Sayings
Issue #86 Posted November, 2013
"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
"At least once, everyone should have to run for his life, so he will know that eggs don't come from stores, that safety does not come from police, and that 'news' is not something that happens to other people." -- Robert Heinlein
"Modern liberalism denies the existence of evil. Oppression explains all such acts. Funny how in the end, the "oppressors" are guilty of this non-existent evil." -- Jeff V.
"Sometimes, we must not do what is expected. We must do what is right." -- Winston Churchill
"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
"The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." -- JFK
"[T]here is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust." -- James Madison
"Isn't it once again time to renew our compact of freedom; to pledge to each other all that is best in our lives; all that gives meaning to them -- for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land? Together, let us make this a new beginning. ... The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our own hands." -- Ronald Reagan
"Any who wants me to be disarmed for any reason deserves neither my respect, loyalty, nor my friendship, and they will receive none." -- Anonymous citizen
"The jackal will sit with the lamb, but only the jackal will leave the table." -- Thomas "Mack" Goethe
"It has been said that arguing with a liberal is like trying to play chess with a pigeon. You make a great move and the pigeon just bounces its head, knocks over a few pieces, craps on the board, declares himself the winner and flies away." -- Unknown
"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and 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." -- Federalist No. 33 (1787)
"[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, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." -- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801
"Only in Washington is it considered abnormal and obstructionist for a member of Congress to ring the alarm about the loss of freedom in America, to take a stand to restore it, and suggest that Americans, particularly low-income Americans, should be able to decide what kind of school they send their child to and to keep and save more of their hard-earned income." -- Columnist Star Parker
"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." -- Henry David Thoreau
"Forget gun control. America needs government control. Have you noticed the common thread among several mass killings and homeland security incidents lately? Time and again, it's the control freaks in Washington who have fallen down on their jobs, allowing crazies, creeps and criminals to roam free and wreak havoc while ignoring rampant red flags. … The motto of our homeland security overlords is 'not on our watch.' But like so much else attached to our post-9/11 national security bureaucracy, that motto has become a punch line. With the feds and military leaders looking the other way or closing their eyes altogether to menaces within their ranks, there is no watch. It's a Code Red alert for government incompetence." -- Michelle Malkin
"If someone comes to kill you, get up early to kill him first." -- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 72:1
"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is, that every nation has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs; but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation." -- James Madison, Helevidius, No. 3, 1793
"Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me danger is very real but fear is a choice. We are all telling ourselves a story." -- Fear speech from the movie After Earth, 2013, Will Smith
We all dream of a world of sunshine, happiness, and peace. The problem is that half the people think it sounds like a wonderful place to live while the other half think it sounds like a nice place to pillage.
"A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence." -- Otto von Bismark
"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." -- Proverbs 27:17
"Statistics are used in the main by liars to impress fools. -- DR Bloch
"A fight is not won by one punch or one kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard." -- Bruce Lee
"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." -- Alfred Hitchcock
"The line between order and disorder lies in logistics ..." -- Sun Tzu
There are no mistakes, only consequences.
"For states that support terrorism, it is not enough that the consequences be costly--they must be devastating." -- G. W. Bush, The Citadel, Dec 11, 2001
"Car doors are not cover. Concrete is." -- Unknown
"Never attribute to malice that which can adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hamlons Razor
"We prepare so we don't end up at the Superdome." -- Unknown
Familiarity and prolonged exposure without incident leads to a loss of appreciation of risk.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." -- "God" in Futurama
"The Constitution establishes the Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary, and through a deliberate allocation of authority, it defines the limits of each upon the others. It particularizes the liberties which, as free men and women, we insist upon, and it constrains both Federal and State powers to ensure that those precious liberties are faithfully protected. It is our blueprint for freedom, our commitment to ourselves and to each other. It is by choice, not by imposition, that the Constitution is the supreme law of our Land. ... [E]ach of us has a personal obligation to acquaint ourselves with it and with its central role in guiding our Nation. While a constitution may set forth rights and liberties, only the citizens can maintain and guarantee those freedoms. Active and informed citizenship is not just a right; it is a duty." -- Ronald Reagan
"I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you with tears in my eye: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all." -- Gen James Matis, USMC, to Iraqi tribal leaders
"The smallest minority is the individual." -- Ayn Rand
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." -- Herbert Spencer, 1891
"If your enemy's tactic is to attack from behind civilians, you must fight regardless of the civilians. Otherwise this tactic will become the choice for ALL terror groups. Deny them this." -- Unknown
"If you show up for a fair fight, you are not prepared." -- Unknown USMC sniper instructor
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act... but a habit." -- Aristotle
"All skill is in vain when an angel pees in the flintlock of your musket." -- Field Marshal Gebhart. von Blücher
"On of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine." -- from a Soviet officer's notebook
Ten years from now no one will remember your gear, weapons, or tactics. They will only remember who won.
"The time to strike is when the opportunity presents itself." -- 6th Code of Isshinryu Karaedo
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." -- Winston Churchill
"It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?" -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Michael Megear, 1823
"But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams, To the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 1798
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States." -- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787
"The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right -- subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility." -- L. Neil Smith, the infamous Libertarian Science Fiction author
"The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." -- From The Weapon Shops of Ishar, by A. Van Vogt
"Looking to politicians for freedom is like looking to pimps for virtue." -- David C.
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible." -- T.E. Lawrence
"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened." -- Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations
"We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." -- Peter Arbiter, Roman Legionnaire, 210 B.C.
"The urge to 'save humanity' is only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all 'messiahs' really seek, not the chance to serve." -- H.L. Mencken
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." -- Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775
"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 (427-347 B.C.)
"The right of resisting oppression is a natural right." -- President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)
"Once more into the fray, into the best fight I'll ever know. To live and die on this day. To live and die on this day." -- From the movie Priest
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. -- Will Rogers
"[Tyrannical] power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?" -- French historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
"I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air." -- Margaret Thatcher
"If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." -- Thomas Paine
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." -- British author George Orwell (1903-1950)
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience." -- French Algerian author Albert Camus (1913-1960)
"It is not the "politicians" we have elected, but the "ideological policies" we have adopted that have taken us to the despotic state of affairs that now plague our lives." -- America's Ruling Troika, by Nelson Hultberg
"No matter how caring you are of minority issues and peace loving, unfortunately your uniform will be your skin color. Ignore that reality at your peril." -- Annon
"Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment." -- historian and author Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998)
"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." -- Thomas Jefferson
"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government." -- Mercy Warren
"If the government gets into business on any large scale, we soon find that the beneficiaries attempt to play a large part in the control. While in theory it is to serve the public, in practice it will be very largely serving private interests." -- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
"If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it." -- psychologist Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
"The state is the organization of robbery writ large." -- Murray Rothbard
"Facts are stubborn things." -- John Adams
"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
"I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all." -- Marine General James Mattis to Iraqi village leaders
"Freedom frightens some people. They say if no one is in charge there would be chaos. That is intuitive, but think about a skating rink. Before rinks were invented, if you proposed an amusement in which people strap blades to their feet and skate around on ice at whatever speeds they wish, you'd have been called crazy. There's got to be speed limits, stoplights, turn signals. But we know that people navigate rinks safely on their own. They create their own order, with only minimal rules. Society would work the same way -- and does to a large extent even today. 'Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government,' Thomas Paine, the soul of the American Revolution, wrote. 'It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. ... Common interest (has) a greater influence than the laws of government.'" -- columnist John Stossel
"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
"Disciplina remuneror fidelis!" (practice rewards the faithful) -- Peter V.
"The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country. A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn't see so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly old men." -- Lyn Nofziger, American political consultant and author (1924-2006)
"No priest, no theologian stood at the cradle of Bethlehem. And yet, all Christian theology finds its beginnings in the miracle of miracles, that God became human." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"[G]overnment bureaucrats create the official definition of poverty, and they do so in ways that provide a political rationale for the welfare state -- and, not incidentally, for the bureaucrats' own jobs. ... There is nothing mysterious about the fact that most people start off in entry level jobs that pay much less than they will earn after they get some work experience. But, when minimum wage levels are set without regard to their initial productivity, young people are disproportionately unemployed -- priced out of jobs. ... Minorities, like young people, can also be priced out of jobs. In the United States, the last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate -- 1930 -- was also the last year when there was no federal minimum wage law. ... In 1948 the unemployment rate of black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. This was a fraction of what it would become in even the most prosperous years from 1958 on, as the minimum wage was raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation. Some 'compassion' for 'the poor'!" -- Thomas Sowell
2013-6