Sayings
Issue #20 Posted August 6, 2001

"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

"To be born free is an accident. To live free is a responsibility To die free is an obligation." -- General Bill Halley

"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

"The patriot, like the Christian, must learn that to bear revilings and persecutions is a part of his duty; and in proportion as the trial is severe, firmness under it becomes more requisite and praiseworthy. It requires, indeed, self-command. But that will be fortified in proportion as the calls for its exercise are repeated." — Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, 1805.

"Lethargy [is] the forerunner of death to the public liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787

This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: Any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. -- John Steinbeck

"There is measure in all things." -- Horace

"I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance." -- Samuel Johnson

"A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use." -- Washington Irving

"Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them." -- Robert Louis Stevenson

"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." -- William Shakespeare

"The mind is always the dupe of the heart." -- François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Simplicity of character is no hindrance to subtlety of intellect." -- John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn

"Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor." -- Hesiod

"Much learning does not teach understanding." -- Heraclitus

"The legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave." -- Andrew Fletcher (1698)

"Cautious, careful people, always casting around to preserve their reputations... can never effect a reform." -- Susan B. Anthony

"The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise -- and occasionally the application -- of the view that all people, and not just one's own kind, are entitled to fair treatment." --James Q. Wilson

"No ascent is too steep for mortals. Heaven itself we seek in our folly." -- Horace

"The best mirror is an old friend." -- George Herbert

"What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven." -- F. Hoelderlin

"The great tragedy of Science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." -- Thomas Henry Huxley

"Idleness and lack of occupation tend -- nay are dragged -- towards evil." -- Hippocrates

"It would be a sad thing if the religious and moral convictions upon which the American experiment was founded could now somehow be considered a danger to free society." -- Pope John Paul II

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, ... pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." -- George Washington

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

"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satisfied; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoidance of danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." -- Helen Keller, The Open Door

"Of course I yelled a warning.... they just couldn't hear it over the roar of the shotgun!" -- Jim Cirillo

"Progressives' divide their time between praising "diversity" and "tolerance," and trying to legislate against and regulate behavior they disapprove." -- George Will

"God, is not your sugar daddy." -Anon.

"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."

Ayn Rand, "The Anatomy of Compromise," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

"Calculated horror always begins on paper with a modest proposal." -- Eileen M. Ciesla, Friday, April 14, 2000, American Partisan

"What will you do without freedom? Will you fight? Fight and you may die. Run and you'll live, at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, how many of you would trade all the days, from that one to this, for one chance - JUST ONE CHANCE - to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they'll never take our freedom? Alba Gu Bra! (Freedom forever!)" -- William Wallace, Scottish Patriot and Freedom Fighter in the movie Brave Heart.

"He either loves his life too much, or holds its desserts small, who dares not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all." -- The Earl of Montrose

"It is a profoundly erroneous truism repeated by all copybooks and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavelry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and they must be made at decisive moments." -- Alfred North Whitehead

"The Map is NOT the Territory!" -- Count Alfred Korsbyski

"I may not be able to hit bullseyes at 50 yards, but if someone attacks me, I'll have shot them twice before they realize I'm fighting back." -- Bill Groce, Chief Firearms Instructor of the Ohio Peace Officer's Training Academy

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 42BC

"Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking!" -- Ferdinand Foch

""So they've got us surrounded, good! That simplifies the problem! Now we can fire in any direction, those bastards won't get away this time!"" -- Chesty Puller, USMC

"Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledge-hammer!"- Maj. Holdredge, USMC

"Retreat hell! We just got here!" -- Cpt. Lloyd Williams, USMC

"Gold is for the mistress, silver for the maid, Copper for the craftsman, cunning at his trade. Good! Said the baron, while sitting in his hall, But Iron, Cold Iron, is master of them all." -- Kipling

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before." -- Mae West

"The difference between a good law and a bad law is that a bad law creates criminals, while a good law identifies them." -- R. Alex Whitlock


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Updated 2001-08-06 @ 1400 - Fr. Frog