FREEDOM QUOTES, PART 1 

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
-- Benjamin Franklin 

Sic Semper Tyrannis 
-- Virginia State Motto 

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." 
-- Edmund Burke - (British statesman - 1756) 

"The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. " 
-- Patrick Henry, March, 1775 

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." 
-- John Stewart Mills 

"To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm . . . is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." 
-- Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878 

"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure." 
-- Albert Einstein 

"Never turn your back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!" 
-- Winston Churchill 

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." 
-- Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minnesota) 

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress." 
-- Frederick Douglas 

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." 
-- Mahatma Ghandi 

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." 
-- Thomas Paine 

"...to disarm the people (is) the best and most effective way to enslave them..." 
-- George Mason 

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." 
-- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" 1859 

"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire; a dangerous servant and a terrible master." 
-- George Washington 

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." 
-- Charles A. Beard 

"...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious." 
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." 
-- Joseph Goebbels - Nazi Propaganda Minister 

"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 bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States" 
-- Noah Webster, 1888 

"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside...Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived the use of them...the weak will become a prey to the strong." 
-- Thomas Paine 

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." 
-- Thomas Paine 

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them..." 
-- Richard Henry Lee, 1787 

"A free people ought...to be armed..." 
-- George Washington, 1790 

"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun." 
-- Patrick Henry 

"...the people have a right to keep and bear arms." 
-- Patrick Henry and George Mason Debates 

"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? ... If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" 
-- Patrick Henry 

"Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense..." 
-- John Adams, (1788) 

"The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." 
-- John Adams, (1772) 

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people." 
-- John Adams 

"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." 
-- John Adams 

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

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State." 
-- Heinrich Himmler 

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the underdog is a sine qua non ["something essential" lit. "without which not"] for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or police." 
--Adolph Hitler, Edict of March 18, 1938 

"All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately ...The SS, SA and Stahlhelm give every respectable German man the opportunity of campaigning with them. Therefore anyone who does not belong to one of the above named organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon ... must be regarded as an enemy of the national government." 
-- SA Oberfuhrer of Bad Tolz, March, 1933. 

"There are going to be situations where people are going to go without assistance. That's just the facts of life." 
--LA Chief of Police, Gates. 

"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good. 
--George Washington 

"It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace! -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that Gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" 
-- Patrick Henry, March, 1775 

"...for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of insuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion." 
-- Alexander Hamilton 

"A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace." 
-- James Madison, The Federalist Papers (No. 46). 

"In political speculations 'the tyranny of the majority' is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard. Society.... practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression,... penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them." 
-- John Stuart Mill - "On Liberty" (1859) 

"Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority." 
-- President Andrew Jackson - (1832) 

"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest possible limits. ... and [when] the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." 
-- St. George Tucker, Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court 1803 

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion." 
-- James Burgh 1774 

"An armed republic submits less easily to the rule of one of its citizens than a republic armed by foreign forces. Rome and Sparta were for many centuries well armed and free. The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom. Among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible. It is not reasonable to suppose that one who is armed will obey willingly one who is unarmed; or that any unarmed man will remain safe among armed servants." 
-- Machiavelli, "The Prince" (1532) 

"Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows" 
"Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them." 
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt 

"We, the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts -- not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution." 
-- Abraham Lincoln 

"Indeed, I am now of the opinion that a compelling case for "stricter gun control" cannot be made, at least not on empirical grounds. I have nothing but respect for the various pro-gun control advocates with whom I have come in contact over the past years. They are, for the most part, sensitive, humane and intelligent people, and their ultimate aim, to reduce death and violence in our society, is one that every civilized person must share. I have, however, come to be convinced that they are barking up the wrong tree." 
-- James Wright (scholarly research in collaboration with Peter Rossi) 

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." 
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis 

"It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." 
-- Justice Robert H. Jackson 

"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." 
-- John Locke 

"No slave shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders from his master or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another. Arms in possession of a slave contrary to this prohibition shall be forfeited to him who will seize them." 
-- A Bill Concerning Slaves, Virginia Assembly, 1779 

"Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out just because I might yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater." 
-- Peter Venetoklis 

"This country was founded by religious nuts with guns." 
-- P.J. O'Rourke 

"When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril." 
-- Harry Truman 

"Life, liberty and property do not exist because men made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place" 
-- Frederic Bastiat 

"All politics are based on the indifference of the majority." 
-- James Reston 

"The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man." 
-- attributed to Horatio Bunce in Sockdolager 

Two visions of the world remain locked in dispute. The first believes all men are created equal by a loving God who has blessed us with freedom. Abraham Lincoln spoke for us: "No man," he said, "is good enough to govern another without the other's consent." 
The second vision believes that religion is opium for the masses. It believes that eternal principles like truth, liberty, and democracy have no meaning beyond the whim of the state. And Lenin spoke for them: "It is true, that liberty is precious," he said, "so precious that it must be rationed." 
Well, I'll take Lincoln's version over Lenin's - and so will citizens of the world if they're given free choice. 
-- Ronald Reagan 

"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ...... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." 
-- Bill Clinton, 3-22-94 

Almost two centuries ago a group of disturbed men met in the small Pennsylvania State House they gathered to decide on a course of action. Behind the locked and guarded doors they debated for hours whether or not to sign the Declaration which had been presented for their consideration. For hours the talk was treason and its price the headsman's axe, the gallows and noose. The talk went on and decision was not forthcoming.
Then, Jefferson writes, a voice was heard coming from the balcony: 
They may stretch our necks on all the gibbets in the land. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. They may pour our blood on a thousand scaffolds and yet from every drop that dyes the axe a new champion of freedom will spring into birth. The words of this declaration will live long after our bones are dust. 
To the mechanic in his workshop they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom; but to the coward rulers, these words will speak in tones of warning they cannot help but hear. Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck. Sign if the next minute this hall rings with the clash of falling axes! Sign by all your hopes in life or death, not only for yourselves but for all ages, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom the bible of the rights of man forever. 
Were my soul trembling on the verge of eternity, my hand freezing in death, I would still implore you to remember this truth: God has given America to be free. 
As he finished, the speaker sank back in his seat exhausted. Inspired by his eloquence the delegates rushed forward to sign the Declaration of Independence. When they turned to thank the speaker for his timely words he couldn't be found and to this day no one knows who he was or how he entered or left the guarded room. 
-- Ronald Reagan 

"Four out of five politicians surveyed prefer unarmed, ignorant peasants." 
-- Unknown 

FREEDOM AND GUN RIGHTS QUOTES,  PART 2 

"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority..... from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason." 
-- Lord Acton - "The History of Freedom in Antiquity" (1877) 

"Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute." 
-- Lord Acton - "Essays on Freedom and Power" (1862) 

"The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea." 
-- John Adams - Constitution of Massachusetts: Declaration of Rights (1780) 

"Any excuse will serve a tyrant." 
-- Aesop - "The Wolf and the Lamb" 

"The people as a body cannot deliberate. Nevertheless, they will feel an irresistible impulse to act, and their resolutions will be dictated to them by their demagogues... and the violent men, who are the most forward to gratify those passions, will be their favorites. What is called the government of the people is in fact too often the arbitrary power of such men. Here, then, we have the faithful portrait of democracy." 
-- Fisher Ames - "The Dangers of American Liberty" (1805) 

"Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful easily break through them." 
-- Anacharsis - (Scythian philosopher - 600 B.C.) 

"Solon used to say... that laws were like cobwebs -- for if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off." 
-- Diogenes Laertius - (Biographer of Greek philosophers - 200 A.D.) 

"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution." 
-- Hannah Arendt - (American political philosopher - 1970) 

"Judges ought to remember that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law." 
-- Francis Bacon - "The Essays of Counsels, Civil and Moral" (1625) 

"Law represents the effort of men to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty." 
-- Henry Ward Beecher - "Proverbs from Plymouth" (1867) 

"REVOLUTION, n. A bursting of the boilers which usually takes place when the safety valve of public discussion is closed." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence." 
-- Prince Otto Von Bismarck 

"The framers [of the Constitution] knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny." 
-- Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black (1960) 

"The most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it; or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. for when this reason ceased, the law itself ought likewise to cease with it." 
-- Sir William Blackstone 

"History is the torch that is meant to illuminate the past, to guard us against the repetition of our mistakes of other days. We cannot join in the rewriting of history to make it conform to our comfort and convenience." 
-- Claude Bowers - (An American diplomat - 1956) 

"Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race." 
-- Charles Bradlaugh - (English reformer - 1890) 

"To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means -- to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution." 
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis - Dissent, Olmstead v. U.S. (1928) 

"The makers of our Constitution sought to protect Americans.... They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." 
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis - Dissent, Olmstead v. U.S. (1928) 

"A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China." 
-- Edmund Burke - (British statesman - 1756) 

"All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state." 
-- Edmund Burke - (British statesman - 1756) 

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; otherwise they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." 
-- Edmund Burke - (British statesman - 1756) 

"Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist." 
-- Edmund Burke - (British statesman - 1756) 

"Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle." 
-- Edmund Burke - (British statesman - 1756) 

"The great end for which men entered into society was to preserve their property. That right is preserved sacred and incommunicable in all instances where it has not been taken away or abridged by some public law for the good of the whole." 
-- Charles Pratt - (Lord Chancellor of England - 1765) 

"Populus vult decipi, decipiatur. The people want to be deceived, let them be deceived." 
-- Cardinal Carlo Caraffa to Pope Paul IV (16th century) 

"Those who steal from private individuals spend their lives in stocks and chains; those who steal from the public treasury go dressed in gold and purple." 
-- Marcus Porcius Cato - (Roman Statesman - 190 B.C.) 

"The more laws, the less justice." 
-- Marcus Cicero - "De Officiis" (44 B.C.) 

"I am a revolutionist by birth, reading, and principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute." 
-- Mark Twain (1906) 

"Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people." 
-- President Grover Cleveland (1887) 

"Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that 'Freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license'; and they will define and define freedom out of existence." 
-- Voltarine De Cleyre - (American radical poet - 19th century) 

"The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority.... it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people." 
-- Frank Cobb - (Editor, New York World - 1920) 

"Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed." 
-- Charles Colton - "The Lacon" (1829) 

"Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past.... while we silence the rebels of the present." 
-- Henry Steele Commager - (American educator - 1947) 

"Who would be cleared by their [Un-American Activities] Committees? Not Washington, who was a rebel. Not Jefferson, who wrote that all men are created equal and who's motto was "rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.... Not Lincoln, who admonished us to have malice toward none, charity for all.... or Justice Holmes, who said that our Constitution is an experiment and that while that experiment is being made, "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death." 
-- Henry Steele Commager - (American educator - 1947) 

"Individuality is the aim of political liberty." 
-- James Fenimore Cooper - "The American Democrat" (1838) 

"The tendencies of democracies are, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal." 
-- James Fenimore Cooper - "The American Democrat" (1838) 

"It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny." 
-- James Fenimore Cooper - "The American Democrat" (1838) 

"Freedom is always in danger, and the majority of mankind will always acquiesce in its loss, unless a minority is willing to challenge the privileges of its few and the apathy of the masses." 
-- R. H. Crossman, Editor, New Statesman (1952) 

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt." 
-- John Curran - (Irish statesman - 1790) 

"No man has any right to rule who is not better than the people over whom he rules." 
-- Cyrus - (Founder, Persian Empire) 

"Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their mind." 
-- Dante - "Monarchy" (1309) 

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free." 
-- Clarence Darrow (1920) 

"The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism..." 
-- Supreme Court Justice David Davis - (1866) 

"Whatever Party of Men obtain the Reins of Management, and have power to name the Person who shall License the Press, that Party of Men have the whole power of keeping the World in Ignorance, in all matters relating to Religion or Policy, since the Writers of that Party shall have full liberty to impose their Notions upon the World." 
-- Daniel Defoe - "An Essay on the Regulation of the Press" (1704) 

"Probably all laws are useless; for good men do not want laws at all, and bad men are made no better by them." 
-- Demonax - (Roman philosopher c. 150 A.D.) 

"The World is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians." 
-- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century) 

"In politics experiments mean revolutions." 
-- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century) 

"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken." 
-- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century) 

"The right to revolt has sources deep in our history." 
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas - (1954) 

"Today's Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress honored by tradition, is also revolution." 
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas - (1954) 

"A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to a dictatorship of the right or the left." 
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas - (1954) 

"The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself... and... the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience." 
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas - (1954) 

"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." 
-- Edward Dowling - (American priest - 1941) 

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." 
-- President John F. Kennedy - (1962) 

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential cause of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars...." 
-- Will Durant - (American historian - 1944) 

"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters." 
-- Albert Einstein - (1954) 

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." 
-- President Gerald Ford - (1976) 

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" 
-- Barry Goldwater - (1964) 

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; moderation in principle is always a vice." 
-- Thomas Paine - "Rights of Men" (1791) 

"The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable." 
-- Ulysses S. Grant - "Personal Memoirs" (1885) 

"The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights." 
-- Erwin Griswold - (Dean, Harvard Law School - 1960) 

"Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen." 
-- George Savile, Marquess of Halifax - (c. 1680) 

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." 
-- Learned Hand - (American jurist - 1944) 

"There never yet has been a great system sustained by force under which all the best faculties of men have not slowly withered. Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force -- That grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever erected for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts. You will find yourself hating and dreading all other men who differ from you; you will find yourself obliged by the law of conflict into which you have plunged, to use every means in your power to crush them before they are able to crush you; you will find yourself day by day growing more unscrupulous and intolerant, more and more compelled by the fear of those opposed to you, to commit harsh and violent actions." 
-- Auberon Herbert - (British journalist - 1893) 

"Everyone loves his own country, customs, language, wife, children, not because they are the best in the world, but because they are his established property, and he loves in them himself, and the labor he has bestowed on them. The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms." 
-- Johann Gottfried Von Herder - "Philosophy of History" (1774) 

"The German people have no idea of the extent to which they have to be galled in order to be led." 
-- Adolf Hitler - "Mein Kampf" - (1926) 

"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one." 
-- Adolf Hitler - "Mein Kampf" - (1926) 

"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it." 
-- Adolf Hitler - "Mein Kampf" - (1926) 

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." 
-- Adolf Hitler - "Mein Kampf" - (1926) 

"All advertising, whether it lies in the field of business or of politics, will carry success by continuity and regular uniformity of application." 
-- Adolf Hitler - "Mein Kampf" - (1926) 

"Hunger is the mother of anarchy." 
-- President Herbert Hoover - (1919) 

"The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional rights of free speech, free press, and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government." 
-- Supreme Court Justice Charles Hughes - "DeJonge v. Oregon" (1937) 

"Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." 
-- Dolores Ibarruri - (Spanish Republican Leader - 1937) 

"It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward." 
-- Dolores Ibarruri - (Spanish Republican Leader - 1937) 


FREEDOM AND GUN RIGHTS QUOTES, PART 3 


"The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone." 
-- Henrik Ibsen - "An Enemy of the People" (1882) 

"The man whom God wills to stay in the struggle of life, He first individualizes." 
-- Henrik Ibsen - "Brand" (1884) 

"What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: to be himself." 
-- Henrik Ibsen - "Peer Gynt" (1867) 

"One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, 'I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it." 
-- Henrik Ibsen - "Peer Gynt" (1867) 

"A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing." 
-- Alexander Hamilton - "The Federalist" (1788) 

"I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country." 
-- President Andrew Jackson - (1824) 

"All politics are based on the indifference of the majority." 
-- James Reston 

"Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only a unanimity of the graveyard." 
-- Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson - "Minersville School District v. Grobitis (1940) 

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchers?" 
-- Juvenal - (Roman rhetorician - c. 100 A.D.) 

"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live." 
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963) 

"Revolution is what societies do instead of committing suicide, when the alternatives are exhausted and all the connections that bind men's lives to familiar patterns are cut. To be a revolutionary is to love your life enough to change it, to choose struggle instead of exile, to risk everything with only the glimmering hope of a world to win." 
-- Andrew Kopkind - (American writer - 1968) 

"Freedom of the press, freedom of association, the inviolability of domicile, and all the rest of the rights of man are respected so long as no one tries to use them against the privileged class. On the day they are launched against the privileged they are thrown overboard." 
-- Prince Peter Kropotkin - "Anarchism" (1884) 

"A wise man neither suffers himself to be governed, nor attempts to govern others." 
-- Jean de la Bruyere - "Les Characteres" (1688) 

"Let no man think that we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves... When zealous agents of the Government arrest suspected radicals without warrant, hold them without prompt trial, deny them access to counsel and admission of bail.... we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity as a shield to every American citizen." 
-- Robert LaFollette, Sr. - (American reform leader - 1920) 

"Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people." 
-- Jean de la Fontaine - "Fables" (1668) 

"All the civilizations we know have been created and directed by small intellectual aristocracies, never by people in the mass. The power of crowds is only to destroy." 
-- Gustave Lebon - "Pschologie des foules" (1895) 

"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." 
-- Lenin 

"Give me the children until they are seven, and anyone may have them afterwards." 
-- Saint Francis Xavier 

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right -- a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit." 
-- Rep. Abraham Lincoln replying to President Polk on Mexico - 1848 

"If Fascism comes to America it would be on a program of Americanism." 
-- Gov. Huey P. Long - 1934 

"The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous." 
-- Machiavelli - "The Prince" (1513) 

"It is necessary that the prince should know how to color his nature well, and how to be a hypocrite and dissembler. For men are so simple, and yield so much to immediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes." 
-- Machiavelli - "The Prince" (1513) 

"Inequality is the inevitable consequence of liberty." 
-- Salvador De Madariaga - "Anarchy or Hierarchy" (1937) 

"It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part." 
-- James Madison - "The Federalist" (1788) 

"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man 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 

"Many people are afraid of freedom. They are conditioned to be afraid of it." 
-- Herbert Marcuse - (American philosopher - 1968) 

"That the power to tax involves the power to destroy; that the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create; .... are propositions not to be denied." 
-- Supreme Court Justice John Marshall - McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) 

"That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them." 
-- George Mason - "Virginia Declaration of Rights" (1776) 

"What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians." 
-- W. Somerset Maugham - "Christmas Holiday" (1939) 

"Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good, need masters." 
-- W. Somerset Maugham - "Christmas Holiday" (1939) 

"A dictator... must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself." 
-- W. Somerset Maugham - "Christmas Holiday" (1939) 

"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance." 
-- Woodrow Wilson - 1912 

"Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant... Violence arises not out of superfluity of power, but out of powerlessness." 
-- Rollo May - "Power and Innocence" (1972) 

"Give light and the People will find their own way." 
-- Carl McGee - Editor, Albuquerque Tribune 

"For the crowd, the incredible has sometimes more power and is more credible than Truth." 
-- Menander - (Greek dramatist - c. 300 B.C.) 

"The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. He can imagine and even esteem, in his way, certain false forms of liberty--for example, the right to choose between two political mountebanks...--but the reality is incomprehensible to him. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. the man who loves it must be willing to fight for it.... More, he must be able to endure it --an even more arduous business." 
-- H. L. Mencken - "Notes on Democracy" (1926) 

"Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always toward permanence and against change... [T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face of its constant and bitter opposition." 
-- H. L. Mencken - "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche" (1950) 

"We didn't inherit the Earth from our parents. We're borrowing it from our children." 
-- Chief Seattle - Suquamish/Duwamish Indian Chief 

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." 
-- John Stuart Mill - "On Liberty" (1859) 

"Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread." 
-- John Stuart Mill - "On Liberty" (1859) 

"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism." 
-- John Stuart Mill - "On Liberty" (1859) 

"I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized." 
-- John Stuart Mill - "On Liberty" (1859) 

"The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle,... that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. that the only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." 
-- John Stuart Mill - "On Liberty" (1859) 

"The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." 
-- John Stuart Mill - "On Liberty" (1859) 

"The only freedom which deserves 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." 
-- John Stuart Mill - "On Liberty" (1859) 

"Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties." 
-- John Milton - (1644) 

"How many things which served us yesterday as articles of faith, are fables for us today." 
-- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580) 

"The laws keep up their credit, not by being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools; still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity; but always by men, vain and irresolute authors." 
-- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580) 

"The most desirable laws are those that are rarest, simplest, and most general; and I even think that it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we have." 
-- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580) 

"In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments; in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing." 
-- Charles De Secondat - "The Spirit of Laws" (1748) 

"You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him." 
-- John Morley - "On Compromise" (1874) 

"Give the vote to the people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich, who will be able to buy them." 
-- Gov. Morris - (1787) 

"Art. 10. Right of Revolution: Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the whole community and not for the interests or emoluments of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to, reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind." 
-- "New Hampshire Bill of Rights" (1784) 

"We prefer self-government with danger, to servitude with tranquillity." 
-- Kwame Nkrumah - (Founder of Ghana - 1958) 

"You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build." 
-- Sean O'Casey - "Death of Thomas Ashe" (1918) 

"War is Peace." 
"Freedom is Slavery." 
"Ignorance is Strength." 
"Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of our own choosing." 
-- George Orwell - "1984" (1949) 

"Take hope from the heart of man, and you have left a beast of prey." 
-- Marie Louise de la Ramee - "Wisdom, Wit and Pathos" (1870) 

"Time makes more converts than reason." 
-- Thomas Paine - "Common Sense" (1776) 

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." 
-- Thomas Paine - "Common Sense" (1776) 

"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." 
-- Thomas Paine - "The American Crisis" (1777) 

"When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." 
-- Thomas Paine - "The Age of Reason" (1793) 

"Revolution is the only thing, the only power, that ever worked out freedom for any people. The powers that have ruled long and learned to love ruling, will never give up that prerogative until they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow and destruction if they do not. To plant--to revolutionize--these are the twin stars that have ruled our pathway. What have we then to dread in the word Revolution--we, the children of rebels!" 
-- Wendell Phillips - (American abolitionist - 1848) 

"The best state is that in which bad men are not allowed to hold office, and good men are not allowed to refuse office." 
-- Pittacus - (Greek sage - c. 600 B.C.) 

"A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." 
-- Plato - "The Republic" (c. 380 B.C.) 

"To be governed is to have every opinion, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected." 
-- Pierre Proudhon - "The General Idea of the Revolution of the 19th Century" (1842) 

"One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted." 
-- Rep. Thomas Reed - 1885 

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." 
-- Thomas Reed - (Speaker of the House of Representatives - 1886) 

"Remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists." 
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) - 1938 

"The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.... 
[Planks of the Manifesto:] 
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents to public purposes. 
2. A heavy progressive income tax. 
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 
4. Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels. 
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State. 
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport... 
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State.... 
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country. 
10. Free education for all children in public schools. 
-- Karl Marx - "The Communist Manifesto" (1848) 

FREEDOM AND GUN RIGHTS QUOTES, PART 4 


"Free people, remember this: You may acquire liberty, but once lost it is never regained." 
-- Jean Rousseau - "The Social Contract" (1762) 

"...the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived..." 
-- Jean Rousseau - "The Social Contract" (1762) 

"As soon as any man says of the affairs of State, 'What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up as lost." 
-- Jean Rousseau - "The Social Contract" (1762) 

"In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and will never exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed." 
-- Jean Rousseau - "The Social Contract" (1762) 

"He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by." 
-- Jean Rousseau - "Emille" (1762) 

"I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred, to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden." 
-- Richard Rumbold - (English Rebel - spoken on the scaffold - 1685) 

"Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master." 
-- Sallust - (Roman historian - c. 40 B.C.) 

"To those who had ordered them to death one of them said: 'We die because the people are asleep and you will die because the people will awaken." 
-- Carl Sandburg - "The People, Yes" (1936) 

"The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority." 
-- Arthur Schopenhauer - (German philosopher - 1819) 

"There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head, if only you begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity." 
-- Arthur Schopenhauer - (German philosopher - 1851) 

"Our country, right or wrong! When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right." 
-- Carl Schurz - (American journalist - 1899) 

"The press of this country is now and always has been so thoroughly dominated by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the great mass of the people that correct information concerning political, economical, and social subjects which it is necessary that the mass of people shall have, in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect themselves from the brutal force and the chicanery of the ruling and employing class." 
-- E. W. Scripps - "Damned Old Crank" (pub. posthumously 1951) 

"Freedom can not be bought for nothing. If you hold her precious, you must hold all else of little value." 
-- Lucius Seneca - "Epistolae Morales" (c. 60 A.D.) 

"Liberty isn't a thing you are given as a present. You can be a free man under a dictatorship. It is sufficient if you struggle against it." 
-- Ignazio Silone - "The God that Failed" (1950) 

"Laws can never be enforced unless fear supports them." 
-- Sophocles - "Ajax" (c. 409 B.C.) 

"Government is essentially immoral. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works." 
-- Herbert Spencer - "Social Statics" (1851) 

"The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind." 
-- Herbert Spencer - "Social Statics" (1851) 

"If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state --to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying toward its support." 
-- Herbert Spencer - "Social Statics" (1851) 

"So long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented." 
-- Herbert Spencer - "Social Statics" (1851) 

"The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts." 
-- Baruch Spinoza - "Ethics" (1677) 

"All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree." 
-- Lysander Spooner - "Trial by Jury" (19th century) 

"All governments, the worst on earth and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them." 
-- Lysander Spooner - "Trial by Jury" (19th century) 

"Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." 
-- Joseph Stalin - 1934 

"I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security--out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction." 
-- John Steinbeck - "America and Americans" (1966) 

"A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half-remembered glory." 
-- John Steinbeck - "America and Americans" (1966) 

"The State calls its own violence, law; but that of the individual, crime." 
-- Max Stirner - "The Ego and His Own" (1845) 

"A man's judgment cannot be better than the information on which he has based it...[G]ive him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning process and make him something less than a man." 
-- Arthur Sulzberger - (Publisher, New York Times - 1948) 

"If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject, because doctrines get inside a man's reason and betray him against himself. Civilized men have done their fiercest fighting for doctrines." 
-- William Sumner - "War" (1903) 

"The State, it cannot be too often repeated, does nothing and can give nothing which it does not take from somebody. The Forgotten Man works and votes--generally he prays--but his chief business in life is to pay." 
-- William Sumner - "The Forgotten Man" (1883) 

"All warfare is based on deception... There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare..... Hence, to fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." 
-- Sun Tzu Wu - "The Art of War" (c. 500 B.C.) 

"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise." 
-- Cornelius Tacitus - "Annals" (c. 116 A.D.) 

"The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws." 
-- Cornelius Tacitus - "Annals" (c. 116 A.D.) 

"Without freedom of the press, there can be no representative government." 
-- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord - (French statesman - 1822) 

"What clever man has ever needed to commit a crime? Crime is the last resort of political half-wits." 
-- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord - (French statesman - 1822) 

"Dissent ... is a right essential to any concept of the dignity and freedom of the individual; it is essential to the search for truth in a world wherein no authority is infallible." 
-- Norman Thomas - (American Socialist leader - 1959) 

"I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; ... Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe-- 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government they will have." 
-- Henry David Thoreau - "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849) 

"I think we should be men first, and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right." 
-- Henry David Thoreau - "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849) 

"There will never be a free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." 
-- Henry David Thoreau - "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849) 

"War is an evil thing; but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse.... Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value.... To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side." 
-- Thucydides - "History of the Peloponnesian War" (c. 413 B.C.) 

"The Revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and reflecting preference for freedom, not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence. It did not contract an alliance with the turbulent passions of anarchy, but its course was marked, on the contrary, by a love of order and law." 
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - "Democracy in America" (1835) 

"Than politics the American citizen knows no higher profession--for it is the most lucrative." 
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - "Democracy in America" (1835) 

"What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom reigning there, but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny...... It may, however, be foreseen even now, that when the Americans lose their republican institutions, they will speedily arrive at a despotic Government, without a long interval of limited monarchy." 
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - "Democracy in America" (1835) 

"If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then result, but it will have been brought about by despotism." 
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - "Democracy in America" (1835) 

"Among democratic nations, each new generation is a new people." 
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - "Democracy in America" (1835) 

"Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom." 
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - "Democracy in America" (1835) 

"In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own." 
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - "Democracy in America" (1835) 

"The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave." 
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - "The Old Regime and the French Revolution" (1856) 

"All men's instincts, all their impulses in life, are efforts to increase their freedom. Wealth and poverty, health and disease, culture and ignorance, labor and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are all terms for greater or less degree of freedom." 
-- Leo Tolstoy - "War and Peace" (1869) 

"Physical violence is the basis of authority." 
-- Leo Tolstoy - "The Kingdom of God is Within You" (1893) 

"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us." 
-- Leo Tolstoy - "The Kingdom of God is Within You" (1893) 

"Where there is a man who does not labor because another is compelled to work for him, there slavery is." 
-- Leo Tolstoy - "The Slavery of Our Times" (1900) 

"Slavery results from laws, laws are made by governments, and, therefore people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of governments.... And it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part." 
-- Leo Tolstoy - "The Slavery of Our Times" (1900) 

"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless." 
-- Leo Tolstoy - "On Life and Essays on Religion" 

"Terror, as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class, is historically justified, precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break the political will of the intelligentsia, pacify the professional man of various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to its own aims within the field of their specialties." 
-- Leon Trotsky - 1919 

"Every successful revolution puts on in time the robe of the tyrant it has deposed." 
-- Barbara Tuchman - (American historian - 1979) 

"Anarchism may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished..... Nor does the Anarchistic scheme furnish any code of morals to be imposed upon the individual. 'Mind your own business" is its own moral law. Interference with another's business is a crime and the only crime, and as such may properly be resisted." 
-- Benjamin Tucker - "Individual Liberty" (1926) 

"In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law: (a) Freedom of Speech; (b) Freedom of the Press; (c) Freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; (d) Freedom of street processions and demonstrations." 
-- "Constitution of the U.S.S.R." - 1924 

"There is nothing that fear or hope does not make men believe." 
-- Marquis de Vauvenargues - "Reflections and Maxims" (c. 1747) 

"Servitude degrades people to such a point that they come to like it." 
-- Marquis de Vauvenargues - "Reflections and Maxims" (c. 1747) 

"Qui desiderat pacem, preparet bellum. Who desires peace should prepare for war." 
-- Vegetius - (Roman writer - c. 375 A.D.) 

"He who lives in fear will never, in my judgment, be a free man." 
-- Virgil - "Epistulae" (c. 19 B.C.) 

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens and to give it to the other." 
-- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764) 

"All political ideas cannot and should not be channeled into the programs of our two major parties. History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups, who innumerable times have been the vanguard of democratic thought and whose programs were ultimately accepted." 
-- Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren - "Sweezey v. New Hampshire" (1957) 

"Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost; and not until we live in a society where each can exercise his right of sovereignty at all times without clashing with or violating that of others." 
-- Josiah Warren - "Equitable Commerce" (1855) 

"It is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest." 
-- George Washington to Henry Laurens - 1778 

"In the nature of things, those who have no property and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it becomes clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at times, for violence and revolution." 
-- Daniel Webster - 1820 

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half of the time." 
-- E. B. White - "World Government and Peace" (1943) 

"To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States: Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, ... no nation, state, city, on this earth ever afterward assumes its liberty." 
-- Walt Whitman - "To the States" 

"All great ideas are dangerous." 
-- Oscar Wilde - "De Profundis" (1905) 

"The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.... On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends." 
-- Oscar Wilde - "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" (1895) 

"In America the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever." 
-- Oscar Wilde - "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" (1895) 

"In times of disorder and stress, the fanatics play a prominent role; in times of peace, the critics. Both are shot after the revolution." 
-- Edmund Wilson - "Memoirs of Hecate County" (1949) 


FREEDOM AND GUN RIGHTS QUOTES, PART 5 


"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." 
-- Thomas Paine 

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will,is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral,is not a sufficient warrant." 
-- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty," 1859 

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your consul, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget ye were our countrymen." 
-- Samuel Adams 

"The U.S. Constitution poses no threat to our system of government." 
-- Joseph Sobran 

"The only organized political party with a Christian vision of morality is the Libertarian Party." 
-- Walter E. Williams 

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." 
-- John Hay, 1872 

"The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt against the reality!" 
-- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943 

"I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either." 
-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918), Russian novelist. Commencement address, 7 June 1978, Harvard University. 

"Still if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse cse. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." 
-- Sir Winston Churchill 

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." 
-- Barry Goldwater 

"This year will go down in history. For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." 
-- A. Hitler 1935 


THOMAS JEFFERSON QUOTES 


"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." 
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Du Pont de Nemours, April 24, 1816 

"On every question of construction (of the constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." 
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823 

"... God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." 
-- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787. 

"No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against the tyranny in government." 
-- Thomas Jefferson, June 1776 

"You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all contitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy... The Contitution has erected no such single tribunal." 
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1820 

"The constitutions of most of our states [and of the United States] assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walk." 
-- Encyclopedia of Thomas Jefferson 

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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 felicity." 
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." 
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliance with none." 
--Thomas Jefferson - First Inaugural Address. 

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all" 
-- Thomas Jefferson in letter to Abigail Adams, Paris, 1787 

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." 
--Thomas Jefferson 

"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills." 
--Thomas Jefferson 

"I wish to preserve the line drawn by the federal Constitution between the [federal and state] governments as it stands at present, and to take every prudent means of preventing either from stepping over it." 
--Thomas Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ed. by H. E. Bergh 

"I place economy among the first and important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy." 
--Thomas Jefferson 

"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own." 
-- Thomas Jefferson in letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, 1803 

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that men can be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effective hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?" 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Information is the currency of democracy." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." 
-- Thomas Jefferson - Notes on Virginia 

"It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plentitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"I never told my religion nor scrutinize that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor wished to change another's creed. I have judged of others' religion by their lives, for it is from our lives and not from our words that our religion must be read. By the same test must the world judge me." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose." 
-- Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Spafford, 1814 

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." 
-- Thomas Jefferson - Notes on Virginia 

"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." 
-- Thomas Jefferson to S. Kercheval, 1810 

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories." 
-- Thomas Jefferson - "Notes on the State of Virginia"(1785) 

"A subject comes into my head... The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another... I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident: The earth belongs always to the living generation." 
-- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison 1789 

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling on a large scale." 
-- Thomas Jefferson to Eldridge Gerry 1799 

"If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be... if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing; to improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains, to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgement; and in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed." 
-- Thomas Jefferson: Report for University of Virginia on the Purpose of Education 

"Resistence to tyrants is obedience to God." 
-- Thomas Jefferson's motto 

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." 
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia 

"I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." 
-- Thomas Jefferson 

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government,I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." 
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, c. 1789 

AYN RAND QUOTES 

"The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave." 

"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." 

"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." 
-- "Atlas Shrugged" 

"Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others." 
-- "The Moratorium on Brains" 

"...a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare." 
-- "The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness 

"If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States: 
1900 - 47.3 years 
1920 - 53 years 
1940 - 60 years 
1968 - 70.2 years (the latest figures compiled [as of January 1971])
Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent "Thank you" to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find." 
-- "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution 

"Even *if* smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death." 
-- "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution 

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force." 
-- Galt's Speech, "Atlas Shrugged" 

"Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it." 
-- Philosophical Detection, "Philosophy: Who Needs It" 

"No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as the right to enslave." 
-- "Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness 

"The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others." 
-- "The Cashing-In: The Student Rebellion," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal 

"Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries." 
-- "For The New Intellectual" 

"Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others - misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement - failure is not a mortgage on success - suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence - man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause - life is not one huge hospital." 
-- "Apollo 11," The Objectivist 

"Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment - so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences." 
-- "The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue Of Selfishness 

"Do not make the mistake...of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer's permission. He does not hold it by permission - but by contract, that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job; a slave cannot." 
-- "Textbook of Americanism" 

"An individualist is a man who says: "I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself." 
-- "Textbook of Americanism" 

"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." 
-- "Who Will Protect Us From Our Protectors"? The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1952 

"You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational convictions - or a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often that not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew." 
-- "Philosophy: Who Needs It," 

"When 'the common good' of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals." 
-- "What is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal 

"Justice does exist in the world, whether people choose to practice it or not. The men of ability are being avenged. The avenger is reality. Its weapon is slow, silent, invisible, and men perceive it only by its consequences - by the gutted ruins and the moans of agony it leaves in its wake. The name of the weapon is: inflation." 
-- "Egalitarianism And Inflation," Philosophy: Who Needs It 

"Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law." 
-- "Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness 

"The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value. Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice - which means: self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction - which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good." 
-- "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," Philosophy: Who Needs It 

"Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demand for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen." 
-- "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business 

"[On three of the rules governing the mechanics of compromise] 
1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins. 
2. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins. 
3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side." 
-- "The Anatomy of Compromise," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal 

"If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor." 

"Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right." 


INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES 

TEAMWORK 
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. 

SUCCESS 
Some people dream of success... 
While others wake up and work hard at it. 

OPPORTUNITY 
Don't wait for your ship to come in.... 
Swim out to it. 

SUCCESS 
Success is a journey, 
Not a destination. 

PERSEVERANCE 
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength or a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. 

LEADERS 
Leaders are like eagles.... 
They don t flock, you find them one at a time. 

CHALLENGES 
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. 

TEAMWORK 
Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision; the ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. 

COURAGE 
Do not follow where the path may lead.... 
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. 

VISION 
Nothing happens unless first there is a dream. 

IMAGINATION 
A mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. 

BELIEVE AND SUCCEED 
The key to Happiness is having a dream.... 
The key to Success is making dreams come true. 

CHERISH TODAY 
Yesterday is but a memory..... 
Tomorrow, a vision of hope. 
Look at today, for it is life. 

COMMITMENT 
To be a winner... all you need to give is all you have. 

ATTITUDE 
If it is to be, it is up to me. 

COURAGE 
To stay the course... sometimes you have to make waves. 

EFFORT 
We cannot adjust the wind... but we can adjust the sails. 

CHALLENGES 
Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory. 

INTEGRITY 
We make a living by what we get.... 
We make a life by what we give. 

COURAGE 
In the end, the only people who fail are those who do not try. 

HINDSIGHT 
After the ship has sunk, everyone knows how she might have been saved. 

FREEDOM 
Freedom is the right to be wrong, 
not the right to do wrong. 

ENCOURAGEMENT 
A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. 

GRINDSTONES 
Life is like a grindstone -- 
Whether it grinds you down or polishes you up 
depends on what you're made of. 

WELFARE 
God gives every bird its food, 
but He does not throw it in the nest. 

A TOAST 
May you have: 
Enough success to keep you eager, 
Enough failure to keep you humble, 
Enough joy to share with others, 
Enough trials to keep you strong, 
Enough hope to keep you happy, 
Enough faith to banish depression, 
Enough friends to give you comfort, 
Enough determination to make each day better than yesterday. 


GREAT THOUGHTS, PART 1 

"In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons." 
-- King Croesus (550 B.C.) 

"Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death." 
-- Rebecca West - (British writer - 1960) 

"Death is something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality, and if you have it you never lose. it." 
-- Frank Lloyd Wright - 1958 

"....I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: 'When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.' " 
-- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764) 

"Their's not to make reply, 
Their's not to reason why, 
Their's but to do and die." 
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson - "Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854) 

"It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior." 
-- George Santayana - "Persons and Places" (1944) 

"We are all in a race for dear life: that is to say, we are fugitives from death." 
-- Theodor Reik - "The Need to Be Loved" (1963) 

"BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"Your son at five is your master, at ten your slave, at fifteen your double, and after that, your friend or foe, depending on his bringing up." 
-- Hasdai Ibn Shaprut - (10th century) 

"We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living." 
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes - (American poet - 1890) 

"Carpe diem, quam minimus credula postero. Seize today, and put as little trust as you can in tomorrow." 
-- Horace - (35 B.C.) 

"There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others." 
-- Jean de la Bruyere - "Les Characteres" (1688) 

"An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward." 
-- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851) 

"But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." 
-- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851) 

"He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear." 
-- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580) 

"It has been often said that he who begins life by stifling his convictions is in a fair way to ending it without any convictions to stifle." 
-- John Morley - "On Compromise" (1874) 

"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes... Three generations of imbeciles are enough." 
-- Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes - "Buck v. Bell" (1927) 

"With savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination... There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of men." 
-- Charles Darwin - "The Descent of Man" (1871) 

"Perhaps the saddest thing to admit is that those who rejected the Cross have to carry it, while those who welcomed it are so often engaged in crucifying others." 
-- Nicholas Berdyaev - (Russian religious philosopher) 

"BIBLE, n. A collection of fantastic legends without any scientific support... full of dark hints, historical mistakes and contradictions." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes. Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings -- they are so trite, so threadbare.... None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot go far wrong... Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire." 
-- Norman Douglas - (English writer - 1917) 

"The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?" 
-- Epicurus - (Greek philosopher - c. 300 B.C.) 

"Faith in immortality, like belief in God, leaves unanswered the ancient question: is God unable to prevent suffering, and thus not omnipotent? or is he able and not willing to and thus not merciful?" 
-- Walter Kaufmann - "The Faith of a Heretic" (1961) 

"The problem of evil... Why does God permit it? Or, if God is omnipotent, in which case permission and creation are the same, why did God create it?" 
-- Sir William Temple - "The Faith of Modern Thought" (1938) 

"Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety." 
-- Ben Hecht - (American journalist - 1947) 

"All religious notions are uniformly founded on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination, and are not disposed that men should reason upon them." 
-- Paul Henri Thiry - (French philosopher - 1770) 

"Give the Church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the sword of power, and the priceless fruit of all the ages will turn to ashes." 
-- Robert Ingersoll - (American lawyer - 1866) 

"The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody." 
-- Robert Ingersoll - (American lawyer - 1866) 

"In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell." 
-- H. L. Mencken - "A Mencken Chrestomathy" (1949) 

"But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes." 
-- Jean Rousseau - "The Social Contract" (1762) 

"If God could make angels, why did he bother with men?" 
-- Dagobert Runes - "Treasury of World Literature" (1966) 

"Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire." 
-- George Santayana - "The Life of Reason" (1906) 

"Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics." 
-- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. - (American historian - 1962) 

"Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge." 
-- Arthur Schopenhauer - (German philosopher - 1851) 

"If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart." 
-- Arthur Schopenhauer - (German philosopher - 1851) 

"The Popes, like Jesus, are conceived by their mothers through overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. All Popes are a certain species of man-gods, for the purpose of being able to conduct the functions of mediator between God and mankind. All powers in Heaven, as well as on earth, are given to them." 
-- Pope Stephen V - (c. 887) 

"That we should cease to exist, that we should live and so profoundly will our existence, only to face annihilation a few years hence, is a thought from which men recoil, not pausing to ask why such simple non-existence should be filled with such dread for them, but dreading it nonetheless. It is from this calamity that religion promises salvation, and upon this promise its strength and appeal entirely rests" 
-- Richard Taylor - (20th century American philosopher) 

"But Christ could certainly not have established the Church. That is, the institution we now call by that name, for nothing resembling our present conception of the Church--with its sacraments, its hierarchy, and especially its claim to infallibility--is to be found in Christ's words or in the conception of the men of his time." 
-- Leo Tolstoy - "The Kingdom of God is Within You" (1893) 

"The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate..... Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us." 
-- James Madison - "A Memorial and Remonstrance" (1784) 

"Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it." 
-- Edward Albee - (An American dramatist - 1966) 

"The need to express one's self in writing springs from a maladjustment of life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action." 
-- Andre Maurois - "The Art of Writing" (1960) 

"Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius's crater for an inkstand.... To produce a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on a flea, though many there be that have tried it." 
-- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851) 

"He that studies books alone will know how things ought to be; and he who studies men will know how they are." 
-- Charles Colton - "The Lacon" (1829) 

"Never complain and never explain." 
-- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century) 

"There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other." 
-- John C. Calhoun - (American statesman - 1837) 

"LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society.... Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy...." 
-- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906) 

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." 
-- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century) 

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a peace of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." 
-- John Donne - (1623) 

"Happy the Man, and happy he alone, 
He who can call today his own; 
He who, secure within, can say, 
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd today." 
-- John Dryden - (1685) 

"A man can be right and president, but he can't be both at the same time." 
-- Mr. Dooley - (American satirist - 1900) 

"When depreciated, mutilated, or debased coinage (or currency) is in concurrent circulation with money of high value in terms of precious metals, the good money automatically disappears." 
-- Sir Thomas Gresham - (c. 1560) 

"We are in danger of developing a cult of the Common Man, which means a cult of mediocrity." 
-- President Herbert Hoover - (1919) 

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all." 
-- Elbert Hubbard - (American writer - 1910) 

"As a rule, we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use." 
-- William James - "The Principles of Psychology" (1890) 

"There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it." 
-- William James - "The Principles of Psychology" (1890) 

"Philosophy asks the simple question, What is it all about?" 
-- Alfred North Whitehead - "Science and the Modern World" (1925) 

"To admit poverty is no disgrace for a man; but, to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful." 
-- Thucydides - "History of the Peloponnesian War" (c. 413 B.C.) 

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." 
-- George Santayana - "The Life of Reason" (1906) 

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 
-- George Santayana - "The Life of Reason" (1906) 

"History is the propaganda of the victors." 
-- Ernst Toller - (German playwright - 1935) 

"As a rule, people are afraid of truth. Each truth we discover in nature or social life, destroys the crutches on which we need to lean." 
-- Ernst Toller - (German playwright - 1935) 

"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if we see Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." 
-- Harry S Truman - 1941 

"All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." 
-- Harry S Truman - 1947 

"President Roosevelt proved that a President could serve for life. Truman proved that anyone could be elected. Eisenhower proved that your country can be run without a President." 
-- Nikita Khrushchov - (1960) 

"Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent, is robbery. If they will not work, neither shall they eat." 
-- Populist Party of America - 1892 

"What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other?" 
-- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580) 

"A precedent embalms a principle." 
-- Lord Stowell - (attorney General of England - 1800) 

"The certainties of one age are the problems of the next." 
-- Richard Tawney - "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" (1926) 

"A man's greatest work is to break his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all the things that have been theirs, to hear the weeping of those who cherished them, to take their horses between his knees and to press in his arms the most desirable of their women." 
-- Ghengis Khan (c. 1200) 

"Against stupidity, the very gods fight in vain." 
-- Friedrich von Schiller - (German dramatist - 1806) 


GREAT THOUGHTS, PART 2 

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:
>From bondage to spiritual faith;
>From spiritual faith to great courage;
>From courage to liberty;
>From liberty to abundance;
>From abundance to selfishness;
>From selfishness to complacency;
>From complacency to apathy;
>From apathy to dependency;
>From dependency back into bondage. 
-- The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic
Alexander Fraser Tyler (1748 - 1813) 

"Nemo Me Impune Lacessit [Lat.] No one injures me with impunity." 
-- Motto of Scotland 

"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? [Lat.] Who shall guard the guardians?" 

"Silent Leges Inter Arma [Lat.] The laws are silent in time of war." 

"Ultima Ratio Regum [Lat.] The final argument of kings: war." 

"The wicked have only accomplices; voluptuaries have companions in debauch, self-seekers have partners, politicians attract partisans; the generality of idle men have attachments; princes have courtiers, and virtuous men alone have friends." 
-- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764) 

"Do not be afraid of enemies; the worst they can do is to kill you. Do not be afraid of friends; the worst they can do is betray you. Be afraid of the indifferent; they do not kill or betray. But only because of their silent agreement, betrayal and murder exist on earth." 
-- Bruno Yasienski - "The Plot of the Indifferent" (1937) 

"To get the bad customs of a country changed and new ones, though better, introduced, it is necessary first to remove the prejudices of the people, enlighten their ignorance, and convince them that their interests will be promoted by the proposed changes, and this is not the work of a day." 
-- Benjamin Franklin (1781) 

"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things..... Whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable." 
-- Niccolo Machiavelli (1513) 

"He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted ... must at least retain the semblence of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions ..." 
-- Niccolo Machiavelli (1513) 

"For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do [it] harm..." 
-- Niccolo Machiavelli 

"It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free." 
-- Niccolo Machiavelli 

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." 
-- Charles de Gaulle 

"Once you stop fearing government, the government fears you." 
-- Robert D. Graham, tax rebel 

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." 
-- Mignon McLaughlin, writer 

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waster your time voting." 
-- Charles Bukowski 

"No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it." 
-- 16 Am. Jur., Sec. 177 late 2d, Sec. 256 

"Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." 
-- Benjamin Disraeli 

"The ultimate consequence of protecting men from the results of their own folly is to fill the world with fools." 
-- Herbert Spencer 

"If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." 
-- Samual Adams, American Revolutionary 

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." 
-- George Bernard Shaw 

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." 
-- William Pitt the Younger, British prime minister 

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." 
-- Bertrand Russell 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." 
-- Albert Einstein 

"Man is a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired." 
-- Mark Twain 

"Politics consists in the art of taking votes from the poor and money from the rich under the pretext of protecting each from the other." 
-- Anonymous 

"Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the future." 
-- Niels Bohr 

"There are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there." 
-- Indira Gandhi 

"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought." 
-- Albert Szent-Gyoergi 

"Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something." 
-- Plato 

"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process." 
-- John F. Kennedy 

"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." 
-- Emile Chartier 

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is." 
-- Horace Walpole 

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal." 
-- Jane Austen, letter of December 24, 1798 

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." 
-- Theodore Roosevelt 

"Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom." 
-- Unknown 

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." 
-- Ambrose Redmoon 

"The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing that you will make one." 
-- Elbert Hubbard 


GREAT MOMENTS IN BUREAUCRATIC HISTORY 

"Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, 'Thank God I'm still alive.' But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again." 
-- U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer 

"I think if you write an unconstitutional resolution, you should be correct." 
-- Michigan Gov. John Engler 

"The House will not allow you to circumvent the rules unless you do it right." 
-- Michigan House member 

"I'm on both sides of the law enforcement issue." 
-- Michigan State Sen. Jack Toepp 

"We're not setting a precedent here today if we lie." 
-- Unknown Michigan legislator 

"Before I give you the benefit of my remarks, I'd like to know what we're talking about." 
-- Michigan State Rep. Frank Wiersbicki 

"To hell with posterity! What's posterity ever done for us?" 
-- Unknown Louisiana legislator 

"I don't want to beat a dead horse to death." 
-- Unknown Louisiana legislator 

"This mortality rate is killing us!" 
-- Unknown Louisiana legislator 

"I'm not sure if I understand the question, but I agree with you." 
-- Unknown Louisiana legislator 

"I came to a fork in the road and I took it." 
-- Defense Secretary Bobby Ray Inman 

"I support efforts to limit the terms of members of Congress, especially members of the House and members of the Senate." 
-- Vice-President Dan Quayle 

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country." 
-- Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C. 

"The exports include thumbscrews and cattle prods, just routine items for the police." 
-- Commerce Department spokesman on a regulation allowing the export of various products abroad 

"Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway." 
-- Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane 

"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass--and I'm just the one to do it." 
-- A congressional candidate in Texas 

"He's trying to take the decision out of the hands of twelve honest men and give it to 435 Congressmen!" 
-- Representative Charles Vanik of Ohio, when he heard that the indicted Spiro Agnew was asking to have his corruption case tried by the House instead of in a regular court 

"The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make them unsafe." 
-- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia 
"I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted." 
-- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries 

"The crime bill passed by the Senate would reinstate the Federal death penalty for certain violent crimes: assassinating the President; hijackiing an airliner; and murdering a government poultry inspector." 
-- Knight Ridder News Service dispatch 

"After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school department is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of David Steele to the post." 
-- Philip Streifer, superintendent of schools, Barrington Rhode Island 

"I didn't say that I didn't say it. I said that I didn't say that I said it. I want to make that very clear." 
-- Michigan Governor George Romney 

"I resent your insinuendoes."
"No man is an Ireland."
"We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement."
"We must restore to Chicago all the good things it never had." 
-- Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley 

"Get the thing straight once and for all. The policeman isn't there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder." 
-- Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley 

"I don't want to cast asparagus at my opponent." 
-- Unknown Chicago politician 

"This is the worst disaster in California since I was elected." 
-- California Govenor Pat Brown discussing a local flood 

"I believe that this country's policies should be heavily biased in favor of non-discrimination." 
-- President Bill Clinton 

"If we don't make some changes, the status quo will remain the same." 
-- Unknown member of President Bill Clinton's staff 

"We're going to have the best educated American people in the world." 
-- Vice-President Dan Quayle 

"Things are more like they are now than they have ever been."
"If Lincoln were alive today, he'd roll over in his grave." 
-- President Gerald Ford 

"I always wait until a jury has spoken before I anticipate what they will do." 
-- Attorney General Janet Reno 

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history...this century's history.... We all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century." 
-- Dan Quayle, then Indiana senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate 

"In the early sixties, we were strong, we were virulent..." 
-- John Connally, Secretary of Treasury 

"The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words." 
-- From an article on the growth of federal regulations in the Oct. 24, 1995 issue of National Review 

"... hazards are one of the main causes of accidents." 
-- from the OSHA booklet, "Safety with Beef Cattle," 1976 

"And what is more, I agree with everything that I have just said." 
-- attributed to Piet Koornhoff, South African ambassador to U.S. 

"Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans." 
-- Alf Landon, presidential candidate against FDR 

"I think that we're on the road to coming up with answers that I don't think any of us in total feel we have the answers to." 
-- Kim Anderson, mayor of Naples, Florida 

"My fellow astronauts..." 
-- Vice-President Dan Quayle, beginning a speech at an Apollo 11 anniversary celebration. 

"Due to an administrative error, the original of the attached letter was forwarded to you. A new original has been accomplished and forwarded to AAC/JA. Please place this carbon copy in your files and destroy the original." 
-- A memo from the Alaska Air Command, February 1973. 

"[I want to] make sure everybody who has a job wants a job." 
-- George Bush 

"Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life." 
-- Orin Hatch, senator from Utah, explaining his support of the death penalty 

"We do not have censorship. What we have is a limitation on what newspapers can report." 
-- Louis Nel, Deputy Minister of Information for South Africa 

"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." 
-- General William Westmoreland 

"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese." 
-- Charles De Gaulle, French President 

"This is a great day for France!" 
-- President Nixon while attending Charles De Gaulle's funeral 

"[That report was]... a wholly garbled version of what never took place." 
-- Augustine Birrel, Chief Secretary for Ireland 

"This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative." 
-- Ron Ziegler, press secretary to President Nixon 

"I never said I had no idea about most of the things you said I said I had no idea about." 
-- Elliot Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State, during a congressional hearing 

"That was consciously ambiguous in the sense that any terrorist government or terrorist movement that is contemplating such actions I think knows clearly what we are speaking of." 
--Alexander Haig, Secretary of State, when asked to clarify a statement 

John Sununu (then governor of New Hampshire):
"You're telling us that the reason things are so bad is that they are so good, and they will get better as soon as they get worse?" 
James Baker (then Secretary of the Treasury):
"You got it." 

"An agency subject to the provisions of the Federal Reports Act may enter into an arrangement with an organization not subject to the Act whereby the organization not subject to the Act collects information on behalf of the agency subject to the Act. The reverse also occurs." 
-- a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 

"We on this side of the House are not such fools as we look." 
-- House member overheard retorting to taunts 

"Honest businessmen should be protected from the unscrupulous consumer." 
-- Lester Maddox, governor of Georgia, on why Georgia should not create a consumer protection agency. 

"If Governor Fields is right, I am going to stand by him because he is right. If he is wrong, I am going to stand by him because he is a Democrat." 
-- Kentucky Senator Augustus Owsley Stanley 

"If crime went down 100%, it would still be fifty times higher than it should be." 
-- Washington, D.C. councilman John Bowman 

Senate Agriculture Chairman Jesse Helms:
"Attaboy, Senator! Atta, uh, girl... person... what are you anyway?" 
Representative Paula Hawkins:
"I'm not a person, I'm a lady!" 

"Anything concerning the Ambassador's swimming pool must be referred to as water storage tank not as swimming pool." 
-- U.S. Embassy, Laos 

"... casual drug users ought to be taken out and shot." 
-- Daryl Gates, Los Angeles police chief 

"[Hijackers should be given] a rapid trial... with due process of law at the airport, then hanged." 
-- Edward Davis, Los Angeles police chief in 1973 

"There have been allegations a number of students at schools in Brooklyn may have been involved in having some knowledge, particularly about social studies and possibly English." 
-- Samuel Polatnick, executive director of the Board of Education's Division of High Schools 

"Minnesota voters played a major role in the victory of that state's gubernatorial primary elections yesterday." 
-- NRA press release 

"If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me." 
-- A congressman during a hearing about multilingual legislation 

"I've got 423 dairy farmers in my district, and I've got to rise above principle." 
-- Tennessee State Representative John Bragg on why he was for price controls on milk but against it for liquor. 

"Nixon has been sitting in the White House while George McGovern has been exposing himself to the people of the United States." 
-- Frank Licht, governor of Rhode Island, while campaigning for McGovern 

"Some of the facts are true, some are distorted, and some are untrue." 
-- A State Department spokesman 

"Everyone who is for abortion was at one time a feces." 
-- Peter Grace in an introduction to a Ronald Reagan speech 

"Information is voluntary. Failure to provide information could subject individual to be called on extended active duty when member might be eligible for assignment to Standby Reserve..." 
-- Privacy Act Statement, U.S. Air Force Reserve, mid-1970's 

"I move, Mr. Chairman, that all fire extinguishers be examined ten days before every fire." 
-- City councilman during debate 

"[I am] pro-choice with limitations, pro-life with exceptions." 
-- Senator John Warner of Virginia 

"I've lived under situations where every decent man declared war first and I've lived under situations where you don't declare war. We've been flexible enough to kill people without declaring war." 
-- Lieutenant General Lewis B. Hershey, on the Vietnam War. 

"For seven and a half years I've worked alongside President Reagan. We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex... uh ... setbacks." 
-- George Bush 

"[I ask you to] work together with me for a better life for oil.. I mean all." 
-- Senator Henry Jackson 

"I believe that we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change." 
-- Vice-President Dan Quayle 

"I have opinions, strong ones, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with them." 
-- President George Bush 

"We are not ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur." 
-- Vice-President Dan Quayle 

"No unmet needs exist and ... current unmet needs that are being met will continue to be met." 
-- Transportation Commission on Unmet Transit Needs, California 

"The rights you have are the rights given to you by Committee. We will determine what rights you have and what rights you have not got." 
-- J. Parnell Thomas, House Un-American Affairs Committee 

"You hear about constitutional rights, free speech, and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist!" You never hear a real American talk like that." 
-- Mayor Frank Hague, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1938 

"This strategy represents our policy for all time. Until it's changed." 
-- Martin Fitzwater, White House spokesperson for George Bush 

"There's no textbook on judgment. I might make one or two other [mistakes], but it will certainly be with great forethought." 
-- Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C. 

1. Resolved, by this council, that we build a new jail.
2. Resolved, that the new jail be built out of the materials of the old jail.
3. Resolved, that the old jail be used until the new jail is finished. 
-- Resolution of Board of Councilmen, Canton, Mississippi 

"If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect." 
-- Attorney General Edwin Meese explaining why the advising of those arrested about their rights should no longer be necessary. 

"The President is aware of what is going on. That's not to say there is something going on." 
-- Ron Ziegler, press secretary to President Nixon 

"If I tell a lie it's only because I think I'm telling the truth." 
-- Phil Gaglardi, Minister of Highways in British Columbia, Canada 

"I was not lying, I said things that later on seemed to be untrue." 
-- President Nixon 

"I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor." 
-- King George III of England 

"[It is] not fair to say that I have misinformed Congress or other Cabinet officers. I haven't testified to that. I've testified that I withheld information from Congress. And with regard to the Cabinet officers, I didn't withhold anything from them that they didn't want withheld from them." 
-- Rear Admiral John Poindexter during a congressional hearing 

"I apologize for lying to you... I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort." 
-- Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew to reporters 

"Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. Don't they deserve some representation on the court?" 
-- Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska defending Judge Harold Carswell 

"Why can't the Jews and the Arabs just sit down together and settle this like good Christians?" 
-- Overheard during a congressional debate 

"It is necessary for technical reasons that these warheads should be stored with the top at the bottom, and the bottom at the top. In order that there may be no doubt as to which is the top and which is the bottom, for storage purposes, it will be seen that the bottom of each head has been labeled with the word TOP." 
-- British Admiralty instructions 

"I'm one of those who sort of vacillates as we can afford to vacillate. My bend toward conservatism is purely and simply based on ... economic circumstances... It may be that, by the next campaign, circumstances would be somewhat better and it may be that I would be somewhat more liberal." 
-- Congressman Ike Andrews (D-N.C.) 

"To hell with the public! I'm here to represent the people!" 
-- New Jersey state senator 

Walter Mondale (Democratic candidate):
"George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." 
George Bush (Republican candidate):
"Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time." 

"We are in favor of a law which absolutely prohibits the sale of liquor on Sunday, but we are against its enforcement." 
-- 1920's Democratic platform in Syracuse 

"I have not reneged on my promise. I have changed my mind." 
-- New York gubernatorial candidate Pierre Rinfret 

"In a general way, we try to anticipate some of your questions so that I can respond "No comment" with some degree of knowledge." 
-- William Baker, CIA spokesperson, to the press 

"Have we gone beyond the bounds of reasonable dishonesty?" 
-- CIA Memo 

"I say this a lot, and I probably shouldn't: the difference between rape and seduction is salesmanship." 
-- Bill Carpenter, mayor of Independence, Missouri 

"The thing is --- we have incidents happening here all the time." 
-- Department of Energy spokesman at Hanford, Washington, on why no announcement was made on a leak of radioactive material. 

"Should the Red hordes continue to pour across the Yalu, it might not only render impossible the resumption of our offensive, but conceivably could eventuate in a movement in retrograde." 
-- General Douglas MacArthur commenting on the situation in Korea 

"Wait a minute! I'm not interested in agriculture. I want the military stuff." 
-- Virginia Senator William Scott during a Pentagon briefing in which army officials began telling him about missile silos. 

"These are not my figures I'm quoting. They're from someone who knows what he's talking about." 
-- Overheard congressman in debate 

"I am philosophically opposed to any fare increase... That does not mean I will not support one." 
-- Fairfax County, Virginia, Supervisor Joseph Alexander 

"If a third or more of our population were killed in a nuclear attack..... a stronger estate tax would have a tremendous revenue potential." 
-- From a 1963 Federal Reserve System planning document 

Nassau County, New York Telephone Directory listing: 
Federal Bureau of Investigation (718) 459-3140
If no answer Call (718) 459-3140 

"I cannot tell you how grateful I am -- I am filled with humidity." 
-- Gib Lewis, Speaker of the Texas House 

"There's a lot of uncertainty that's not clear in my mind." 
-- Gib Lewis, Speaker of the Texas House 

"There are two kinds of truth. There are real truths and there are made-up truths." 
-- Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C.

"The honorable member did not want the truth; the honorable member had asked for facts." 
-- Joseph Chamberlain, member of 19th century Parliament 

"When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results." 
-- President Calvin Coolidge 

"That's the most unheard-of thing I ever heard of." 
-- Senator Joseph McCarthy 

"I do not feel that we should allow a shortage of funds to prevent cities from financing needed projects." 
-- Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey 
 
"I think that the free-enterprise system is absolutely too important to be left to the voluntary action of the marketplace." 
-- Congressman Richard Kelly (R-Fla.) 

"There are instances where it is in the best interests of the nation not to vote the will of the people." 
-- Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, on why Congress gave itself a pay raise without voting on the record for the raise. 

"I don't know anyone here that's been killed with a handgun." 
-- Rep. Avery Alexander, Louisiana House member 

"I can't believe that we are going to let a majority of the people decide what is best for this state." 
-- Rep. John Travis, Louisiana House member 

"This amendment does more damage than it does harm." 
-- Rep. Cynthia Willard-Lewis, Louisiana House member. 

"This has all the earmarks of an eyesore." 
"This comes within a few pennies of being a very large amount." 
"We must put our shoulders to the wheel and push the ship of state up Market Street." 
"Indeed, if there's anything behind this that your humble servant can undercover, I'm going to undercover it." 
"Ladies, I have here some figures which I want you to take home in your heads, which I know are concrete." 
"Along the invisible pathway to the future, I see the footprints of a hidden hand." 
"The roosters have come home to hatch." 
"Let's call a shovel a shovel, no matter who we hit." 
"You can't straddle a fence and still keep your ear to the ground." 
-- James McSheehy, San Francisco Supervisor 1917-1941 

"I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix." 
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." 
"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people." 
"It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago." 
-- Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle

"The president has kept all of the promises he intended to keep." 
-- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on "Larry King Live" 

"If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all. " 
-- Forestry expert Ronald Reagan 

"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas." 
-- Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery 

"The Internet is a great way to get on the net." 
-- Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole 

"It's like an Alcatraz around my neck." 
-- Boston mayor Menino on the shortage of city parking spaces 

"They're multipurpose. Not only do they put the clips on, but they take them off." 
-- Pratt & Whitney spokesperson explaining why the company charged the Air Force nearly $1,000 for an ordinary pair of pliers 

"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president." 
-- Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents 

"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before." 
-- Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower 

"A billion here, a billion there -- sooner or later it adds up to real money." 
-- Everett Dirksen 

"If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter will be cut right out from under your feet." 
-- Former British foreign minister Ernest Bevin 

"How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese? 
-- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), French general, president - Quoted in: Newsweek (New York, 1 Oct. 1962) 


Other Interesting Quotes


"Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us." 
-- Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead 

"An armed society is a polite society." 
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." 
"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark." 
"You can have peace or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once." 
"Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." 
"The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into direpute -- get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed." 
"No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and in the long run, no state has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: "Come back with your shield, or on it." Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome." 
-- Lazarus Long (as quoted in a Robert A. Heinlein novel) 

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." 
-- Robert A. Heinlein

"A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind." 
-- Aral Vorkosigan (as quoted in a Lois McMaster Bujold novel) 

"A Smith and Wesson beats four aces." 
-- Poker Rule No. 1 

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." 
-- George Orwell - "1984" 

"Masses create movements; individuals exploit them." 
-- Unknown 

"The dogs may bark, but the caravan goes on." 
-- Old Arab Proverb 

"Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over. " 
-- Frank Zappa 

"There are really only two ways to approach life - as victim or as gallant fighter - and you must decide if you want to act or react, deal your own cards or play with a stacked deck. And if you don't decide which way to play with life, it always plays with you. " 
-- Merle Shain 

"Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." 
-- John Adams 

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." 
-- P.J. O'Rourke 

"A man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." 
-- Muhammed Ali 

"I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it." 
-- Jonathan Winters 

"Sometimes you need to look reality in the eye, and deny it." 
-- Garrison Keillor 

"If it's free, it's advice; if you pay for it, it's counseling; if you can use either one, it's a miracle." 
-- Unknown 

"Entitlement programs are nothing new. My father had an entitlement program: The day after we graduated he told us if we preferred to starve instead of work, we're entitled." 
-- Unknown 

While on a geology field trip in college, Gloria Steinem came across a giant turtle that had climbed out of the river, crawled up a dirt road, and was in the mud on the embankment of another road, seemingly about to crawl up on it and get squashed by a car. So, being a good co-dependent with the world, she tugged and pushed and pulled until she managed to carry this huge, heavy, angry snapping turtle off the embankment and down the road. She was just putting it back into the river when her geology professor arrived and said, "You know, that turtle probably spent a month crawling up that dirt road to lay its eggs in the mud by the side of the road, and you just put it back in the river." In later years, she realized that this was the most important political lesson that she learned, one that cautioned her about the authoritarian impulse of both left and right. Always ask the turtle. 

"You either have to be first, best, or different" 
-- Loretta Lynn 

"I do the very best that I know how -- the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won't matter. If the end brings me out wrong, then 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference." 
-- Abraham Lincoln 

Once, Christopher Columbus was invited to a banquet where he was assigned the most honorable place at the table. Another man who was meanly jealous of him asked abruptly, "Had you not discovered the Indies, are there not other men in Spain who would have been capable of the enterprise?" Columbus made no reply, but took an egg and invited the company to make it stand on end. They all attempted, but in vain; whereupon he tapped it on the table, denting one end, and left it standing. "We all could have done it that way!" the jealous man accused. "Yes, if you had only known how," retorted Columbus. "And once I showed you the way to the New World, nothing was easier than to follow it." 

Four monkeys were put into a room. In the center of the room was a tall pole with a bunch of bananas suspended from the top. One particularly hungry monkey eagerly scampered up the pole, intent on retrieving a banana. Just as he reached out to grasp the banana, he was hit with a torrent of cold water from an overhead shower. With a squeal, the monkey abandoned its quest and retreated down the pole. Each monkey attempted, in turn, to secure the bananas. Each received an equally chilly shower, and each scampered down without the prize. After repeated drenchings, the monkeys finally gave up on the bananas. With the primates thus conditioned, one of the original four was removed from the experiment and a new monkdy added. No sooner had this new monkey started up the pole than his companions reached up and yanked the surprised creature back down the pole. The monkey got the message -- don't climb the pole. After a few such aborted attempts, buth without ever having received a cold shower, the new monkey stopped trying to get the bananas. One by one, each of the original monkeys was replaced. Each new monkey learned the same lesson: Don't climb the pole. None of the new monkeys ever made it to the top of the pole; none even got so far as a cold shower. Not one understood precisely why pole climbing was discouraged, but they all respected the well-established precedent. Even after the shower was removed, no monkey ventured up the pole. It could be suggested that precedents, enacted into policy manuals, processes, and bureaucracy often outlive the particular context that created them. 

"In no other profession are the penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so irrevocable as in the military." 
-- General Douglas MacArthur 

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you sweat in war." 
-- Ancient Chinese Proverb 

"If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all have one fine Christmas." 
-- Major (retired) Dave Lauderback 


Just For Fun


"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." 
-- A. Whitney Brown 

"We have not succeeded in answering all of our problems - indeed, we have not completely answered any of them. The answers we have found have only served to raise a whole new set of questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we think we are confused on a much higher level about more important things." 

"The trouble with the Rat Race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." 
-- Lily Tomlin 

"A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit." 
-- In the August 1993 issue of PS magazine, the Army's magazine of preventive maintenance 

"Remember: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less." 

"You will be poor and unhappy until you are 45 years old," the fortune teller told the man, who asked, "Then what?" Said she: "By then you'll be used to it." 

"That's the fastest time ever run -- but it's not as fast as the world record." 
"This is a truly international field, no Britons involved." 
"The late start is due to the time." 
"He's got his hands on his knees and holds his head in despair." 
"He just can't believe what's not happening to him." 
"One of the great unknown champions because very little is known about him." 
"Don't tell those coming in the final result of that fantastic match, but let's just have another look at Italy's winning goal." 
-- David Coleman, a famed English sports commentator 

In reference to another player's mental faculties, the player replied, "He ain't no rocket surgeon." 
-- Unidentified Montreal Expos ball player 

"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees." 
-- Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks 

"Half this game is ninety percent mental." 
-- Philadelphia Phillies manager Danny Ozark 

"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous." 
"You wouldn't have won if we had beaten you." 
"Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical." 
"If the people don't want to come out to the park, nobody's going to stop them." 
-- Yogi Berra 

"It is bad luck to be superstitious." 
-- Andrew Mathis 

"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." 
-- John Wayne