Sayings
Issue #84 Posted July, 2013
"The purpose of freedom is not safety, not convenience, nor compassion. It is to live and die free, and spurn Leviathan." -- Bill E.
"Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy. And the policy of one age may ill suit the wishes or the policy of another. The constitution is not subject to such fluctuations. It is to have a fixed, uniform, permanent construction. It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." -- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution
"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." -- lexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome will become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance." -- Cicero , 55 BC
"Danger is real. Fear is a choice." -- Advice from a father to his son in After Earth
"I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire." --- Ayn Rand
"Most people are afraid of Jefferson's "dangerous freedom.""
"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, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798
"The most dangerous man to any government is the one who is able to think things out, without regard to prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable." -- H.L. Mencken
"The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered." -- Thomas Jefferson (1781)
"[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." -- Tench Coxe
"The skills needed to produce logically sound arguments, for instance, are the same skills that are necessary to recognize when a logically sound argument has been made. Thus, if people lack the skills to produce correct answers, they are also cursed with an inability to know when their answers, or anyone else's, are right or wrong. They cannot recognize their responses as mistaken, or other people's responses as superior to their own." -- Author unknown
In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." -- author Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." -- C.S.Lewis
"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." -- French economist Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1693)
"Life is hard. It's harder if you’re stupid." -- John Wayne
"The meek may 'inherit the Earth,' but they do it in small plots." -- Heinlein
"In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant who is to move the whole machine means to regulate and manage the people is fear, by the servile dread of his power. But a free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue." -- Samuel Williams
"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 them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are." -- Ayn Rand
"Talking to liberals is like having to slap a TV several times to get a picture." -- Unknown
"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." -- Thomas Paine
"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." -- JFK
"The natural cure for an ill-administration ... is a change of men." -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 58, 1788
"A sword in a killer's hand does not kill; it is merely a tool." -- Seneca the Younger
"The right of resisting oppression is a natural right." -- President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." -- Greek philosopher Plato (c. 428-348 BC)
"They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men." -- John Adams, Novanglus No. 7, 1775
"I first look to the Bible for moral guidance and for wisdom. I say this even though I am not a Christian (I am a Jew, and a non-Orthodox one at that). And I say this even though I attended an Ivy League graduate school (Columbia), where I learned nothing about the Bible there except that it was irrelevant, outdated and frequently immoral. I say this because there is nothing -- not any religious or secular body of work -- that comes close to the Bible in forming the moral bases of Western civilization and therefore of nearly all moral progress in the world. ... If not from the Bible, from where should people get their values and morals? The university? The New York Times editorial page? ... The universities and their media supporters have taught a generation of Americans the idiocy that men and women are basically the same. And they are the institutions that teach that America's founders were essentially moral reprobates -- sexist and racist rich white men." -- radio talk-show host Dennis Prager
"Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense." -- Robert A. Heinlein
"When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground." -- Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, 1805
"A feminized culture, as we now have, requires a surplus of goods and services to sustainitself. After a cataclysmic event it is difficult to imagine the necessary surplus being available to those that do not earn their daily bread." -- Gary Crumrine
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823
"Experience is a good teacher. Unfortunately she sometimes kills the student." -- Bill Jeans
"Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness. I don't know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, 'We must broaden the base of our party' -- when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents." -- Ronald Reagan
"[I]f marriage has no form and serves no social purpose, how will society protect the needs of children -- the prime victim of our non-marital sexual culture -- without government growing more intrusive and more expensive? Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces. Marriage benefits everyone because separating the bearing and rearing of children from marriage burdens innocent bystanders: not just children, but the whole community. ... Government recognizes traditional marriage because it benefits society in a way that no other relationship or institution does. Marriage is society's least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage protects children by encouraging men and women to commit to each other and take responsibility for their children. Promoting marriage does not ban any type of relationship: Adults are free to make choices about their relationships, and they do not need government sanction or license to do so. All Americans have the freedom to live as they choose, but no one has a right to redefine marriage for everyone else. The future of this country depends on the future of marriage, and the future of marriage depends on citizens understanding what it is and why it matters and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage." -- Heritage Foundation's Ryan T. Anderson
"The difference between the path toward greater freedom or bigger government is the difference between success and failure; between opportunity and coercion; between faith in a glorious future and fear of mediocrity and despair; between respecting people as adults, each with a spark of greatness, and treating them as helpless children to be forever dependent; between a drab, materialistic world where Big Brother rules by promises to special interest groups, and a world of adventure where everyday people set their sights on impossible dreams, distant stars, and the Kingdom of God." -- Ronald Reagan
"A true hoplophobe fears the inanimate object no matter where it's found, including in the gun safe of a decent, law abiding citizen. A political whore only fears guns that belong to people not in their circle of influence." -- Chuck R.
"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
"Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in ... the Executive branch. ... The tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single individual ... would terminate in virtual monarchy. ... The tendencies of ... governments in their decline is to monarchy. ... The spirit of faction ... in times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior ... impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty. It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have entrusted power." -- William Henry Harrison, March 4, 1841 inaugural address
"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the new wonderful good society which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)
"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
"[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." -- Tench Coxe
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
"Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it." -- Mark Twain
"I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth." -- William F. Buckley
"Of every 100 men, 10 shouldn't even be here. 80 are nothing more than targets. 9 are real fighters, we are lucky to have them, for they the battle make. But one, one of them is a warrior, and he will bring the others back with him." -- Heraclitus
"Statistics, in the main, are used by scoundrels to confound fools." -- Jeff Cooper
"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that children can have any just sense of the sacred obligations of morality or religion if, from their earliest infancy, they learn their mothers live in habitual infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant infidelity to their mothers?" -- John Adams, Diary, 1778
"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." -- Alexander Hamilton
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn
"Did you ever wonder why people are far more likely to become conservative in their views and values as they get older? When this rather devastating question is posed to liberals, leftists, progressives, Democrats -- you choose the label or group -- they answer that people get more selfish as they get older. ... People get worse as they get older? If you were walking in a dark alley at midnight, which would you fear more -- a group of teenagers or twenty-somethings or a group of senior citizens? Do older people or younger people give more of their time to charitable institutions? Are our prisons filled with young people or old people? The fact is that not only do people get more wise and more conservative as they get older, they get more kind and more generous, too. ... If anything, we older people yearn for a peaceful world even more than young people do. We are the ones who lost friends or relatives in some war. We are the ones who have lived a lifetime of seeing and reading about human suffering. And, we, not you, have children and grandchildren whom we ache to see alive and healthy. ... What the term 'more idealistic' really means when applied to young people is that young people are more naive, not more idealistic, than older people. ... We are seduced by policies based on the awesome American value of individual initiative combined with liberty to create and retain wealth. It's now called conservatism." -- radio talk-show host Dennis Prager
"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1785
"Sticks and stones may break my bones but an M14 reaches farther. -- Bill Jeans
"If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 1816
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the American Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." -- Henry Ford
"You are beginning to damage my calm." -- Jayen Cobb, Mercenary, Serenity
"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 Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, 1816
"If the federal government should ... make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people ... 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
"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
"The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." -- JFK
"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 Jefferson
The Dunning-Kruger effect: The truly incompetent are too incompetent to realize that they're incompetent.
"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
"Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it." -- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776)
"A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal." -- John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776
"Experience is a great teacher but she sometimes kills her students." -- Unkown
"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, No 1, 1776
"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 (1776)
"The American war is over; but this far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government, and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they are established and brought to perfection." -- Benjamin Rush, letter to Price, 178
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic." -- Joseph Story
"I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, become honorable by being necessary." -- Nathan Hale, remark to Captain William Hull, who had attempted to dissuade him from volunteering for a spy mission for General Washington, 1776
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." -- Thomas Paine in The American Crisis, 1776
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