"The world does not owe you a living. The world owes you NOTHING. It was here first." -- Mark Twain
"When I joined the military it was illegal to be homosexual, then it became optional. I'm getting out before Obama makes it mandatory." -- GySgt Harry Berres, USMC
"It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to." -- W. C. Fields
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research." -- Albert Einstein
"If we want to keep our nation's secrets safe, just store them where President Obama keeps his birth certificate and college transcripts." -- Mike Huckabee
"If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it." --James Madison, Federalist No. 57, 1788 [It seems that Mr. Madison grossly overestimated the spirit of the average American citizen to care about his own freedom.]
"Frankly, I don't know what it is about California , but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine , even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington , we're number one. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The three of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words." -- Burt Prelutsky, LA Times
"A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country." -- James Madison
"What’s in a name? The modern definition of Nazi: anyone winning an argument with a liberal."
"Criminals are why you buy a handgun. Socialists are why you buy a battle rifle." -- Unknown
"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." -- George Washington
"Agents of the state are not your friends and should never be trusted to do the correct thing. They will never have your best interests or rights as their priority. They exist soley to enforce the states will upon you, at your expense." -- unknown commentator
"[Those] who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others." -- economist Walter E. Williams
"The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone. ... The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition." -- James Madison
The militia comprehends the whole people. By virtue of the laws of the country, every male inhabitant between sixteen and sixty years of age, is enrolled in a company, and a regiment of militia completely organized with all its officers. He is enjoined to keep always in his house, and at his own expense, a firelock in good order, a powder horn, a pound of powder, twelve flints, four-and twenty balls of lead, a cartridge box, and a knapsack; so that the whole country is ready to march to its own defense upon the first signal of alarm. These companies and regiments are obliged to assemble at certain times in every year, under the orders of their officers, for the inspection of their arms and ammunition, and to perform their exercises and maneuvers. Behold, sir, a little sketch of the four principal sources of that prudence in council and that military valor and ability, which have produced the American Revolution, and which I hope will he sacredly preserved as the foundations of the liberty, happiness, and prosperity of the people. If there are any other particulars, concerning which I can give you any information, be so good as to point them out." -- John Adams, in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States,1782, p 316-317
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary...." --Thomas Jefferson
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them." -- Frederick Douglass
"When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 48
"A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." -- former England Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please." -- American lawyer and patriot James Otis (1725-1783)
"The house of representatives ... can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny." -- James Madison
"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. ... [I]t is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -- and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!" -- Patrick Henry
"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)
"For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat." -- Thessalonians 3:10 (So much for socialism.)
"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)
"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
"Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America." -- Joseph Warren
"Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable." -- Roman philosopher Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
"A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts." -- banking executive and author Herbert Victor Prochnow (1897-1998)
"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them." -- Thomas Jefferson
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy." --British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Those who have been intoxicated with power ... can never willingly abandon it." -- British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens." -- Joseph Story
"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." -- George Washington
"No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance." -- British historian Alan Bullock (1914-2004)
"Conservatives were brought up to hate deficits, and justifiably so. We've long thought there are two things in Washington that are unbalanced -- the budget and the liberals." -- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
"A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts." -- James Madison
"[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
"Shoot until they change shape or catch fire" -- M.G. Allen Youngman
"I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one." -- Alexander Hamilton
"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived." -- Italian statesman and political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
"The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase." -- Russian writer Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi (1828-1910)
"For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work." -- 2 Thessalonians 3:10-11
"Coolidge is the first president to discover that what the American people want is to be left alone." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"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 essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." -- James Madison
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic." -- Justice Joseph Story
2011-1