Sayings
Issue #66 Posted July, 2010

"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Women back on a pedestal, Sex back in the bedroom, Obscenity back in the outhouse, Perversion back in the closet, Murderers back on the gallows, Education back in the schools, Gold back in our money, ..... And America back on top!" -- John D. (Jeff) Cooper

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." -- James Madison

"The rule is that the wayward bullet that misses its intended target will strike the most expensive thing it can find! There is always a group of nuns or orphans floating around to get shot by the strays." -- Atrib. to Tom Givens

"Work as if you were to live 100 Years, Pray as if you were to die To-morrow." -- Benjamin Franklin

"Government's sole function is to get in a man's way." -- Cpt. Malcolm Reynolds, The TV show "Firefly"

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." -- Robert Heinlein

"...We are breaking through all those sacred maxims of our forefathers, and giving alarm to every wise man on the continent of America, that all his rights depend on the will of men whose corruptions are notorious, who regard him as an enemy, and who have no interest in his prosperity." -- George Johnstone, addressing the British House of Commons, October 26, 1775

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last." -- Alexander Hamilton

"Training errors are recorded on paper. Tactical errors are etched in stone." -- Erwin Rommel

"Expecting a carjacker, rapist, drug pusher or killer to care that his possession or use of a gun is unlawful is like expecting a terrorist to care that his car bomb is taking up two parking spaces." -- Ken Maurer

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

"I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty." -- President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

"The world does not owe you a living. The world does not owe you anything. It was here first " -- Mark Twain.

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." -- John Adams

"[T]he people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." -- Samuel Adams

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

"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be..." -- John Adams

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." -- James Madison

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. ... We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" -- George Orwell, "1984"

"You can ignore reality. What you cannot ignore are the consequences of ignoring reality." -- Ayn Rand

"To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence." -- James Madison

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." -- Samuel Adams

"[W]ith respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age..." -- Thomas Jefferson

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? ... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." -- Patrick Henry

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." -- James Madison

"How did it happen? How did our national government grow from a servant with sharply limited powers into a master with virtually unlimited power? In part, we were swindled. There are occasions when we have elevated men and political parties to power that promised to restore limited government and then proceeded, after their election, to expand the activities of government. But let us be honest with ourselves. Broken promises are not the major causes of our trouble. Kept promises are. All too often we have put men in office who have suggested spending a little more on this, a little more on that, who have proposed a new welfare program, who have thought of another variety of 'security.' We have taken the bait, preferring to put off to another day the recapture of freedom and the restoration of our constitutional system." -- U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)

"Can you then consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution, and retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity, which has hitherto been spent in honor? If you can -- GO -- and carry with you the jest of Tories and scorn of Whigs -- the ridicule, and what is worse, the pity of the world. Go, starve, and be forgotten!" -- George Washington

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." -- Thomas Jefferson

"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

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." -- John Marshall

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." -- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'present' or 'not guilty.'" -- President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

"There is good news from Washington today. The Congress is deadlocked and can't act." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." -- James Madison

"[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." -- James Madison

"Fear is the foundation of most governments." -- John Adams

"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant." -- American teacher, writer and philosopher Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)

"Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action." -- German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1834)

"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich." -- American author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." -- Thomas Jefferson

"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?" -- James Madison

"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." -- George Washington

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson

"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." -- Thomas Jefferson

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

"It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." -- Thomas Jefferson

"No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer or quicker." -- President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- British publisher and writer Ernest Benn (1875-1954)

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office." -- American journalist H. L. Mencken (1880-1856)

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." -- Thomas Jefferson

"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted." -- Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, December, 1791

"Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve." -- Benjamin Franklin

"Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." -- James Madison

"The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." -- French economist, statesman and author Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

"He who does not bellow out the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers." -- French poet, essayist and editor Charles Peguy (1873-1914)

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, 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

"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

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy." -- Samuel Adams

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 51

"As on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so on the other, it is equally evident that to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established." -- Alexander Hamilton

"[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

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." -- author Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded." -- French political philosopher C. L. De Montesquieu (1689-1755)

"The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum." -- English cleric and writer Charles Colton (1780-1832)

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

"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... A murderer is less to fear." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

2010-4