson
“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” – T. S. Eliot (quoted by Judy Jones and William Wilson in An Incomplete Education)
“Our devotion to free wheeling industrial competition must not force us into accepting the law of the jungle as the standard of morality expected in our commercial relations.” – Judge Goldberg, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, E. I. duPont deNemours & Co. v. Christopher, 431 F.2d 1012 (1970)
“Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“As a man of civil profession seems awkward in a camp or a garrison, and is even in some danger of being despised there, so does an idle man among men of business.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“The greatness of a state and the happiness of its subjects, however independent they may be supposed in some respects, are commonly allowed to be inseparable with regard to commerce.” – David Hume, Political Discourses
“Poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“A man is of all sorts of luggage the most difficult to be transported.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour . . . . To violate this combination is every where a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“What are the common wages of labour, depends every where upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour. It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. . . . In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One
“Foul words is but foul wind and foul wind is but foul breath.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 5.2
“In a false quarrel there is no true valour.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 5.1
“There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently, however they have writ the style of gods, and make a pish at chance and sufferance.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 5.1
“Men can counsel and speak comfort to that grief which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it, their counsel turns to passion, which before would give preceptial medicine to rage, fetter strong madness in a silken thread, charm ache with air and agony with words: no, no; ’tis all men’s office to speak patience to those that wring under the load of sorrow; but no man’s virtue nor sufficiency to be so moral when he shall endure the like himself.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 5.1
“What we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost, why, then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 4.1
“O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do! not knowing what they do!” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 4.1
“When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 3.3
“Every one can master a grief but he who has it.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing 3.2