Sayings
Issue #72 Posted July 4, 2011

"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

"My position is that if a politician doesn't trust me with a firearm, I don't trust him to hold office." -- Annon

"Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politically correct? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one what is right." -- Martin Luther King

"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens." -- George Mason

[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn

"You are the first responder to your emergency" -- unknown

"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views, and demand that they respect yours. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the Great Divide. Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect for all people, but grovel to no one. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food, and the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself " -- Tecumseh

"No fire was ever caused by a fire-drill. Preparedness does not encourage aggression, any more than fire-drills encourage fires!" -- Gen. George Patton

"Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge." (More often quoted as, "Never do anyone a small injury." ) -- Machiavelli's rule

"You do not have the right to an opinion. You do have the right to have an INFORMED opinion. No one has the right to be uninformed." -- Harlan Ellison

"If you done it, it ain't braggin." -- Dizzy Dean

"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again." -- A. Solzhenitsyn

"Wars are lost by "out-stupiding" your enemy." -- Isaac Asimov

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." -- James Madison

"The malice of the wicked is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous" -- Winston Churchill

Hofstatter's Rule: "Activities always take longer than you think, even after you have taken Hofstatter's rule into account."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H. L. Mencken

"The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing." -- British author and economist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

"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." -- American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein (1907-1988)

"The ultimate determinate in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas - a trial of spiritual resolve; the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideas to which we are dedicated." -- Ronald Reagan

"The less government we have the better -- the fewer laws and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual." -- American author Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"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

"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness." -- 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." -- Joseph Story

"It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement." -- French judge, writer, philosopher Estienne de la Boétie (1530-1563)

"Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men." -- economist Fredrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

"A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it." -- former senator Sam Erving (1896-1985)

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves." -- Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, July 6, 1775

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

"At the grave of a hero we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight.'' -- Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined." -- James Madison in Federalist No. 45

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of thehuman race." -- Calvin Coolidge

"One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one." -- James Madison

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." -- James Madison

"Fighting government intrusion into our lives is becoming increasingly difficult for at least two reasons. The first reason is that educators at the primary, secondary and university levels have been successful in teaching our youngsters to despise the values of our Constitution and the founders of our nation -- 'those dead, old, racist white men.' Their success in that arena might explain why educators have been unable to get our youngsters to read, write and compute on a level comparable with other developed nations; they are too busy proselytizing students. The second reason is we've become a nation of thieves, accustomed to living at the expense of one another and to accommodate that we're obliged to support tyrannical and overreaching government. Adolf Hitler had it right when he said, 'How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.'" -- economist Walter E. Williams

"The first step to understanding is to call things by their right names." -- Lao Tse, Founder of Taoism

"Though defensive force will always be a 'sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men." -- Augustine

"Modern leading men have the gravitas of a gnat." -- Stephen Hunter

"[R]eligion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society." -- John Adams

"If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership -- you are practicing followship." -- British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies." -- American comedian Groucho Marx

"To the distinguished Character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to add the more distinguished Character of Christian. The signal Instances of providential Goodness which we have experienced and which have now almost crowned our labours with complete Success, demand from us in a peculiar manner the warmest returns of Gratitude and Piety to the Supreme Author of all Good." -- George Washington

"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

"[T]he hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty--that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men." -- George Washington, General Orders, 1776

"I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air." -- Margaret Thatcher

"In a relationship with my government which was moving quickly from cordial and co-operative to oppressive and violent I would much rather start that transition finding that I already had my foot on the throat of the government than finding my throat already had the foot of the government upon it." -- 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

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they predictably create for themselves (1) a legal system that protects it, (2) a political party that enshrines it, and (3) a 'moral' code that justifies it." -- Frederic

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." -- Joseph Stalin

"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes -- rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments." -- Alexander Hamilton

"If congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." -- James Madison

"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

"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

"There's only two people I'd shoot someone for. One of 'em's me, and the other one ain't you." -- Nicolas Cage in "Con Air"

"Treat everyone with politeness, even those who are rude to you, not because they are nice but because you are." -- Author Unknown

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. 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

"Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy." -- Margaret Thatcher

2011-4