Sayings
Issue #78 Posted July, 2012

"There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come." -- Peter Muhlenberg, from a Lutheran sermon read at Woodstock, Virginia, 1776

"Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians." -- Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book

"[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them." -- Candidus, in the Boston Gazette, 1772

"I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air." -- -Margaret Thatcher

"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals--that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government--that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government." -- Ayn Rand

"To you who call yourselves 'men of peace,' I say, you are not safe without men of action by your side" -- Thucydides

"The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." -- -JFK

"Fathom the Hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured, but not everyone must prove they are a citizen to vote." -- Anon.

"Some people today are afraid of knowing God. I suspect that has to do with accountability." -- Annon

"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." -- John Stuart Mill

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good." -- Thomas Sowell

"The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of." -- James Madison (1788)

"Statistics are used in the main by liars to impress fools." -- Unk

"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated." -- James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, 1829

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions." -- James Madison, National Gazette Essay, 1792

"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they are going to be when you kill them." -- Unknown

"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, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing." -- Ronald Reagan

"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify." -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 3

"The smallest minority on Earth is the individual. Who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." -- Ayn Rand

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last." -- Alexander Hamilton

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are." -- Ayn Rand

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." -- George Washington

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path." -- Ronald Reagan

"Come on, lad, there's pirating to be done!" -- Yellowbeard (1983).

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it." -- Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961)

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." -- James Madison

"If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible." -- American author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"Marriage is in its origin a contract of natural law. It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic." -- Justice Joseph Story

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 45

"To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character." -- Alexander Hamilton

"I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of its political cares." -- Federalist No. 12

"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again." -- George Washington

"Let's ensure that the federal government never again legislates against the family and the home. ... But let us make certain that the family is always at the center of the public policy process, not just in this administration but in future -- all future administrations." -- Ronald Reagan

"Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue ... presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few not for the many." -- James Madison

"Scientists can tell you just to the minute when something is going to happy 10 million miles away and none of them has ever been smart enough to tell you what day to put on your heavy underwear." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Let therefore every man, that, appealing to his own heart, feels the least spark of virtue or freedom there, think that it is an honor which he owes himself, and a duty which he owes his country, to bear arms." -- British colonial statesman Thomas Pownhall (1722-1805)

"If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation." -- Samuel Adams

"In planning, forming, and arranging laws, deliberation is always becoming, and always useful." -- James Wilson

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." -- Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The Founding Fathers established a system which meant a radical break from that which preceded it. A written constitution would provide a permanent form of government, limited in scope, but effective in providing both liberty and order. Government was not to be a matter of self-appointed rulers, governing by whim or harsh ideology. It was not to be government by the strongest or for the few. Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world--nothing more and nothing less." -- Ronald Reagan

"I can say -- not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots -- that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world." -- author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt." -- George Washington

"Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance." -- Thomas Jefferson

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." -- Presbyterian clergyman William Boetcker (1873-1962)

"No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant." -- George Washington

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson

"It is very imprudent to deprive America of any of her privileges. If her commerce and friendship are of any importance to you, they are to be had on no other terms than leaving her in the full enjoyment of her rights." -- Benjamin Franklin

"As the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance." -- President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule." -- author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." -- George Washington

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." -- English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"It was self-serving politicians who convinced recent generations of Americans that we could all stand in a circle with our hands in each other's pockets and somehow get rich." -- American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey (1918-2009)

"[I]t is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own." -- Benjamin Franklin

"I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit." -- James Madison

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." -- Thomas Jefferson

"We will encourage all Americans -- men and women, young and old, individuals of every race, creed, and color -- to succeed and be healthy, happy, and whole. This is our goal. We see America not falling behind, but moving ahead; our citizens not fearful and divided, but confident and united by shared values of faith, family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom. An opportunity society begins with growth, and that means incentives. ... [M]y sympathies are with the taxpayers, not the tax-spenders. I consider stopping them from taking more of your earnings an economic responsibility and a moral obligation. I will not permit an antigrowth coalition to jeopardize this recovery. If they get their way, they'll charge everything on your 'Taxpayers Express Card.' And believe me, they never leave home without it." -- Ronald Reagan

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

"Without education we are in the horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously." -- English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob." -- American author and commentator William F. Buckley (1925-2008)

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." -- Thomas Payne

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Without timely expression and emphatic endorsement, our own belief in the principles of human freedom and representative government must eventually atrophy and wither." -- Ronald Reagan

2012-4