Sayings
Issue #77 Posted May, 2012
"The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it." -- American writer H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, 'a new form of servitude.'" -- economist Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)
"Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity." -- American author Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)
"There are some people who's sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others." -- T. Miller
"The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all." -- Ronald Reagan
"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1784
"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, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833
"The goal of the 'liberals' -- as it emerges from the record of the past decades -- was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot -- by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli." -- author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares do the plowing for those that don't" -- Unknown
"Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty and his property." -- Claude Frederic Bastiat
"I've known many who claim to yearn for a fight, when the enemy is far away. Precious few continue to so yearn when the enemy gets close!" -- US Grant
"The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." -- JFK
"The Iron Law of Bureaucracy - Every bureaucracy consists of two kinds of people: those who support the original mission; and those who support the bureaucracy itself. Over time the second type of people take over the organization." -- Jerry Pournelle
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." -- Frederic Bastiat
"No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength" (or "no plan survives contact with the enemy") -- Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke aka "Moltke the Elder".
"We have become a nation that plays its games like it is fighting a war and fights its wars like it is playing a game." -- Jeff Cooper
"Federal prosecutors are into convictions the same way Lyndon Johnson was into body count. This is the legal system's equivalent of "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out." -- Anon
"[I]f the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted." -- Noah Webster
"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
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." -- James Madison
"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors." -- Ronald Reagan
Four Steps to Ensuring Liberty;
1. Buy a firearm
2. Learn to use it
3. Teach someone else
4. Repeat
"Conventional wisdom is that government must run the schools. But government monopolies don't do anything well. They fail because they have no real competition. Yet competition is what gives us better phones, movies, cars -- everything that's good. ... In 1955, [economist Milton Friedman] proposed school vouchers. His plan didn't call for separating school and state -- unfortunately -- but instead sought a second-best fix: Give a voucher to the family, and let it choose which school -- government-run or private -- their child will attend. Schools would compete for that voucher money. Today, it would be worth $13,000 per child. (That's what America spends per student today.) Competition would then improve all schools. ... Vouchers aren't a perfect solution, but they are better than leaving every student a prisoner of a government monopoly." -- columnist John Stossel
"Those nations and states which have secured man's highest aspirations for freedom, opportunity, and justice have always been those willing to trust their people, confident that their skills and their talents are equal to any challenge." -- Ronald Reagan
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
"There are only two places where the powerful and great in this world lose their courage, tremble in the depths of their souls, and become truly afraid. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"A universal peace, it is to be feared, 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
"We warned of things to come, of the danger inherent in unwarranted government involvement in things not its proper province. What we warned against has come to pass. And today more than two-thirds of our citizens are telling us, and each other, that social engineering by the federal government has failed. The Great Society is great only in power, in size and in cost. And so are the problems it set out to solve. Freedom has been diminished and we stand on the brink of economic ruin. Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let's act and talk like it. The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when?" -- Ronald Reagan
"States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct." -- Alexander Hamilton
"The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 48
"If congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." -- James Madison
"The construction applied ... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited power"
"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." -- President John F. Ken
"The Constitution provides the structure of our federal system and a system of checks and balances that applies equally to each branch of government, to relations between the states and the Federal Government, and, as importantly, to each of us. It protects the rights of all Americans to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' and limits governmental authority to ensure these liberties are faithfully protected -- both by and from the state. But in the end it is each citizen who is responsible for protecting the liberties set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights." -- Ronald Reagan
"I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve this measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." -- President Franklin Piece (1804-1869)
"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation [for charity relief] in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit." -- President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908)
"Often, in politics, it doesn't matter what the facts are. What matters is how well you make your case to the voting public." -- economist Thomas Sowell
"[Confinement] to a passive commerce would [compel us] to see the profits of our trade snatched from us, to enrich our enemies and persecutors. [Our] spirit of enterprise ... an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost; and poverty and disgrace would overspread our country." -- Alexander Hamilton
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." -- James Madison
"The principle of the Constitution is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions, except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend of free government." -- Thomas Jefferson
"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived." -- Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
"Ain't it funny how many hundreds of thousands of soldiers we can recruit with nerve. But we just can't find one politician in a million with backbone." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible [and] not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen which we ourselves ought to bear." -- George Washington
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves." -- Joseph Warren
"Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy 'accommodation.' And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer -- not an easy answer -- but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right." -- Ronald Reagan
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 51
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over a member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." -- British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
"No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution."-- Thomas Jefferson
"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson
"His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man." -- Thomas Jefferson on George Washington
"I never thought of myself as a great man, just a man committed to great ideas. I've always believed that individuals should take priority over the state. History has taught me that this is what sets America apart -- not to remake the world in our image, but to inspire people everywhere with a sense of their own boundless possibilities. There's no question I am an idealist, which is another way of saying I am an American." -- Ronald Reagan
"Everybody is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage." -- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Beware the temptation to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil." -- Ronald Reagan
"We're a nation with global responsibilities. We're not somewhere else in the world protecting someone else's interests; we're there protecting our own." -- Ronald Reagan
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." -- James Madison
"He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing." -- Benjamin Franklin
"No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income." -- Ronald Reagan
"East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other." -- Ronald Reagan
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." -- Thomas Paine
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- British author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
"Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness." -- James Wilson
"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be -- through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business." -- Ronald Reagan
2012-3