“So about 80 years after the Constitution is ratified, the slaves are freed. Not so you'd really notice it of course; just kinda on paper. And that of course was at the end of the Civil War. Now there is another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I've ever heard one — civil war. D'you think anybody in this country could ever really have a civil war? "Say, pardon me…*machinegun sounds*… I'm awfully sorry! Awfully sorry."
Now of course the Civil War has been over for about 120 years. But… not so you'd really notice it. Because you see we have these people called "Civil War buffs"… in fact some of these people actually get dressed up once a year and then go out and re-fight these battles. D'you know what I say to these people? USE LIVE AMMUNITION ASSHOLES, WOULD YA PLEASE?! You might just raise the intelligence level of the American gene pool!”
What Am I Doing in New Jersey? (1988)
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George Carlin 270
American stand-up comedian 1937–2008Related quotes
Ending words
The house on the hill (1949)
“Americans, 150 years after the Civil War began, are still getting it wrong.”
"Getting the Civil War Right" http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-40-fall-2011/feature/getting-civil-war-right (2011)
2010s, 2011
1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)
Source: 2010s, Why the Left Hates America (2015)
“What would Lincoln have been without the Civil War? Just another railroad lawyer!”
JFK to Gore Vidal, quoted in David Swanson's Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (2011).
Attributed
“There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.”
Source: Les Misérables
Preface
The Great Rehearsal (1948)
Context: The most momentous chapter in American history is the story of the making and ratifying of the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution has so long been rooted so deeply in American life — or American life rooted so deeply in it — that the drama of its origins is often overlooked. Even historical novelists, who hunt everywhere for memorable events to celebrate, have hardly touched the event without which there would have been a United States very different from the one that now exists; or might have been no United States at all.
The prevailing conceptions of those origins have varied with the times. In the early days of the Republic it was held, by devout friends of the Constitution, that its makers had received it somewhat as Moses received the Tables of the Law on Sinai. During the years of conflict which led to the Civil War the Constitution was regarded, by one party or the other, as the rule of order or the misrule of tyranny. In still later generations the Federal Convention of 1787 has been accused of evolving a scheme for the support of special economic interests, or even a conspiracy for depriving the majority of the people of their liberties. Opinion has swung back and forth, while the Constitution itself has grown into a strong yet flexible organism, generally, if now and then slowly, responsive to the national circumstances and necessities.
“I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.”
No. 29. (Rica writing to Ibben)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)