Sayings
Issue #52 Posted Mar. 1, 2008
"Never underestimate the ability of people to develop strange interpretations of anything you write, say, or do." -- Richard A. Moran
"After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut." -- Will Rogers
"Nothing is more essential... than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable character." -- Samuel Adams
"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men." -- John Adams
"The philosopher seeks what is good. The businessman seeks what sells. Sometimes the two qualities are the same. Usually they are not." -- Jeff Cooper
"Then what then shall we die for? You will listen to me! Listen! The brethren will still be looking here to us, to the Black Pearl, to lead them. And what will they see? Bilge rats on a derelict ship? No! No, they will see free men and freedom, and what the enemy will see will be the flash of our canon and they will hear the ring of our swords, and they will know what we can do. By the sweat of our brows and the strength of our backs, and the courage of our hearts – Hoist the colors!" -- CPT Elizabeth Swan, "Pirates of the Caribbean 3"
"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit." -- James Madison
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein.
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." -- H.L. Mencken
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius
"Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced." -- Albert Einstein
"All big things in this world are done by people who are naive and have an idea that is obviously impossible." -- Dr. Frank Richards
"Judges...rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times." -- former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger
In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment "is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence."
A renowned genius once asked a student, "What are you watching when you sit on a hillside in the late afternoon as the colors turn from yellow to orange and red and finally darkness?" He answered, "You are watching the sunset." The genius responded, "That is what is wrong with our age. You know full well you are not watching the sun set. You are watching the world turn." -- Jeremy Kagan
"As you journey through life, take a minute every now and then to give a thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something." -- Hagar the Horrible
"Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage." -- Thomas Szasz
"A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes." -- Mark Twain
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem." -- Ronald Reagan
"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." -- Thomas Paine
"Rust destroys iron, moths destroy clothes, the worm eats away the wood; but greatest of all evils is envy, impious habitant of corrupt souls, which ever was, is, and shall be a consuming disease." -- Menander
"Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretense that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means." -- Charles Dickens
"Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power." -- William Gaddis
"Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again." -- Grover Cleveland
"I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money." -- Arthur Godfrey
"History and war are cruel pedants. Those who know too little of the former are likely to have too much of the latter." -- Oliver North
"The wars of the future will be won by those with the greater strength of will. And boundless determination is one weapon that Islamist extremists unquestionably possess. Do we?" -- Ralph Peters
"If elected officials were half as imaginative at solving real problems as they are at perpetuating themselves in office, we'd see real confidence in government restored." -- John Fund
"Christians are expected to behave furtively; they may call themselves Christians, as long as their public prayers are 'nonsectarian'--that is, avoiding the name of Jesus before mixed audiences... Drunkenness and foul language may be pardonable, but the glorification of Jesus is another matter." -- Joseph Sobran
"Your love of liberty...and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness." -- George Washington
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains." -- Herbert Hoover
"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." -- John Adams
"The republic was not established by cowards, and cowards will not preserve it." -- Elmer Davis
"What experience and history teach is this--that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things." -- G. K. Chesterton
"Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all." -- Voltaire
"I have enough money to last me the rest of my life--unless I have to buy something." -- Jackie Mason
"It's nevertheless still true that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, it's still true that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and it's still true that Ronald Reagan was right when he warned us to 'trust, but verify'." -- Wesley Pruden
"Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth." -- George Washington
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." -- Aristotle
"Men hate those to whom they have to lie." -- Victor Hugo
"A true way to be deceived is to think oneself more clever than the others." -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others." -- Winston Churchill
"We need more Democrats in the Senate--like Custer needed more arrows." -- Ronald Reagan
"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted." -- Alexander Hamilton
"Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions." -- Mark Twain
"For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat." -- Paul of Tarsus
"[I]f we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War." -- George Washington
"It is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious and moral sanctions." -- Barry Goldwater
"In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." -- Andre Gide
"The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green." -- Thomas Carlyle
"There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence so important, as living within your means." -- Calvin Coolidge
"There are some in government who have a very simple tax proposal in mind. There will be only two lines on the tax form: How much did you make last year? Send it." -- Ronald Reagan
"We talk about [the Constitution] a lot. We have cases about it. But to actually sit down and read it doesn't happen that often, and that is a very rewarding exercise." -- Chief Justice John Roberts
"The virtue 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
"People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men." -- H. L. Mencken
"You know it's said that an economist is the only professional who sees something working in practice and then seriously wonders if it works in theory." -- Ronald Reagan
"Either you think--or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity." -- Ulysses S. Grant
"I have always thought you could not only judge someone by the company they keep, but by the company they do not keep." -- Larry Wakefield
"A nation is not worthy to be saved if, in the hour of its fate, it will not gather up all its jewels of manhood and life, and go down into the conflict, however bloody and doubtful, resolved on measureless ruin or complete success." -- James Garfield
"The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself." -- Woodrow Wilson
"In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends." -- John Collins
"While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert it only irritates." -- Samuel Johnson
2008-2