Sayings
Issue #73 Posted September 1, 2011
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -- Tacitus
"If you believe that your government can provide all that you need, then believe that that same government can take away all that you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
"At least once, everyone should have to run for his life, so he will know that eggs don't come from stores, that safety does not come from police, and that 'news' is not something that happens to other people." -- Robert Heinlein
"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life. Music and cats." -- Albert schweitzer
"We should not ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity." -- Napoleon
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You are the first responder to your emergency" -- Unknown"Life is just as deadly as it looks. Fiction is more forgiving."
"Lavrenti Beria, the head of Joseph Stalin's KGB, once quipped to his boss, "show me the man and I will find the crime." The Soviet Union was notorious for having accordion-like criminal laws that could be adjusted to fit almost any dissident target. The U.S. is a far cry from the Soviet Union, but our laws are dangerously overbroad. --- Alan Dershowitz"
"We carried our weapons with us at all times, even when we went for water" -- Nehemiah, Chapter 4, Verse 23b
"The telegraph is like a very long cat; you pull the tail in New York and it meows in Los Angeles. Radio operates the same way, but without a cat." -- Albert Einstein
"Inside of every liberal is a tyrant trying to take over by force." -- "TB"
"My two favorite rules for concealed carry work splendidly again: 1) Keep your damned mouth shut; 2) If you don't have a metal detector, I don't have a gun." -- Annon
"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, 'What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.'" -- St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), in "The City of God"
"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount... The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." -- General Omar Bradley, November 11, 1948:
"It's so adorable when people who wouldn't know a high-capacity magazine from Vanity Fair start telling gun owners what they should want and need." -- Ann Coulter
"One thing I won't tolerate in a man is rude behavior." -- Woodrow F. Call
"No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution." -- Joseph Story
"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit...it's the only way to be sure." -- Ripley - Aliens (1986)
"As we travel through life one rule will become evident: No good deed goes unpunished. This will prove to be true more times than not. Note that happiness comes from within one’s self." -- Unk
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Any good plan should look like nonsense to those facing off against it." -- Unknown
"Anytime I find myself in the cellar of despair I just look for the wine racks." -- Unknown
"It is difficult to explain to a culture rapidly forgetting its foundation why that foundation matters. While churches and schools have left instruction in Western Civilization behind, the recipients of its strong underpinnings float aimlessly trying to redefine the definite and ignore the irrefutable. And here it is: Western Civilization in general and America in particular was built on Judeo-Christian values. Those values shaped every area of life from government to finance to family. They brought order to all three. Government was no longer top-down, but of the people. People were free to 'pursue happiness' in part by choosing their own work. Judeo-Christian teaching taught them to work hard, make and keep contracts, treat employees fairly, pay an honest day's wage, and keep their word. Prosperity followed from those foundational principles." -- President of Culture Campaign Sandy Rios
"No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income." -- Ronald Reagan
"East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other." -- Ronald Reagan
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are." - Ayn Rand
"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte
"That which can't be adequately explained by stupidity may be assumed to be evil." -- Tim Burke
"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." -- JFK
"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable." -- George Washington
"It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government." -- former AFL-CIO President George Meany (1894-1980)
"History comes and history goes, but principles endure, and ensure future generations will defend liberty not as a gift from government but as a blessing from our Creator." -- President Reagan
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy. ... I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." -- Thomas Jefferson
"If you are not shooting you should be reloading. If you are not shooting or reloading you should be moving (actually I think you should be moving *and* reloading!). And if you are not shooting, moving or reloading then someone is going to cut your head off and stick it on a pike!" -- Clint Smith
"Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reenactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free. ... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. ... The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife." -- Thomas Jefferson
"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
"You can also get interesting looks from political candidates by asking which part of government, given that government is a necessary evil, they plan to be: the necessary part or the evil part?" -- Unknown
"There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors... I mean it." -- Margaret Thatcher
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius
"Nothing is so terrifying as ignorance in action." -- Goethe
"War is less costly than servitude. The choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." -- Jean Dutourd
"Violence, naked force has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms." - Robert Heinlein
"Scientists can tell you just to the minute when something is going to happy 10 million miles away and none of them has ever been smart enough to tell you what day to put on your heavy underwear." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"Let therefore every man, that, appealing to his own heart, feels the least spark of virtue or freedom there, think that it is an honor which he owes himself, and a duty which he owes his country, to bear arms." -- British colonial statesman Thomas Pownhall (1722-1805)
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful, and murder respectable and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell
"In planning, forming, and arranging laws, deliberation is always becoming, and always useful." -- James Wilson
"If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
"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
"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals--that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government--that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the Government." -- Ayn Rand
"When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Have you something to do to-morrow; do it to-day." -- Benjamin Franklin
"The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." -- American statesman and senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." -- French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987)
"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." -- English philosopher Roger Bacon (1220-1292)
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