Sayings
Issue #82 Posted March, 2013
"There are no redcoats. Today, we fight radical legislators, tyrannical judges and the idle pretender to America's legacy who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and believes that he has the right to decide which of our constitutional rights should be shredded next. " -- Senator Rand Paul
"With all this "gun control" talk I haven't heard one politician say how they plan to take guns from criminals, just from law abiding citizens." -- An angry law abiding citizen
"Never call an unarmed man 'security'" -- Dave Grossman
"When dictators come to power, the first thing they do is take away the people's weapons. ... I do not believe that [our nation's leaders] have any desire to impose a dictatorship upon us. But this does not mean that such will always be the case. A nation rent internally, as ours has been in recent years, is always ripe for a 'man on a white horse.' A deterrent to that man, or to any man seeking unlawful power, is the knowledge that those who oppose him are not helpless." -- Ronald Reagan
"People do not go into government to leave people alone." -- David C.
"The 2nd Amendment is as relevant to modern weapons as the First is to Radio, TV and the Internet." -- Unknown
"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it." -- William S. Burroughs.
"The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it." -- English novelist and journalist George Orwell (1903-1950)
"The more rules and regulations, the more thieves and robbers there will be." -- Father of Taoism Lao-Tzu (570-490 BC)
"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
"In a society of wolves you do not fight back by creating more sheep" -- Dan B.
"No amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it." -- Stephen Vizinczey
"You have to allow a man his illusions" ;-) Some folks working for evil do not actually know - or maybe accept - that they are up to no good. Doesn't make them any less dangerous." -- James Kennedy in Cahill (U.S. Marshal)
"It's hard to imagine a more stupid, dangerous way of making decisions, than putting those decisions into the hands of those who pay no price for being wrong!" -- Thomas Sowell
"You can't be my son! No woman has ever slept with me and lived!" -- from the Monty Python movie Yellowbeard
"There has never been a slave who did not choose to be a slave. Their choice may be between bondage and death, but the choice is always there." -- Tyrion Lannister, "A Dance With Dragons"
"Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a 'Banquet of Consequences!'" -- R L Stevenson
The following 7 quotes are all by H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."
"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."
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."
"Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."
"The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic."
"The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression."
"Government is not reason...it is not eloquence... It is a force ... like Fire. It is a dangerous servant ... and a fearful master." -- George Washington
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. That honor, courage and virtue mean everything ; that power and money ... money and power mean nothing. That good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this.... that love....true love never dies ! Remember that boy ... remember that. Doesn't matter if it is true or not, a man should believe in those things , because those are the things worth believing in...... got that ?" -- Robert Duvall's speech in "Secondhand Lions"
"What this country needs are more unemployed politicians." -- Edward Langley
"Police are secondary responders. You are your own first responder. There is absolutely no reason that secondary responders should have arms denied to first responders." -- Tim B.
"We are told it is impossible to round up 12 million people illegally in the United States, many of them "registered" with visas. They all have to go out in public to buy food, work and do other daily tasks. If that is the case, how exactly is the government going to round up 300,000,000 legally own guns that have a virtually indefinite lifespan and never have to see the light of day? -- Unknown
"Better to thought a dinosaur than a cockroach." -- Jeff Cooper
"What this country needs are more unemployed politicians." -- Edward Langley
"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
"Violence, naked force has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms." -- Robert Heinlein
"There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors... I mean it." -- Margaret Thatcher
"Don't leave your weapons lying about behind your back in a field; you never know when you may need all of sudden your spear." -- From: Poems of the Vikings: The Elder Edda: Havamal, Sayings of the High One (the god Odin)
"First they'll tell you it will never work, and they can prove it. Then, they'll admit it works, but argue that it is not important. Finally, they'll concede that it is important, but insist they've know about it for years!" -- Kettering
"Death comes to of all. The difference is that we prefer to die free; they prefer to die cradled." -- Steve Pegram
"They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power." -- Patrick Henry, from his speech at the Second Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church:
"The first indication a bad guy should have that I'm dangerous is when his disembodied soul is looking down at his own corpse wondering what happened." -- Lincoln R. Carr
"Every so often one of those peaceful, compassionate liberals drops the mask and gives us a peek into his soul. It is ugly in there, fellas. If you doubt the need for an AR, you haven't looked inside the mind of a liberal yet." -- Tim B.
"The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and then stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them." -- Sergeant Alvin C. York 1941
"The 1911 has the feel of fine, perfected machinery. It's like a Porsche. You wield it with your will not your hand." -- JRB
"Air superiority is your tank on his runway." -- John Keegan
"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me" -- Ann Rand
"[T]he government may not descend to the evil of preventive law. The government cannot treat men as guilty until they have proven themselves to be, for the moment, innocent. No law can require the individual to prove that he won't violate another's rights, in the absence of evidence that he is going to. But this is precisely what gun control laws do. Gun control laws use force against the individual in the absence of any specific evidence that he is about to commit a crime. They say to the rational, responsible gun owner: you may not have or carry a gun because others have used them irrationally or irresponsibly. Thus, preventive law sacrifices the rational and responsible to the irrational and irresponsible. This is unjust and intolerable. The government may coercively intervene only when there is an objective threat that someone is going to use force. ... Statistics about how often gun-related crimes occur in the population is no evidence against you. That's collectivist thinking. The choices made by others are irrelevant to the choices that you will make. ... The government may respond only to specific threats, objectively evident. It has no right to initiate force against the innocent. And a gun owner is innocent until specific evidence arises that he is threatening to initiate force. Laws prohibiting or regulating guns across the board represent the evil of preventive law and should be abolished." -- columnist Harry Binswanger
"As a behavior modification technique, killing is unparalleled, and works with even the slowest of learners." -- Tim Burke
"You can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition". -- Kipling
"If your purpose is to learn from someone else, it's training. If your purpose is to repeat something you already know how to do, it's practice. If your purpose is to measure your capabilities against someone else, it's competition." -- Jon Diller
"God uses broken people to reach a broken world. The mistakes of yesterday say nothing about the possibilities of tomorrow." -- Rick Perry
"You are the first responder to your emergency" -- Patrick Sweeney
"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
Gun Control is fine ....if you are the one controlling the guns." -- Clint Eastwood
"I believe that to have a friend, a man must be one. That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world. That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself." --The Lone Ranger's creed
"Leftists are not good people with unrealistic ideals. They are evil people, making evil plans. "Oh, there's never been a socialist utopia because the wrong people have been in charge." Bull. The people running every socialist hellhole are just like the one's clamoring to make our country into one." -- Tim Burke
"There is no such thing as ' overkill ' . There is only ' open fire ' and ' reload. '" -- Unk.
"Duty is ours; consequences are God's." -- Robert E. Lee
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
"Sound tactics will assist the Superior Gunman in abstaining from a display of his superior skills!" -- John Farnam
"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do." -- Robert Heinlein
"My "sap" weighs 39 ounces when it is empty, up to that point it does have the disadvantage of being noisy" -- Jim H.
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." -- Patrick Henry
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him had better take a closer look at the American Indian." -- Henry Ford
"When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk." -- Tuco's advice in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
"One man who knows what is about to happen is worth four who do not." -- from Stephen Becker's "The Chinese Bandit"
"To shoot yourself while cleaning or working on a piece, it is really helpful to be the product of institutionalized training that has "loaded" and "unloaded" guns. As the thought goes, you can do anything you want with an "unloaded" gun, including pointing it at yourself and others. Further proof that the most dangerous thing in this world is an unloaded gun." -- John E Hearne
"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." -- Joseph Stalin
"A sword is never enough. The mind is also a weapon, but like the sword it must be honed and kept sharp." - From "The Walking Drum" by Louis L'Amour
"I've come to realize what a good test one's attitude towards guns is about whether someone's mind is liberty oriented. If one is okay with police having guns -- whoever is designated as having authority -- but panicked at the thought of their fellow man or themselves having guns, then that is someone who does not think like a free person. He places a magical aura around whoever is in charge and only thinks they can wield power. This will come up again in other areas, such as letting government make economic decisions but fearing individual people making those decisions themselves." -- columnist Frank J. Fleming
"It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law ... that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts." -- American journalist H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"The most dangerous person on earth is the arrogant intellectual who lacks the humility necessary to see that society needs no masters and cannot be planned from the top down." --Friedrich von Hayek
"Wherever the people are true Christians, there are men to be found in large numbers, but everywhere and always, if Christianity wilts, the men wilt. ... The world is dwindling away, for lack of men; the nations are perishing for scarcity of men, for the rareness of men. I do believe: there are no men where there is no character; there is no character where there are no principles, doctrines, stands taken; there are no stands taken, no doctrines, no principles, where there is no religious faith and consequently no religion of society. Do what you will: only from God you will get men." -- Louis Cardinal Pie from his 1871 Christmas homily (1815-1880)
"Peace" is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading. -- Anonymous
"No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state.... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen." -- Josiah Quincy, Jr., Thoughts on Standing Armies, 1774
I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a "surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow." The etymology of the word is obscure; in fact, unknown. But through frequent recent usage, the term is acquiring a broader meaning, which our dictionaries have not yet caught up to. Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and take the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled "curmudgeon." -- Edward Abbey (1927-1989), A Voice Crying In The Wilderness
"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
"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals
to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding." -- Jeff Snyder, author American Handgunner, Second Amendment Foundation Officer
"I am not afraid to go unarmed...I simply detest being unarmed. It is a contemptible and undignified condition in which to find oneself." -- anon. Gunsite graduate
"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it." -- Daniel Webster
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