Sayings
Issue #85 Posted September, 2013

"As we all know, learning is the only delight of which there is no surfeit." -- Jeff , Dec. 1998

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? It is feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... [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 Pennsylvania Gazette, 1788

"It's not a Bill of Needs, It's a Bill of Rights" -- Gordon H.

"Our most persistent delusion is that evil is curable through legislation" -- TB Reed

"I try to never be unarmed. I don't mind dying, I just don't want to die stupid. Highways can bring the ghetto everywhere." -- Ed C.

"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." -- Sigmund Freud, "General Introduction to Psychoanalysis".

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny 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." -- C.S. Lewis

"God who gave us life gave us Liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." -- Thomas Jefferson (1774)

"When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing--they believe in anything." ­- G. K. Chesterton

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government ­ lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." -- Patrick Henry

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." -- John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

"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

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks and adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." -- George Washington, letter to Bushrod Washington, 1783

"There is nothing wrong with winning. There is a great deal wrong with loosing. Those who bear arms should keep that in mind." -- Jeff Cooper

"Avoid if you can, fight if you must --- but be prepared to do either!" -- Unknown

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow." -- James Madison

"The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." -- Martin Luther

"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul." ­- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Now, if you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.... You've got to make the mind take over and keep going." -- Patton

"Death favors no man. We must ride like thundering waves under the tented battle flag of my father. We have rested long enough. Frost to fire, to fire to frost. Iron will melt, but it will writhe inside of itself! All these years, all I've known is darkness. But I have never seen a brighter light than when my eyes just opened. And I know that light burns in all of you! Those embers must turn to flame. Iron into sword! I will become your weapon! F orged with a fierce fire that I know is in your hearts! For I have seen what she sees, I know what she knows. I can kill her. And I'd rather die today than live another day of this death! And who will ride with me?" -- Snow White’s battle speech, Snow White and the Huntsman

"Independence. An idea and a Day loved by us but hated and feared by a growing number of people who exist in our country. I decline to call them Americans." -- David C.

I am not concerned so much with who my grandfather was as who his grandson will be. -- Abraham Lincoln

"Never get in the way of an idiot reaching for their highest potential." -- Jim B.

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful, and murder respectable and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell

"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 their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. 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 every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated." -- Thomas Paine, "The American Crisis"

"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." -- French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

"The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful." -- President Calvin Coolidge (1873-1933)

The intelligence of a bureaucratic committee is that of the most intelligent member divided by the number of members." -- Heinlein

"Unarmed, humans are the cheapest protein in the food chain. Wolves know it, lions know it, bears know it, and sharks know it. Communists, Nazis, and Democrats also know it." -- Jack B.

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 1823

Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, founded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings." -- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

"The turn will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power they have been given. It will come when Americans, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic." -- Senator Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)

"Too few seem to understand that powers approved under one administration will be inherited by future administrations with sharply different views. If you don’t want your enemies to wield a particular weapon, don’t give it to your friends, either." -- Robinson Wells

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -- Lyndon Johnson

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country; he should lisp the praise of liberty, and of those illustrious heroes and statesmen, who have wrought a revolution in her favor." -- Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

"As democracy is perfected, the office of the 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 occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron." -- H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

"Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state." -- George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

"[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice." -- John Adams, Speech on Independence Day to the House of Representatives, 1821

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence." -- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay." -- James Monroe

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it wears overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

"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 A. Heinlein

"The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers." -- Virginia Woolf

"If you are over 40, a three-day growth of beard does not make you look ruggedly handsome. It makes you look homeless." -- Unknown

"Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress." -- French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), speaking from experience

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." -- Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791

"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home." -- Tecumseh

"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, 'What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.'" -- St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), in "The City of God"

"From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that." -- George Patton

"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 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, November 27, 1780

"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; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." -- James Madison

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful, and murder respectable and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell

"Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free." -- Jerry Pournelle

"O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!" -- Shakespere

"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 Paine

"Many Americans are not "poor," they just spend the money they have unwisely and then expect the rest of us to make up the difference." -- Walt H.

"I once said about legislatures and Congresses that it isn't necessary to make them see the light; make them feel the heat." -- Ronald Reagan

"Après nous, le déluge" - or to paraphrase, "when this is over, all hell’s gonna break loose." -- Louis XV

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Peter Drucker

Hofstatter's Rule: "Activities always take longer than you think, even after you have taken Hofstatter's rule into account."

"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

"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

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." - Herbert Spencer

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."-- Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

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