Body

Sayings
Issue #79 Posted September, 2012

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." -- John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -- H. L. Mencken

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia." -- George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

"A superior man, when resting in safety, forgets not that peril is ever present. When in a state of security, he forgets not that ruin is only a breath away. When all is orderly, he forgets not that chaos ever hovers over him. Thus, his state and clans are preserved." -- Confucius

"Self defence is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself." -- English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704)

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

"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, letter to James Smith, 1822

"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication, somehow think we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication, and a government bureaucracy to administer it." -- Thomas Sowell

"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates ... to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them." -- John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

"Language is the difference between human beings and bureaucrats." -- Mensa Journal

"When you have a race of people who consider themselves Black FIRST and Americans SECOND -- you've got a REAL PROBLEM." -- Jeff Cooper

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, 1824

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." -- Thomas Jefferso

"You can't get the water to clear up until you get the pigs out of the creek !" -- Unknown

"Liberalism requires three groups in order to function. First, there is the liberal elite itself, the people who make liberalism happen. They demonstrate liberalism by preaching and practicing non-discrimination toward the Other, the minority, the less capable. Second, there are the Other and the less capable, upon whom the liberal elite practices its liberal virtue of non-discrimination. Without the Other, toward whom one practices non-discrimination, liberalism would die. Therefore liberalism requires an ever-renewed population of non-assimilated and unassimilable people. But a third group is also needed for liberalism to function, and that is the vast unenlightened majority whose backward morality is needed as a foil against which the elite demonstrates its morality and establishes its legitimacy and right to rule." -- Lawence Auster

"Warriors never dwell on combat, for it is part of their lives, a duty, an honor. Noncombatants will never know the warrior psyche. It is useless to argue the two. For those who have killed will never forget and those who have never killed cannot ever imagine. It's a Warrior thing. It's either in your blood or it is not. Peace is never a steady state for the Warrior, only those whom he protects." -- Unknown

"There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue." -- John Adams

"Curmudgeonhood is a state of enlightenment, not a tally of days." -- Rich Wabrek

"Work hard, do your best, and keep your word. Never get too big for your britches. Trust in God, have no fear, and never forget a friend." -- Harry Truman

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." -- British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." -- economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

"[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and ... wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution." -- Alexander Hamilton

"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again." -- A. Solzhenitsyn

"Small minds are the most dangerous for they are literal and incapable of independent judgement." -- Joseph Ames, Jr.

"Economic envy may cloak itself in rhetoric about 'inequality' or 'egalitarianism' or 'redistribution of wealth,' but its oldest name is covetousness. That is the sin enjoined by the last of the Ten Commandments: 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's.' At first blush it may seem odd that God would ban a mere desire. After all, the other nine commandments concern behavior: idolatry, theft, perjury, and so on. But as a matter of moral and social hygiene, the Tenth Commandment is indispensable. Covetousness -- particularly when it takes the form of class hatred -- is the root of innumerable other evils. From the belief that you don't have enough because others have too much, it isn't that great a stretch to the belief that those who have too much should be forced to make do with less. It shouldn't be surprising when a movement obsessed with what rich capitalists earn rather than with what they produce starts treating other people's property and persons with contempt. Occupy Wall Street preaches that the '1 percent' got rich by exploiting the '99 percent.' The Tea Party believes that with greater freedom and less government, we could all be more prosperous and productive. One is rooted in envy, the other in self-respect. What distinguishes them, you might say, is the culture of the Tenth Commandment. That distinction is showing up in many ways, not least in the latest police reports." -- columnist Jeff Jacoby

"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." -- Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"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." -- Sen. Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." -- George Washington from his Farewell Address, 1796

"Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all." -- George Washington

"There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of standardized mediocrity." -- Ronald Reagan

"[A] rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive." -- Thomas Jefferson

"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties." -- Thomas J

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly." -- George Washington

"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

"Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin." -- Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

"There is good news from Washington today. The Congress is deadlocked and can't act." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"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 (Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws)

"It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression." -- James Madison

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." -- Thomas Jefferson

"It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness." -- James Wilson

"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." -- Alexander Hamilton

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments." -- author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." -- Patrick Henry

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it." -- American writer H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." - -George Washington

"The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. ... This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs, when he first appears he is a protector." -- Plato (429-347 BC)

"The Constitution, which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all." -- George Washington, September 19, 1796

"I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers." -- James Madison

"The Constitution ... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt." -- American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

"We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society." -- James Madison

"Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it." -- French economist, statesman, and author Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

"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

"[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone. ... 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." -- James Madison

"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes -- rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments." -- Alexander Hamilton

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." -- Patrick Henry

"The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." -- British philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment's would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress." -- Ronald Reagan

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." -- John Marshall

"The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal." -- American author and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody." -- Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), who, ironically, was a socialist

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