Sayings
Issue #56 Posted November, 2008

"There are two types of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig." -- Blondie in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

"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 23, 1775

"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction…. Once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome." -- Robert A.Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset

"I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing." --  Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1981

"Again and again, the impossible problem is solved when we see that the problem is only a tough decision waiting to be made." -- Robert Schuller

Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

"I have no use for anyone who wants to disarm me...until they actually TRY and then they can be useful as a TARGET." -- Rosco Benson

Stress is overcoming the bodies basic desire to choke the life out of someone who desperately needs it.

"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

"I never wanted to see anybody die but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure." -- Mark Twain

"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

"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." -- Mohandas Gandhi

"If you're so rich, why aren't you so smart." -- Nassim Taleb

"Don't ascribe malice when stupidity makes an adequate explanation." -- Napoleon

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fights with all the odds against you with only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is not hope of victory at all, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -- Winston Churchill

"I have strong feelings about gun control. If there's a gun around, I want to be controlling it." -- Clint Eastwood as Tommy Nowack in Pink Cadillac (1989

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

"They'll forgive you for being wrong. What they won't forgive you for is being right." -- Robert L. Bartley

"Remember, there is such a thing as good and evil." -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry." -- William F. Buckley

"It's easy being a humorist when you've got the whole government working for you." -- Will Rogers

"It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably." -- Immanuel Kant

"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing." -- Thomas Paine

"The meek may inherit the earth, but they won't be able to keep it.  Those who beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks will end up plowing and pruning for those who didn't."

"Peace can ultimately be achieved through the liberal use of superior firepower."

"Rules and history are usually written by the victors."

"For some societies, being nuked back to the stone age only involves a two-week trip."

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." -- Frank LLoyd Wright (1868-1959)

'There is no statute of limitations on honor, it is never too late to do what is right.'' -- Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, 2001

"Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." -- George Washington

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry... has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who... have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." -- Thomas Jefferson

"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian." -- Pat Paulson

"The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful." -- Calvin Coolidge

Keep in mind...

1. When evil rears it's ugly, you can count on absolutely no one other than yourself for help.

2. When seconds count, even good cops still are minutes away.

3. Staying in Yellow, your life may depend on it!!

"When the antis [anti-gun] wail please ask them how many Americans were killed in automobiles today? (Average is 115 per day). We tolerate cars because they offer us freedom; we should be equally tolerant of handguns as they ensure freedom at the cost of many, many fewer deaths." -- Jim Dodd

"The animal rights people are more violently opposed to fur than to leather because it is easier to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs."

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

"It is difficult to move strong things by pushing directly, so you should injure the corners" -- Fire Book, Book of Five Rings, Musashi

"If men of wisdom and knowledge... and true republican simplicity of manners... are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation." -- Samuel Adams

"[A] man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles." -- Thomas Jefferson

"If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed." -- David Viscott

"For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?" -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

"Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country." -- Ambrose Bierce

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election." -- Otto von Bismarck

"I have always maintained that no President can be as bad as the men that advise him. We don't need a different man as bad as we need different advisors for the same man." -- Will Rogers

"Covenants without swords are but words." -- Thomas Hobbes

"Son, let me explain something to you. You don't poke a wolverine with a sharp stick unless you want your balls ripped off." -- Grandpa Vanderboegh's Rule of Life #32.

"Do not speak to a fool, for he will scorn the wisdom of your words." -- Proverbs 23:9

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" -- John Adams

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

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others." -- James Madison

"There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge." -- Roger Bacon

"A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself." -- C. S. Lewis

"The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense." -- Alexander Hamilton

"No matter how worthwhile an end may be, if there is no constitutional authority to pursue it, then the federal government must step aside and leave the matter to the states or to private parties. The president and Congress can proceed only from constitutional authority, not from good intentions alone. If Congress thinks it necessary to expand its powers, the Framers crafted an amendment process for that purpose. But too often, rather than follow that process, Congress has disregarded the limits set by the Constitution and gutted our front line defense against overweening federal government." -- Robert Levy

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws." -- John Adams

"In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends." -- John Collins

"While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert it only irritates." -- Samuel Johnson

"Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them." -- Suzanne Necker

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." -- Eric Hoffer

"Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble." -- Sir Walter Scottv

"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

"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books--a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects." -- Albert Einstein

"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

"[T]he line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them." -- Thomas Jefferson

"One man with courage makes a majority." -- Andrew Jackson

"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory." -- Herbert Kaufman

"People unfit for freedom--who cannot do much with it--are hungry for power." -- Eric Hoffer

"The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges' views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice." -- Justice Hugo Black

"Washington is the only town in the world where sound travels faster than light." -- Wade Hamptom McCree, Jr.

"The chief cause of problems is solutions." -- Eric Sevareid

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?" -- Thomas Jefferson

"Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself." -- Jean Francois Revel

"The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks." -- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny." -- Barry Goldwater

"A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top." -- James Reston

"Time and money spent in helping men do more for themselves is far better than mere giving." -- Henry Ford

"It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow." -- Calvin Coolidge

"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." -- George Washington

"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

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise." -- Mark Twain

"What a glorious morning this is!" -- Samuel Adams to John Hancock at the Battle of Lexington, Massachusetts, 19 April 1775

"Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they want a war let it begin here." -- Captain John Parker at the Battle of Lexington

"The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth." -- Thomas Paine"

"We know the Race is not to the swift nor the Battle to the Strong. Do you not think an Angel rides in the Whirlwind and directs this Storm?" -- John Page

"Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!" -- George Washington

"The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution." -- John Adams

"Patriotism itself is a necessary link in the golden chains of our affections and virtue." -- Stephen Decatur

"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

"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

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence... the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake." -- George Washington

"[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; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men." -- John Adams 

"Courage... is the universal virtue of all those who choose to do the right thing over the expedient thing. It is the common currency of all those who do what they are supposed to do in a time of conflict, crisis and confusion." -- Florence Nightengale

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose." -- Ronald Reagan

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." -- Ronald Reagan

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." -- Ronald Reagan

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." -- Ronald Reagan

"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong." -- Ronald Reagan

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress." -- Ronald Reagan

"The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination." -- Ronald Reagan

"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." -- Ronald Reagan

"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." -- Ronald Reagan

"I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting." -- Ronald Reagan

"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." -- Ronald Reagan

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book." -- Ronald Reagan

"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women." -- Ronald Reagan

"I once knew a man named Lew.....
Who decided to stay when poo flew.....
He fired without error
and caused a great terror,
Dispersing the liberal crew." -- Ray Lindsay III 

"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." -- Ronald Reagan

2008-6