Sayings
Issue #42 Posted July 1, 2006

"It [Independance Day] ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more." -- John Adams

"Of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is the most pernicious." -- Robert Heinlein, If This Goes On--

"It’s not what I am under here [his mask], but what I do that defines me." -- Batman to his love interest in Batman Begins

"It could take a hundred years, or as little as a generation, to rediscover the freedom our Founders hammered into the U.S. Constitution. Much of our freedom has already been lost, but the rediscovery cannot even begin to emerge until the weight of government oppression grows too heavy to bear. Early Americans felt the weight of King George's oppression, until they could bear it no more. Then, they acted. Not all of the early Americans had reached the tipping point in 1776. In fact, many, if not most of the people, preferred to suffer oppression by the king, rather than to pay the cost of freedom. Many, if not most, of the people in America today, prefer to suffer governmental oppression, rather than to pay the cost of freedom. So far, governmental oppression is not too heavy; people can still do almost anything they wish--if they can get a permit." -- Henry Lamb

"No man is superior to any other in all ways. Every man is superior to any other in some way." -- Dr. Pendric

Paranoia is just another term for a higher state of awareness.

"Every country has an Army. Its own or someone else's"

"[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." -- James Madison

"Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people...of the characters and conduct of their rulers." -- John Adams

"We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money." -- Davy Crockett

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." -- John Stewart Mill

"To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals---that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him." -- Honore De Balzac

"Liberty is worth whatever the country is worth. It is by liberty that man has a country; it is by liberty he has rights." -- Henry Giles

"The surf that distresses the normal swimmer brings joy to the surf-rider." -- Oswald Chambers

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter." -- Ernest Hemingway, On The Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter, Esquire, April, 1936

"He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires, and fears is more than a king." -- John Milton

"We [must] emphasize again that the terms liberty and freedom are not equivalent. Freedom is a physical condition denoting the absence of bonds or bondage. Liberty, on the other hand, is a political condition certified by the social right to do whatever does not infringe upon the liberty of your neighbor. You are free once you have jumped over the fence, but liberty is not a characteristic of the nanny state in which the government tells you what you must or must not do in all aspects of your life. A man may live a quite satisfactory life without either freedom or liberty, if he is that sort of man. Such a man manifests the slave personality, and may be kept happy as long as he is sure of "bread and games." Men - some men - may be willing to fight for liberty, but they will not do so until they understand exactly what is involved." -- Jeff Cooper

"I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort." -- Elizabeth T. King

"Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service." -- Auguste Renoir

"Against the machinations of your enemies you can take defense but against the stupidity of fools the very gods themselves fight in vain." -- Unknown

"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." -- Benjamin Franklin

"As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry." -- Samuel Johnson

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head." -- Noah Webster

"Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism." -- Herman Hesse

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Socrates

"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." -- George Santayana

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." -- Edmund Burke

"Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong." -- John G. Diefenbaker

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." -- Barry Goldwater

"Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature." -- Winston Churchill

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." -- Groucho Marx

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap,

we should soon want bread." --Thomas Jefferson

"That which seems to be the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next." --John Stuart Mill

"The Christian faith has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried." -- G.K. Chesterton

"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them." -- Joseph Story

"The right to be left alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms." --William Douglas

"When nothing is sure, everything is possible." - -Margaret Drabble

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." -- Barry Goldwater

"Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped." -- Calvin Coolidge

"When those who are governed do too little, those who govern can--and often will--do too much." -- Ronald Reagan

"There are a hundred things to single you out for promotion in party politics besides ability." -- Will Rogers

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic..." -- Justice Joseph Story

"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress ... to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.... " -- Samuel Adams

"At the day of Doom men shall be judged according to their fruits. It will not be said then, Did you believe? but, Were you doers, or talkers only?" -- John Bunyan

"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights." -- Edmund A. Opitz

"Whosoever is out of patience is out of possession of his mind, body and soul." -- Sir Francis Bacon

"The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green." -- Thomas Carlyle

"What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?" -- Grover Cleveland

"The chief cause of problems is solutions." -- Eric Sevareid

"To insist on strength...is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering." -- Barry Goldwater

"Wisdom in government is not a one-way street that always runs downhill. More often, the higher up the ladder of government you go, the less common sense you find." -- Ronald Reagan

"The Income Tax has made more Liars out of the American people than golf has." -- Will Rogers

"The left takes its vision seriously -- more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep." -- Thomas Sowell

"[A]n act that is inherently evil does not become moral simply because there's a majority consensus." -- Walter Williams

"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." -- John Adams

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Understanding is not enough; we must do. Knowing and understanding in action make for honor. And honor is the heart of wisdom." -- Johann von Goethe

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. -- H.L. Mencken

"A man can do nothing better than to find satisfaction in his work." -- King Solomon

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals." -- Samuel Ullman

"It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed." -- Henry Ward Beecher

"Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts." -- H.L. Mencken

"Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true." -- Demosthenes

"A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him." -- Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux

"Everybody is on a trip somewhere if they work for the government. I wonder when the taxpayers take their trip." -- Will Rogers

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." -- John Marshall

"There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism." -- Alexander Hamilton

"Nothing is ended with honor which does not conclude better than it began." -- Samuel Johnson

"To see what is right and not to do it is cowardice. It is never a question of who is right but what is right." -- John Buchan

"I had rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth than of holding all the offices that capital has to give, from the presidency downward." -- Henry Adams

"I believe in God as I believe the sun has risen, not because I can see it, but because by way of it I can see everything else." -- C.S. Lewis

"The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happiness for themselves." -- William Channing

"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival." -- Winston Churchill

2006-4