Sayings
Issue #54 Posted July 4, 2008
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks. -- Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.
"Hige sceal že heardra, heorte že cenre, / mod sceal že mare, že ure męgen lytlaš." "Thought must be the harder, heart be the keener, mind must be the greater, while our strength lessens." -- Anglo-Saxon poem "The Battle of Maldon," author unknown
"Oderint Dum Metuant," - Let them hate so long as they fear. -- Caligula,
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." -- Alexander Hamilton
"We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"I'd rather have controversy than mediocrity" -- Charles "Sid" Heal
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual--or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country." -- Samuel Adams
"If the people fail to vote, a government will be developed which is not their government... The whole system of American Government rests on the ballot box. Unless citizens perform their duties there, such a system of government is doomed to failure." -- Calvin Coolidge
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
"The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom." -- Fredrich August von Hayek
"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." -- Mother Teresa
"Unless a man is master of his soul, all other kinds of mastery amount to little." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones." -- Phillips Brooks
A fitting and true response was once given to Alexander the Great by an apprehended pirate. When asked by the king what he thought he was doing by infesting the sea, he replied with noble insolence, "What do you think you are doing by infesting the whole world? Because I do it with one puny boat, I am called a pirate; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor." -- St. Augustine, The City of God, Book IV, Chapter 4
"There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves." -- Will Rogers
"War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perseverance, by time, and by practice." -- Alexander Hamilton
"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected." -- Thomas Jefferson
"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." -- Edward Gibbon
"It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, 'We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.' This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves." -- Ronald Reagan
"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes..." -- John Adams
"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?" -- Herbert Spencer
"The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same." -- Stendhal
"The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion." -- Edmund Burke
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." -- Aesop
"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?" -- Thomas Jefferson
"Upon our material well-being must be built a superstructure of individual and national life in accordance with the laws of the highest morality, or else our prosperity itself will in the long run turn out a curse instead of a blessing. We should be both reverently thankful for what we have received, and earnestly bent upon turning it into a means of grace and not of destruction." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"Live each day to the fullest. Live each day with enthusiasm, optimism and hope. If you do, I am convinced that your contribution to this wonderful experiment we call America will be profound." -- Ronald Reagan
"There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves." -- Will Rogers
"If we want our grandchildren to be able to give thanks for being Americans, we'll need to... start steering a course away from government control of our lives--and start moving back toward greater personal responsibility." -- Ed Feulner
"Honesty in action is the best policy, but (as the Bible shows) sin is always crouching at our door. When it leaps, honest words--with changes in behavior--are the best response." -- Marvin Olasky
"The fact is that traditional morality has practical authority independent of whether God exists and whether we know His will." -- Jonah Goldberg
"It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history." -- Dinesh D'Souza
"We are so robotic in America whenever the word 'discrimination' is used that we shut down thought and all genuflect in the direction of whoever is complaining. But the proper question is not whether it is discrimination but whether it is justified." -- Mona Charen
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one..." -- Thomas Paine
"Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you." -- Albert Jay Nock
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory... so help us God." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism." -- G. Edward Griffin
"It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man." -- Albert Einstein
"Don't overestimate the decency of the human race." -- H. L. Mencken
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious." -- Aristotle
"Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." -- Alexander Hamilton
"Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself." -- Jean Francois Revel
"The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks." -- Thomas Bailey Aldrich
"Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny." -- Barry Goldwater
"A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top." -- James Reston
"Time and money spent in helping men do more for themselves is far better than mere giving." -- Henry Ford
"It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow." -- Calvin Coolidge
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -- Sir Winston Churchill
"[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all... are essential to the well-being of a family." -- Samuel Adams
"Some people believe, and I am among them, that the power of the media today constitutes the most significant exercise of unaccountable power in our society. It is unaccountable to anyone, except for those who exercise the power. I believe that the domain of culture is as important as the domain of government or the economy." -- Jeane Kirkpatrick
"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind." -- Thomas Paine
"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson
"Corruption is no stranger to Washington; it is a famous resident." -- Walter Goodman
"Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity." -- Lord Acton
"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good and the real reason." -- J.P. Morgan
"I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him 'father."' -- Will Rogers
"War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perseverance, by time, and by practice." -- Alexander Hamilton
"Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself." -- Benjamin Franklin
"I can only say that I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ alone for salvation." -- Robert E. Lee
"The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be." -- Socrates
"It is almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry." -- Albert Einstein
"I cannot think of a single example at any time or any place where there was a large measure of political freedom without there also being something comparable to a private enterprise market form of economic organization for the bulk of economic activity." -- Milton Friedman
"Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even." -- Will Rogers
"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times." -- George Washington
"Let each man resolve to be victorious, and that the right of self-government, liberty, and peace shall find him a defender." -- Robert E. Lee
"[M]y religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave." -- Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson
"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." -- Samuel Adams
2008-4