Jon Stewart · 228 pages
Rating: (82.3K votes)
“If "con" is the opposite of pro, then isn't Congress the opposite of progress? Or did we just fucking blow your mind?!?”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“So, is there hope for a truly democratic Africa? Long answer: Only if continent-wide improvements in education, human rights and public health are coupled with an aggressive and far-sighted debt-relief program that breaks the cycle of subsistence farming and urban squalor. Short answer: No.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“The Republican party is the party of nostalgia. It seeks to return America to a simpler, more innocent and moral past that never actually existed. The Democrats are utopians. They seek to create an America so fair and non-judgmental that life becomes an unbearable series of apologies.
Together, the two parties function like giant down comforters, allowing a candidate to disappear into the enveloping softness, protecting them from exposure to the harsh weather of independent thought.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“The problem with the Tea Party is they're all ignorant hillbillies who drink moonshine and ride around on mules. And they believe in stereotypes too.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“1. Society needs laws. While anarchy can often turn a humdrum weekend into something unforgettable, eventually the mob must be kept from stealing the conch and killing Piggy. And while it would be nice if that "something" was simple human decency, anybody who has witnessed the "50% Off Wedding Dress Sale" at Filene's Basement knows we need a backup plan—preferably in writing. On the other hand, too many laws can result in outright tyranny, particularly if one of those laws is "Kneel before Zod." Somewhere between these two extremes lies the legislative sweet-spot that produces just the right amount of laws for a well-adjusted society—more than zero, less than fascism.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“You know what they say: If at first you don't succeed, f**k it.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“Each party has a platform--a pre-fixed menu of beliefs making up its worldview. The candidate can choose one of the two platforms, but remember: no substitutions.
For example, do you support healthcare? Then you must also want a ban on assault weapons. Pro limited government? Congratulations, you are also anti-abortion.
Luckily, all human opinion falls neatly into one of the two clearly defined camps. Thus, the two-party system elegantly represents the bi-chromatic rainbow that is American political thought.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“As heirs to a legacy more than two centuries old, it is understandable why present-day Americans would take their own democracy for granted. A president freely chosen from a wide-open field of two men every four years; a Congress with a 99% incumbency rate; a Supreme Court comprised of nine politically appointed judges whose only oversight is the icy scythe of Death -- all these reveal a system fully capable of maintaining itself. But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“It's great having Bruce Springsteen on my show. We have so much in common! We're both from New Jersey, just from different neighborhoods. Sort of like how Martin Luther King and Margaret Mitchell both came from Atlanta. But from different neighborhoods.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“Campaigns and elections are the process in which democracy separates the willing from the able, and goes with the willing.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“Classroom Activities
1. Using felt and yarn, make a hand puppet of Clarence Thomas. Ta-da! You're Antonin Scalia!”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“It is perhaps a sign of the strength of our republic that so few people feel the need to participate. That must be the reason.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“[Stump speeches] are to oratory what a stump is to a tree.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
“Newspapers abound, and though they have endured decades of decline in readership and influence, they can still form impressive piles if no one takes them out to the trash.”
― Jon Stewart, quote from America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
Jon Stewart
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date November 28, 1962
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“We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter. . . Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficiency. A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp's half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer's task to say, "It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café when you can eat macrobiotic at home." Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist – the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.”
― Natalie Goldberg, quote from Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
“Outside, gray clouds stretched to infinity. Were my parents and Mikey out there somewhere? I imagined them soaring like birds through the heavens, and wondered how, in a sky so endless, could there be no room for me?”
― Karen Amanda Hooper, quote from Grasping at Eternity
“I look ridiculous and stupid. As I check myself in the bathroom mirror, I want to back out. I'm wearing a skintight leotard/body suit obviously designed by women who have no clue about men's plumbing, because the outline of my dick is obscene. Don't dudes who do this ridiculous sport wear a cup or something? I've been on a trampoline, but I've never done synchronized trampolining. Looking at myself in the mirror, I can see why.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from Wild Cards
“When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.”
― Calia Read, quote from Unravel
“But then the chancellor had become dictator, putting himself and his followers above the law, and now, they were using that power to strip the Jews of their rights.”
― Ellen Marie Wiseman, quote from The Plum Tree
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