In the fall 2005 semester, I enrolled in Special Topics in Public Choice, taught by Gordon Tullock. Many of my classmates and I continually made note of the mere experiential quality of the course. Just to have the opportunity to say that we had taken a class with Gordon Tullock, was a substantial benefit to taking the class. Tullock was a veritable wealth of historical and insightful knowledge throughout the semester. Aside from taking typical notes of important concepts, dates, and diagrams, I couldn’t help myself from jotting down some of his more caustic and biting remarks. They are reprinted to the best of my recollection below. Please understand that any offensiveness is most likely a result of the phrase being taken out of context. The following phrases were recorded in good fun and entertainment.

1. The optimal class size is zero.
2. The 45 calibur was invented to handle the Phillipino
3. The black fellas in Australia are a particularly oppressed group, it’s my understanding that they spend most of their time drunk.
4. India is a drastic result of teaching people economics.
5. If we didn’t have homosexuals we wouldn’t have AIDS.
6. The author of “Silent Spring” (Rachel Carson), is right on up there with Hitler and Stalin.
7. We used to own a number of very pleasant islands in the South Pacific. Why didn’t we send the homeless there?
8. The thing to remember, if you can’t hear me, is to take satisfaction in knowing that it probably isn’t worth listening to.
9. Under democracy I found myself walking up the beach in Normandy, and I wasn’t very happy about it.
10. Louis XVI and George III were very stupid people.
11. Condorcet discovered the problems of majority rule voting, he had is head cut off by Robespierre a little while later, but it had nothing to do with his theorem. Robespierre had his head cut off too, it was a particularly unpleasant time to live.
12. Under Castro the Cuban economy has been particularly bad. There is no other country whose government’s majority income comes from prostitution, at least none that I’ve heard of.
13. How he could get syphilis (one of the last emperors of China), seeing as how he had unfettered access to any number of women who were routinely checked for diseases escapes me, but he had it none the less.
14. People are left free to live in dangerous areas, if something catastrophic happens, we can go in bury them quietly and that is it.
15. The one answer that I don’t like, is that this is the morally right thing to do.
16. Hume didn’t make a lot of friends; he also spoke French with a Scotch accent.
17. The closing words “public goods” were added to the immenent domain clause for purely stylistic reasons.
18. The majority of the world practices polygamy. I’m not just talking about the troves of topless girls in Africa which you’re probably thinking about right now.
19. When we pioneered westward we converted hunter gatherer cultures into agricultural ones, with us being agricultural and the Indians ceasing to exist.
20. I’m very fond of Chinese temples, or even Japanese temples, but I don’t like Indian temples. It’s a personal preference and nothing more.
21. Most unskilled laborers; like my class, don’t have the mental capacity to be skilled laborers.