Sayings
Issue #55 Posted September, 2008
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it." H.L. Mencken
"In the writings of the Ephesians there was this precept, constantly to think of some one of the men of former times who practiced virtue." -- Marcus Aurelius
"I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast industry's planners believe." -- Edward R. Murrow
"Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so."-- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
"What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this, I was training for this." - Roman Philosopher Epictetus
"When the political columnists say 'Every thinking man' they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to 'Every intelligent voter' they mean everybody who is going to vote for them." -- Franklin P. Adams
"Let your plans be as dark and as impenetrable as the night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt." -- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"He who has mercy upon the ruthless is really being ruthless to the merciful." -- The Talmud
"The further out you walk on the See-saw, the harder it is to get it to go back to level." -- Greg McTye
"The optimist sees the coffee mug as half full, the pessimist sees it as half empty. I see it as an impact weapon." -- Tim Burke
If a man deserves to be killed, the question is not: "Which way is he facing?" The question is: "Can you make the shot?" -- Doug Smith (aka Backshooter)
"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." -- Thomas Jefferson (Rights of British America, 1774)
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn
"A righteous man who falters before the wicked is like a murky spring and a polluted well." -- Proverbs 25:26
"There is [a] class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs---partly because they want sympathy, and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs... There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."-- Booker T. Washington in his 1911 book, My Larger Education
"America is at that awkward stage. It is too late to work within the system but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe
"Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles." -- Ambrose Bierce
"The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible." -- Thomas Hardy
"Above these [citizens] an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living? Subjection in small affairs manifests itself every day and makes itself felt without distinction by all citizens. It does not make them desperate, but it constantly thwarts them and brings them to renounce the use of their wills. Thus little by little, it extinguishes their spirits and enervates their souls." -- Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
"Nothing just happens in politics. If something happens you can be sure it was planned that way." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Politics, and the fate of mankind, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness." -- Albert Camus
"If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics." -- Will Rogers
"The problem isn't a shortage of fuel; it's a surplus of government." -- Ronald Reagan
"The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up." -- Milton Friedman
"[A] Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States... as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Do what they least expect when they least expect it." -- B. H. Liddell Hart
"The one resolution, which was in my mind long before it took the form of a resolution, is the key-note of my life. It is this, always to regard as mere impertinences of fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom, like Aaron's rod, with flowers." -- Helen Keller
"Ethics and Honesty are more important then Education and Station" -- Chuck Barker
"I never wanted to see anybody die but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure." -- Mark Twain
"I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the few, and long-term gain for all." -- Milton Friedman
"God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves." -- Dwight L. Moody
"Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it--that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life." -- Ayn Rand
"Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause--nor any charter of immunities and rights." -- Henry David Thoreau
"Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another." -- Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as he walks along the road, the fool lacks sense and shows everyone how stupid he is. -- Ecclesiastes 10:2
"Consensus is the negation of leadership." -- Margaret Thatcher
"Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solution." -- Edward R. Murrow
"The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts." -- Anatole France
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The following are all by H.L. Mencken
"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
"I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
"Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." -- Benjamin Franklin
"Before there can be much character and courage in Congress, there must be a great deal of it in the American people. We shall look in vain for these treasures in Washington if they are not scattered widely everywhere from Boston to San Diego... Our national character will determine whether our legislators will be courageous or cowardly, and our politics good or bad." -- Allan Nevins
"A universal peace, it is to be feared. It is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts." -- James Madison
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end." -- Lord Acton
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts." -- Edmund Burke
"Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow." -- Aesop
"The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts." -- Baruch Spinoza
"There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change." -- Euripides
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." -- Mark Twain
"In stirring up tumult and strife, the worst men can do the most, but peace and quiet cannot be established without virtue." -- Cornelius Tacitus
"Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." -- Ambrose Bierce
"Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world." -- Thomas Carlyle
"Principle--particularly moral principle--can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true." -- Edward R. Lyman
"If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man--it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil." -- James A. Garfield
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison
"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged." -- President Abraham Lincoln
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time." -- Ayn Rand
"Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed." -- Walter Lippmann
"Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper." -- Francis Bacon
"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." -- Blaise Pascal
"These politicians, when they can't make politics pay, can always fall back on--the honorable practice of law." -- Will Rogers
"Today, some politicians crave nothing more than the honor, prestige, and power of the presidency; they'll do anything they can to get it. How different American presidential campaigns would be if the candidates were running out of a sense of duty, service, and self-sacrifice." -- Ken Connor
"In the animistic church, any using or changing of the physical world (such as burning carbon) is a sin against the sacred, holistic, living world (the Gaia hypothesis). But as everyone uses energy (just as every Christian sins), the neo-animist church, too, must provide for a remission of sin (and also, a handy source of profit for the carbon-offset company owners--such as Al Gore...)" -- Tony Blankley
"America needs a people who do not merely talk about public virtues, but embrace them with passion and humility." -- Brent Bozell
"Gun control historically serves as a gateway to tyranny... Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government." -- Rep. Ron Paul
"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families." -- Benjamin Rush
"Real valor consists not in being insensible to danger, but in being prompt to confront and disarm it." -- Sir Walter Scott
"The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently but to live manfully." -- Thomas Carlyle
"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." -- C.S. Lewis
"The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business." -- Clarence Darrow
"The true American religious tradition, the one that disciplines power, subjugating it to reason, truth and, ultimately, an all-powerful God, is not a threat to liberty but its best defender." -- Judge Janice Rogers Brown
"No small concern of those who created the Constitution was the prospect of legislative tyranny, the exercise of power for illegitimate purposes carried out in the name of the majority." -- Gary McDowell
"The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come is to teach men to shoot!" -- Theodore Roosevelt
2008-5