Jonathan Swift Quotes
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
Swift, Jonathan. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. John Morphew, 1711, p. 398.
_0_thumbnail_47x47.jpg "Statue of Robert Hall in Leicester."){kind=small}
Ale has too often been praised by poets
The longer you drink the less sense your mind makes of things
Modern research has shown that the earliest deleterious effect of alcohol is impaired judgment and perception. It is fascinating that in this important set of advice from the chief God Odin, this was the problem that was focussed upon.
In some societies, drunkenness is an extenuating circumstance which diminishes moral and legal guilt. In others it is not. In the United States is sometimes is and sometimes is not. Generally, a drunk person will not be relieved of all guilt but often the charge will be lessened—for example from murder to manslaughter. Aristotle suggested, and in some Islamic countries it is observed that the person who commits a crime while drunk is punished twice—once for the crime and once for being drunk.
This has always been a problem for the US Military. Attempts at prohibition have been bad for morale, and there is a cultural tradition that military men drink alcohol. However in the Gulf War, our military men and women stationed in Saudi Arabia could not drink as a consequence of the Islamic prohibition of alcohol in Saudi Arabia. There has never been, in the history of our military a period with fewer courts martials, and discipline problems in general. Very few assaults, rapes and murders.
This is one of the earliest observations of the fact that after drinking alcohol, a person is apt to speak without his usual inhibitions and judgment. This has been the downfall of many politicians and is the largest problem of maintaining secrecy and confidentiality.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. The Congressmen who voted for Prohibition in the next century had not read or believed this quotation of Twain’s.
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
