Sayings
Issue #47 Posted May 1, 2007
"A pistol is like a seatbelt. We don't wear seatbelts in hopes of getting into a car wreck or in paranoid fear of an accident. Nor are hopes or paranoia why we carry guns. Both are worn ‘just in case’ and if all goes well, neither will never be used. Laws that force us to unbuckle our ‘seatbelts’ need to be repealed." -- The Firearms Coalition
" It only takes one sociopath to ruin your day" -- Bill T., MO
"It has always been my belief that what really determines peoples' perceptions about the state of the economy is what they see in their lives, neighborhoods and workplaces. They don't pay any attention to the gross domestic product numbers or any of the lesser figures released on almost a daily basis."-- Bruce Bartlett
"All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." -- Sir Winston Churchill
"Quality articles are made for men who are tired of the extravagance of buying cheap things." -- Hamley Cowboy Catalog 1939
There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic..." -- Justice Joseph Story
"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 limits possible. Wherever … the right of 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." -- George Tucker, American Revolutionary War veteran
"Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer's hands. -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 45 AD
"No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction, be conceived to give the Congress a power to disarm the people. A flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if, in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either [state or federal government] should attempt it, [the Second] Amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both." -- William Rawle, appointed as a U.S. attorney by President George Washington
"I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908 [by an Indian extremist opposed to Gandhi's agreement with Smuts], whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defend me, I told him it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so-called Zulu Rebellion and [World War I]. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi, Young India, August 11, 1920 from Fischer, Louis ed.,The Essential Gandhi, 1962
"You won't get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens. There's only one way to get real gun control: Disarm the thugs and the criminals, lock them up and if you don't actually throw away the key, at least lose it for a long time... It's a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun controllers. I happen to know this from personal experience." -- Ronald Reagan
"If there is something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action." -- Unknown
"The scariest sound wasn't the cough of a lion just before it charged or the rustle of a leopard as it leaped, but a 'click' when you expected a 'BANG.'" -- Peter Hathaway Capstick
"The higher type of man clings to virtue, the lower type of man clings to material comfort. The higher type of man cherishes justice, the lower type of man cherishes the hope of favors to be received." -- Confucius
"Simply scaring hostiles away is never very satisfactory, be they mosquitoes, crocodiles, or people, because they will be back later, with friends." -- Jeff Cooper
"The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State." -- Bertrand de Jouvenel
"Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good." -- Calvin Coolidge
"Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power." -- Eric Hoffer
"The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many as can help in making his fortune." -- Jean de La Bruyere
"I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far'." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." -- The Declaration of Independence
"Knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful." -- Samuel Johnson
"I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another." -- Homer
"The worst of all deceptions is self-deception." -- Plato
"The reality is, if we tell the truth, we only have to tell the truth once. If you lie, you have to keep lying forever." -- Rabbi Wayne Dosick
"Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
"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 money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policies followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great 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 to liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependency; and,
From dependency back to bondage.
Professor Alexander Tyler, writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic
"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
"The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous." -- Margaret Fontey
"Where there are no good works, there is no faith. If works and love do not blossom forth, it is not genuine faith, the Gospel has not yet gained a foothold, and Christ is not yet rightly known." -- Martin Luther
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your daily victory or defeat." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less." -- Robert E. Lee
"The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker." -- Helen Keller
"The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest." -- George Washington
"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself." -- Joseph Pulitzer
"In the United States there is no phenomenon more threatening to popular government than the unwillingness of newspapers to give the facts to their readers." -- Nelson Antrim Crawford
"The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." -- General George S. Patton
"Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent." -- Marilyn vos Savant
"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals." -- Samuel Ullman
"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times." -- George Washington
"Where there are no good works, there is no faith. If works and love do not blossom forth, it is not genuine faith, the Gospel has not yet gained a foothold, and Christ is not yet rightly known." -- Martin Luther
"The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper." -- Aristotle
"[A]ll men were created to busy themselves with labor for the common good." -- John Calvin
"While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." -- Samuel Adams
"To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals-- that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him." -- Honore de Balzac
"[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests." -- John Adams
"The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East, was and is, its concern for freedom from the state." -- Ludwig Von Mises
"Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch." -- James Baldwin
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." -- George Bernard Shaw
"Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate." -- Ambrose Bierce
"[C]onservatives are not supposed to like big government. It's not our job. We're supposed to like freedom and the rights of the individual." -- Peggy Noonan
"The history of liberalism in...America has mostly been about giving people what they want and convincing them they are victims and that only government can help them, while the history of conservatism has mostly been about telling people what they need and giving them opportunities to better their lives." -- Cal Thomas
"One single object...[will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." -- Thomas Jefferson
"I pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous." -- Benjamin Franklin
"True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them--the desire to do right--is precisely the same." -- Robert E. Lee
"Our God was my shield. His protecting care is an additional cause for gratitude." -- Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
"Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in circumstances confronting him." -- St. Thomas Aquinas
"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing." -- Thomas Jefferson
2007-3