Sayings
Issue #67 Posted September, 2010

"Doubtless things might become uncomfortable enough to arouse them (the American public), but, given opportunity for personal favors, and not too irksome control, they are content to abdicate their sovereignty and be fleeced, and eventually slaughtered, if only the shepherds will agree to shear them in their sleep." -- Judge Learned Hand

"Just because they have the right to, doesn't mean it's right to do." -- unknown

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." -- John Adams

"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government." --author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

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

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly." -- George Washington

" Sometimes we lose sight of the forest because we're preoccupied with the pine needles." -- Tod Windsor

"Chance favors the prepared mind." -- Louis Pasteur

"Posterity ­ you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it." ­- John Quincy Adams

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy." -- John Marshall

A nation preserved with liberty trampled underfoot is much worse than a nation in fragments but with the spirit of liberty still alive. Southerners persistently claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of government." -- Private John H. Haley, 17th Maine Regiment, USA

"If the right of secession be denied...and the denial enforced by the sword of coercion; the nature of the polity is changed, and freedom is at its end. It is no longer a government by consent, but a government of force. Conquest is substituted compact, and the dream of liberty is over." -- Albert Taylor Bledsoe, from Is Davis a Traitor?

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." -- John Quincy Adams

"It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions." -- Samuel 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." -- economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)

"The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State." -- economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995)

"I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden." -- British colonel Richard Rumbold (1622-1685)

"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison

"The Constitution is not an instrument for government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government, lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." -- Patrick Henry, American Patriot

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." -- George Washington

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison

"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." -- John Adams

"The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." -- Greek historian Plutarch (c. 46-120 A.D.)

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." -- physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country." -- American author Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"I guess truth can hurt you worse in an election than about anything that can happen to you." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

" Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it binds the universe together."

"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams

"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

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual -- or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country." -- Samuel Adams

"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

"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

"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 S. Patton

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

"It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country ... in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives -- the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for their country, for us. All we can do is remember." -- Ronald Reagan

"The malice of the wicked is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous" -- British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." -- Irish novelist C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

"If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave." -- author John "Birdman" Bryant (1943-2009)

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -- American author Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"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 siren, till she transforms us into beasts. ... 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

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." -- James Madison

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

"Let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt." -- unknown

"It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson

"A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." -- Greek playwright Euripides (485-406 B.C.)

"The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds." -- British journalist Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

"The bigger the government, the less I do for myself, for my family and for my community. That is why we Americans give more charity and devote more time to volunteering than Europeans do. The European knows: The government, the state, will take care of me, my children, my parents, my neighbors and my community. I don't have to do anything. The bigger question in many Europeans' lives is, 'How much vacation time will I have and where will I spend that vacation?' That is what happens when the state gets bigger -- you become smaller." -- radio talk-show host Dennis Prager

"Many people ask me whether the Democrats are in as much trouble as they were in 1994. The numbers suggest they are in much deeper trouble, at least at this moment." -- political analyst Michael Barone

"Americans are not victims who need handouts. Americans need the freedom to flourish. And until our president realizes this, he, and America, will lose out." -- National Review editor Kathryn Lopez

"We must present a clear choice: stay the course of progressive liberalism, which moves away from popular consent, the rule of law, and constitutional government, and toward a failed, undemocratic, and illiberal form of statism; or correct course in an effort to restore the conditions of liberty and renew the bedrock principles and constitutional wisdom that are the roots of America's continuing greatness." -- Heritage Foundation scholar Matthew Spalding

"America's future is clear: Unless we start cutting spending and take control of entitlement programs, our children will go broke making good on our promises. ... The government can never spend its way out of recession. It can only get out of the way, through lower tax rates and less costly regulation, and allow private business to grow again." -- columnist Rich Tucker

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Virtue is harder to be got than a knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered." -- English philosopher and political theorist John Locke (1632-1704)

"Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of 'em play, either back home in their native state or after they've been captured and sent to a zoo - or Washington." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish." -- French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

"People unfit for freedom -- who cannot do much with it -- are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a 'have' type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a 'have not' type of self." -- writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

"The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians." -- British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

"The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish." -- French economist Frederic Bastiat

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." -- author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." -- British statesman and political thinker Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing." -- German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." -- James Madison

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