Sayings
Issue #70 Posted March 1, 2011

"Everybody is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"It is discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit." -- British playwright Noel Coward (1899-1973)

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Envy is the route of all evil." -- Jeff Cooper

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." -- Cicero - 55 BC (We sure haven’t learned anything in 2066 years, have we?)

"Rise and rise again, until the lambs bebcome wolves." -- Inscription on the sword of Robert of Loxley from the 2010 movie, Robin Hood

"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." -- William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)

"You're not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant." -- Harlan Ellison

"The modern definition of a racist: someone who is winning an argument with a liberal." -- Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation (1996)

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." -- George Orwell

"Could we put Congress on a one-law-per-month limitation? If it saves just one trillion, it’s worth it." -- Glenn Reynolds

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." -- economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

"Eloquence may exist without a proportionate degree of wisdom." -- author Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"Even America's bitterest enemies understand why we mark July 4th with parades, speeches and fireworks: to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We're proud of our nation, and justifiably so. So why do we virtually ignore September 17th? That's the date, in 1787, when our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution. ... Yet today, on many issues, this vital document is frequently ignored, even undermined, by some of the very people who have taken a public oath to uphold it." -- Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner

"While America's liberal elite have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision and, as such, differ only in degree but not kind. Both denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are for control and coercion by the state. They believe they have superior wisdom to the masses and they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. They, like any other tyrant, have what they see as good reasons for restricting the freedom of others." -- economist Walter E. Williams

"Why has the left directed so much time and effort into demonizing ordinary Americans? Because the Tea Party's three primary planks -- limited government, fiscal responsibility and Constitutional fealty -- represent the greatest threat to liberalism since its flowering in the 1960s. A smaller, fiscally responsible government dedicated to a Constitution expressly designed to limit the power of the state is the death knell for those dedicated to the idea their worldview must be imposed on Americans by an ever-expanding state. The left's worst nightmare is an America comprised of largely self-sufficient, clear-thinking individuals left to their own devices." -- columnist Arnold Ahlert

"Fathom the odd hypocrisy that the government wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but people don't have to prove they are citizens." -- Ben Stein

"The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception." -- economist Fredrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." -- Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954)

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." -- James Madison

"A man cannot have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained." -- Joseph Story

"Authority does not equal responsibility any more than rank equals responsibility." -- Unknown

"It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object." -- James Madison

"In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself." -- Benjamin Franklin

"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

"We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts.... Self-government means self-reliance." -- President Calvin Coolidge (1873-1933)

"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 writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." -- The Signers

May your preparation be adequate to you opportunities (Chinese form of "good luck"),

"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

"[T]here is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust." -- James Madison

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

"[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them." -- Candidus

"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy." -- Benjamin Franklin

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." -- George Washington

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." -- George Washington

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves." -- Thomas Jefferson

[I]f the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted." --Noah Webster

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

"Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions. The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the tyranny mediated against them." -- George Washington

"If we buy from other countries, we get the goods and they get the gold. If we buy from ourselves, we get the goods and the gold." -- attributed to Abraham Lincoln

"...I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." -- John Wayne in The Shootist

"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding." -- Jeff Snyder, author, American Handgunner, Second Amendment Foundation Officer

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert Heinlein

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." -- Ayn Rand

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." -- Sun Tzu (6th century B.C. Chinese general) in "The Art of War"

There is no left or right. There's only an up or down: up to the ultimate in individual freedom, consistent with an orderly society - or down to the totalitarianism of the ant heap. And those today who, however good their intentions, tell us that we should trade freedom for security are on that downward path." -- Ronald Reagan

"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt." -- George Washington

"Be what you are and say what you feel... Because those that matter don’t mind and those that mind don’t matter." -- Maxine

2011-2