Sayings
Issue #44 Posted November 1, 2006

"Fight back! Whenever you are offered violence, fight back! The aggressor does not fear the law, so he must be taught to fear you. Whatever the risk, and at whatever the cost, fight back!" -- Jeff Cooper

"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

The life of thought endangers every civilization that it adorns. In the earlier stages of a nation's history there is little thought; action flourishes, men are direct, uninhibited, frankly pugnacious and sexual. As civilization develops, as customs, institutions, laws, and morals more and more restrict the operation of natural impulses, action gives way to thought, achievement to imagination, directness to subtlety, expression to concealment, cruelty to sympathy, belief to doubt; the unity of character common to animals and primitive men passes away; behavior becomes fragmentary and hesitant, conscious and calculating, the willingness to fight subsides into a disposition to infinite argument. Few nations have been able to reach intellectual refinement and esthetic sensitivity without sacrificing so much in virility and unity that their wealth presents an irresistible temptation to impecunious barbarians. Around every Rome hover the Gauls; around every Athens some Macedon. -- Will Durant, The Life of Greece, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1959, p 470.

"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who do nothing about them." -- Albert Einstein

"[R]eligion, or the duty which we owe to our creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence..." -- Article 16 of the Virginia Bill of Rights

"With great power goes great responsibility." -- Spiderman, from the first movie.

"If you are ever morally confused about a major world issue, here is a rule that is almost never violated: Whenever you hear that 'world opinion' holds a view, assume it is morally wrong." -- Dennis Prager

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Till the Revolution'.

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." -- Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith, 1940

"Adventure is the result of poor preparation" -- Mark Twain

The first time is happenstance, the second time is coincidence, the third time is enemy action.

"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society." -- H. L. Mencken

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Understanding is not enough; we must do. Knowing and understanding in action make for honor. And honor is the heart of wisdom." -- Johann von Goethe

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." -- Thomas Jefferson

"We do not admire a man of timid peace." --Theodore Roosevelt

"The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty." -- Immanuel Kant

"Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression." -- Rudolph Rummel

"Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them." -- Seneca

"Courage is resistance to fear, master of fear -- not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave." -- Mark Twain

"The Jews and Arabs should settle their dispute in the true spirit of Christian charity." -- Alexander Wiley

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." -- George Washington

"No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability." -- Federalist No. 62

"Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage." -- Winston Churchill

"[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." -- Benjamin Franklin

"It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it." -- Ronald Reagan

"Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority." -- William Howard Taft

"Do not expect justice where might is right." -- Plato

"The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded." -- President Franklin Pierce

"A person's accuracy is inversely proportional to the amount of ammunition in the firearm" -- Burlingame's Dictum, Peter Bulingame

"Society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases." -- John Adams

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or timid." -- President Dwight Eisenhower

"[S]o long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." -- Voltaire

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

"I wouldn't call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate, who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment, can hardly be described as democracy either." -- Edward Zehr

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"Politicians have a field day misleading Americans who, as a result of having been dumbed down by our education system, can't think, reason or analyze." -- Walter Williams

"Tyranny seldom announces itself. ... In fact, a tyranny may exist without an individual tyrant. A whole government, even a democratically elected one, may be tyrannical." -- Joseph Sobran

"Our freedom is not being destroyed by terrorists, but by ignorance, apathy and complacency. Our government schools are to blame. ... Our dumbing down is not accidental but a very well organized plan." -- Kelly McGinley

"You want to appease the 'international community'? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of 'peace.' Apply relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian leadership that has proved (at Camp David 2000) it will never make peace." -- Charles Krauthammer

"While many people are urging us to vote -- regardless of for whom, for what, or for what reason -- there are very few urging us to do what is far more important: Stop and think! Voting is not a matter of personal expression but a serious responsibility for choosing what course this country will take in the years--and decades--ahead." --Thomas Sowell

"If a person is utterly ignorant about matters of public policy, then he or she has a solemn obligation to refrain from voting. The percentage of people who fall into the utterly ignorant category is estimated to be about 25 percent of eligible voters." -- Mona Charen

"The elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The merit of our Constitution was, not that it promotes democracy, but checks it." -- Horatio Seymour

"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert Humphrey

"Elections are a good deal like marriages, there's no accounting for anyone's taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it's the same with Public Officials." -- Will Rogers

"It is sweet and honorable to die for your country." -- Horace

"We make war that we may live in peace." --Aristotle

"To be prepared for War is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." -- George Washington

"If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence." --Thomas Jefferson

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse." -- John Stuart Mill

"The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth." -- Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson

"A really great people, proud and high-spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence." -- Woodrow Wilson

"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave." -- Calvin Coolidge

"Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory." -- George Patton

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"[L]et us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us re-consecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain." -- Dwight Eisenhower

"The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." -- Douglas MacArthur

"The Constitution which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People is sacredly obligatory upon all." -- George Washington

"It is hostile to a democratic system to involve the judiciary in the politics of the people." -- Felix Frankfurter

"That government is best which governs least." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones." -- Phillips Brooks

"Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy." -- Michael Kinsley

"There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders." -- Alan K. Simpson

"A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American." -- Woodrow Wilson

"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it." -- Daniel Webster

"The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better." -- Fredrich August von Hayek

"Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive." -- Ronald Reagan

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I've always figured information transfer was inversely proportional to politically correct jargon, but I learned a jim-dandy phrase from an institutional training video. I now know how to answer when someone asks me why I go armed. 'Why, it's "to facilitate a positive outcome of lethal threat crisis management of a a close range interpersonal confrontation.'" -- Lyman Lyon

2006-6