I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will RogersRead
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
Interpretation
The quote compares Congress in session to a child playing with a hammer, implying chaos and potential danger.
Will Rogers uses this quote to express his frustration with Congress, suggesting that their actions often resemble the reckless and unplanned behavior of a child wielding a tool without understanding its purpose. This analogy highlights concerns about the effectiveness and responsibility of political leaders, implying that their decisions may lead to unforeseen negative consequences for the country.
In practice
During a debate about government dysfunction, one could use this quote to illustrate the perceived incompetence of lawmakers.
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.
Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.
The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.
Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it.
The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, 'How is the president?'
It's not enough to say that the Olympics is an athletic contest outside of politics, because it's not. The Chinese clearly are using the Olympics to recreate how they are viewed in the world and how they view themselves.
Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
If we can't have a public debate because the information space is so polluted, or because people are afraid of the reactions of organized trolls, then we can't really have meaningful elections anymore, either.
Now and always, hard-line policy and those who embrace it are vessels for darker forces that are at once self-cannibalizing and combustible. No good can come of them. They are unsustainable because their sense of righteousness denies human worth.
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