Sayings
Issue #30 Posted November 7, 2003

"We always want the best man to win an election. Unfortunately, he never runs." -- Will Rogers

"Unarmed, one can only flee from Evil. But Evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." - Jeff Cooper

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good." -- Thomas Sowell

"Cogito ergo armor" "I think, therefore I am armed."

"The hoplophope fears and, yes, hates us because we are not afraid. There is not much room for compromise here. We cannot expect reason to carry weight, but we can meet propaganda with propaganda, and our task is easier because our position is demonstrably the right one. And most people are not complete fools." -- Jeff Cooper

"Yes, we did produce a near perfect republic, but will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I am apt to believe that [Independence Day] will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the 'Day of Deliverance' by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty." – John Adams

"May it [the Declaration of Independence] be to the world what I believe will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing man to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition has persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings of security and self-government." – Thomas Jefferson

"Let us keep untarnished, unstained, the honor of the flag our fathers bore aloft in the teeth of the wildest storm, the flag that shall float above the solid files of a united people, a people sworn to the great cause of liberty and justice, for themselves, and for all the sons and daughters of men." – Theodore Roosevelt

"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." – George Washington

"...[I]t is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own." – Benjamin Franklin

"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not our circumstances." – Martha Washington

"...[R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington

"Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals." -- Niccolo Machiavelli

"I care not so much what I am to others as I respect what I am in myself. I will be rich by myself and not by borrowing." -- Montaigne

"A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says, 'I was beaten.' He does not say, 'My men were beaten.' Thus speaks a real man." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?" -- William O. Douglas

"We get the fundamental confusion that government, since it can correct much abuse, can also create righteousness." -- Herbert Hoover

"...[T]he hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last." -- Charles Dickens

"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"At times it does seem a shame that Noah and his party didn't miss the boat." -- Mark Twain

"All investment is an act of faith, and faith is earned by integrity. In the long run, there's no capitalism without conscience; there is no wealth without character." -- President George W. Bush

"Our politics suffers from a shortage of people who put character and country before career and personal gain." -- Cal Thomas

"Trust is one of those things that is much easier to maintain than it is to repair." -- Thomas Sowell

"In the legal arena, material misrepresentations of fact are called 'fraud.' In Washington, such misrepresentations are called 'politics'." -- Ken Connor

"The Founders understood that religious belief was not incidental to the American experiment in liberty but was the foundation on which it was built. The whole idea that individuals were entitled to liberty rests on the Judeo-Christian conception of man." -- Linda Chavez

"There is something to be said for popular abolition of the death penalty; there is nothing to be said for its incremental abolition by this court." -- Justice Antonin Scalia

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical over 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today." -- Thomas Sowell

"As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins, by national calamities." -- George Mason

"The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The more people misbehave and are incapable of taking care of themselves and their families, the more government has a pretext to enter every part of the individual's life. ...The less people obey the laws of nature and the laws of God, the more they will be beholden to the laws of the state, and to those who control the state's apparatus." -- Steven Greenhut

"We've gone astray from first principles. We've lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything that we've accomplished. Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." -- Ronald Reagan

"It isn't that we don't know where to look for guidance in how to build lives of personal integrity and governments and institutions that reflect them. It is that we have chosen to ignore such things in the pursuit of immediate gratification." -- Cal Thomas

"The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class." -- Aristotle

"Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle." -- Edmund Burke

"It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality." -- Samuel Johnson

"What is a communist? One who hath yearnings/For equal division of unequal earnings." -- Ebenezer Elliott

"The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all." -- John F. Kennedy

"Money will not purchase character or good government." -- Calvin Coolidge

"We get the fundamental confusion that government, since it can correct much abuse, can also create righteousness." -- Herbert Hoover

"One of the evils of democracy is, you have to put up with the man you elect whether you want him or not." -- Will Rogers

"I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world." -- Mark Twain

"No corporation on earth comes close to the accounting fraud practiced year after year by the federal government." -- Rep. Ron Paul

"The history of liberty is largely the history of the observance of procedural safeguards. The existence of so many bogus civil liberty concerns should not blind us to real ones." -- Maggie Gallagher

"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

"Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness." -- George Washington

"For what people have always sought is equality before the law. For rights that were not open to all alike would be no rights." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals." -- Felix Frankfurter

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." -- Reinhold Niebuhr

"To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them." -- Edmund Burke

"[The Ten Commandments] are the charter and guide of human liberty, for there can be no liberty without the law." -- Cecil B. DeMille

"Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government." -- Milton Friedman

"Shrewdness in public life all over the world is always honored, while honesty in public men is generally attributed to dumbness and is seldom rewarded." -- Will Rogers

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." -- The Dali Lama

"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms." - - Thomas Jefferson

2003#4