Sayings
Issue #41 Posted May 1, 2006

"A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is not a worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes." -- Woodrow Wilson

"To trust arms in the hands of the people at large has, in Europe, been believed...to be an experiment fraught only with danger. Here by a long trial it has been proved to be perfectly harmless...If the government be equitable; if it be reasonable in its exactions; if proper attention be paid to the education of children in knowledge and religion, few men will be disposed to use arms, unless for their amusement, and for the defense of themselves and their country." -- Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York [London 1823]

"If someone tells you that you cannot have a gun, shoot them. And, if they were sent by someone, go shoot that person too." -- Lessons Learned from the 20th Century

The four rules of privacy:
1. Nothing you tell anybody else is private.
2. Do not send over wires or airwaves any information that you do not wish to have intercepted.
3. Keep your confidential information to yourself until you are in a secure location free of recorders, transmitters, and flapping ears.
4. Know your confidant.
...and this most important fact, The best way to keep a secret is don't tell anyone.

"An ordinance that seeks to reduce the murder rate by disarming those owners who are not criminals makes about as much sense as fighting alcoholism by prohibiting beer sales to Mormons." -- Steve Chapman on RealClearPolitics

"Practice makes permanent, only *perfect* practice makes perfect." -- Jim Higginbotham

A compromise is an agreement whereby both parties get what neither of them wanted.

"When asked why I am armed, I ask "the better question is why you aren't?" It is a gentleman's obligation to be armed. As a productive member of society he has an obligation to see to his own welfare, and that of his family so that they remain productive. By definition, a gentleman is a responsible person. If he sees another citizen in trouble, he does what he can to help. Running away, or turning a blind eye, is not very gentlemanly. Unfortunately, in the age of the common man, gentlemen are anachronisms. A quirky thing from a time past." -- Peter Burlingame

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. -- Ayn Rand

"I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing." -- KdT

"If you know that you have the upper hand, you almost always do have it." -- Jeff Cooper

"[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man... and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous." -- George Washington

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

"A wise man's heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man's heart directs him toward the left." -- King Solomon

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else". -- Frederic Bastiat

"We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life -- the unborn -- without diminishing the value of all human life." -- Ronald Reagan

"I've noticed that everybody who is for abortion has already been born." -- Ronald Reagan

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." -- George Washington

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 57

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P.J. O'Rourke

"Those who are preoccupied with 'making a statement' usually don't have any statements worth making." -- Thomas Sowell

"Crime expands according to our willingness to put up with it." -- Barry Farber

"If the next century does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the...morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces." -- James Garfield

"To expect bad people not to do wrong is madness, for he who expects this desires an impossibility. But to allow people to behave so to others, and to expect them not to do you any wrong, is irrational and tyrannical." -- Marcus Aurelius

"Why has government been instituted at all?  Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." -- Alexander Hamilton

"What we need in appointive positions is men of knowledge and experience who have sufficient character to resist temptations." -- Calvin Coolidge

"A politician will do anything to keep his job -- even become a patriot." -- William Randolph Hearst

"Every public official should be recycled occasionally." -- John V. Lindsay

"There never was a bad man that had ability for good service." -- Edmund Burke

"Better faithful than famous. Honor before prominence." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"Real valor consists not in being insensible to danger, but in being prompt to confront and disarm it." -- Sir Walter Scott

"Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less." -- Robert E. Lee

"The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected." -- Will Rogers

"Those who are quick to promise are generally slow to perform. They promise mountains and perform molehills. He who gives you fair words and nothing more feeds you with an empty spoon. People don't think much of a man's piety when his promises are like pie-crust: made to be broken." -- Charles Spurgeon

"The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon." -- George Washington

"Moral relativism is the end of morality, period." -- Michael Novak

"What five members of the Supreme Court say the law is, may be something vastly different from what Congress intended the law to be." -- Benjamin F. Fairless

"As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard." -- Felix Frankfurter

"The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no recognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution." -- Byron R. White

"Respect for the original intent of the Constitution is low in Washington. It's so low, it's virtually non-existent." -- Rep. Ron Paul

"Mankind censures injustice, fearing that they may be victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it." -- Plato

"National injustice is the surest road to national downfall." -- William E. Gladstone

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops -- no, but the kind of man the country turns out." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people." -- Richard Henry Lee

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." -- Albert Einstein

"From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own." -- Carl Schurz

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out." -- Thomas Babington

"The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning." -- Adlai Stevenson

"Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit." -- Aristotle

"[H]e who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Stupidity is the only universal capital crime. The sentence is death, there is no appeal and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." -- R.A. Heinlein.

"All perception is affected by perspective." -- D.J. Rowberry

"The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with it's credibility. And vice versa." -- Unknown

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual. -- Thomas Jefferson

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." -- John Stuart Mill

"The best revenge is not to do as they do." -- Marcus Aurelius

"Even dying is an act of life and should be done, like everything else, to the best of your abilities."

"To expect the wicked not to sin is sheer lunacy. It asks the impossible. Similarly, to allow them to sin against others but not against you is both irrational and surprisingly capricious."-- Marcus Aurelius

"Only a fool or a stranger on this planet will be surprised by anything in this life."-- Marcus Aurelius

"If it is good to say or do something, then it is even better to be criticized for having said or done it."-- Marcus Aurelius

"It is the fate of kings to do men good and to be hated for it."-- Marcus Aurelius

"I do what is expected of me and let nothing get in my way: neither the inanimate, nor the irrational, nor the hopelessly lost." -- Marcus Aurelius

"The American military has not proven merely lethal, but unpredictable and a little crazy into the bargain." -- Victor Davis Hanson, April 21, 2003

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of force a moral imperative." -- Ayn Rand

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." -- James Madison

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke

"A churchless society is most assuredly a society on the downgrade." -- Theodore Roosevelt

2006-3