Politics and Law

There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant.

Liu Shao-ch’i (1898-c. 1974)
Chinese communist statesman, he succeeded Mao Tse-tung as chairman of the People’s Republic of China in 1959. Speaking on 13 July 1947 and quoted in: Stanley Karnow’s Mao and China: From Revolution to Revolution (1972).

ANOINT, v.t.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. As sovereigns are anointed by the priesthood, So pigs to lead the populace are greased good.

LAWSUIT, n.: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out as a sausage.

PRESIDENCY, n.: The greased pig in the field game of American politics.

ULTIMATUM, n.: In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions. Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry met to consider it. “O servant of the Prophet,” said the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk to the Mamoosh of the Invincible Army, “how many unconquerable soldiers have we in arms?” “Upholder of the Faith,” that dignitary replied after examining his memoranda, “they are in numbers as the leaves of the forest!” “And how many impenetrable battleships strike terror to the hearts of all Christian swine?” he asked the Imaum of the Ever Victorious Navy. “Uncle of the Full Moon,” was the reply, “deign to know that they are as the waves of the ocean, the sands of the desert and the stars of Heaven!” For eight hours the broad brow of the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk was corrugated with evidences of deep thought: he was calculating the chances of war. Then, “Sons of angels,” he said, “the die is cast! I shall suggest to the Ulema of the Imperial Ear that he advise inaction. In the name of Allah, the council is adjourned.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
U.S. author and journalist.The Devil’s Dictionary (1906).

“If you’re going to turn into a pig, my dear,” said Alice, seriously, “I’ll have no more to do with you. Mind now!”

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
English author and mathematician.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates… Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now existing, boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits, by assuming for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally resembled.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
U.S. essayist, poet and philosopher. English Traits (1856).

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English author and lexicographer, quoted in James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).

Commitment: Commitment can be best illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs… The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.

Anonymous

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

George Orwell (1903-1950)
British sociopolitical author. Animal Farm (1945).

No man should be allowed to be the President who does not understand hogs, or hasn’t been around a manure pile.

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)
Kansas farmer and 33rd U.S. President (1945-1953). From a joke told during an Iowa plowmen’s competition in 1948.

All of Ruben’s cards
were marked in advance.
The trial was a pig circus
he didn’t have a chance.

Bob Dylan (b. 1941)
U.S. musician and songwriter. “Hurricane” from the album DESIRE (1975).

In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are f——ed until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)
U.S. author and journalist. The Great Shark Hunt (1979).

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.

Orson Scott Card (b. 1951)
U.S. author, playwright, teacher and former missionary for the Mormon Church.

If a pig goes upon the threshing-floor, or a field, or a garden, and the owner of the meadow, or the field, or the garden smites it so that it die, he shall give it back to its owner; but if he does not give it back, he becomes a thief.

If anyone have intercourse with a pig or a dog, he shall die. If a man have intercourse with a horse or a mule, there is no punishment. But he shall not approach the king, and shall not become a priest… If a pig spring upon a man for intercourse, there is no punishment.

Hittite Code of Laws or The Code of the Nesilim, (c. 1300 BC).

When the commission finds that a pig has entered the parlor, the exercise of its regulatory power does not depend on proof that the pig is obscene.

John Paul Stevens (b. 1920)
Associate Justice (1975), US Supreme Court, writing for the Majority Opinion in a 5-4 ruling that allowed the Federal Communications Commission to prohibit the broadcasting of words that are offensive but fall short of the Court’s definition of obscenity, July 3, 1978.

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Irish-born British political writer, philosopher, and statesman. Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

MR. WEINGLASS (Defense Lawyer): Now, drawing your attention to the first week of December 1967, did you have occasion to meet with Jerry Rubin and the others?

THE WITNESS (Abbie Hoffman): Yes.

MR. WEINGLASS (Defense Lawyer): Will you relate to the Court and jury what the conversation was?

THE WITNESS (Abbie Hoffman): Yes. We talked about the possibility of having demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois, that was going to be occurring that August.

I am not sure that we knew at that point that it was in Chicago. Wherever it was, we were planning on going. Jerry said that because of our action at the Stock Exchange in throwing out the money, that within a few weeks the Wall Street brokers there had totally enclosed the whole stock exchange in bulletproof, shatterproof glass, that cost something like $20,000 because they were afraid we’d come back and throw money out again.

He said that for hundreds of years political cartoonists had always pictured corrupt politicians in the guise of a pig, and he said that it would be great theater if we ran a pig for President, and we all took that on as like a great idea and that’s more or less… that was the founding.

Testimony of Abbie Hoffman
The Chicago Seven Trial Transcripts from (Sept. 24, 1969 – Feb. 8, 1970). The witness in the above exchange, Abbie Hoffman, was arrested as a result of his involvement in organizing the “Festival of Life” — a Yippie demonstration held concurrently with the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Yippies nominated a pig — “Pigasus” — for president and urged demonstrators to fight the police or committed acts of civil disobedience.

Why, this fellow don’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday.

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)
Kansas farmer and 33rd U.S. President (1945-1953), commenting on 1952 presidential candidate Dwight D Eisenhower. Quoted inMemoirs of Richard Nixon by Richard Nixon (1978).

Suppose they all had different forms of government and even where it was a democratic form it was class government. That would be Europe… And periodically there boils up among these people some Pied Piper with silver tongue, calling some new Utopia… With a vicious rhythm these malign forces seem to drive nations like the Gadarene swine over the precipice of war.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007)
U.S. historian, writer and an adviser to President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. “The New Isolationism” printed in “The Atlantic Monthly”, May 1952.

[during the McCarthy era] no one could say when or whether the terror would end… She refused to become one of those who went crawling to the Committee, or to the studios, to wear the guise of a penitent and seek redemption and good fortune by being traitorous. Her attitude toward the House Committee was that of a noblewoman observing, with an understanding disdain the vulgarity of a swineherd.

John Keats (b. 1920)
You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker (1970).