Body

Sayings
Issue #81 Posted January, 2013

"Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect people from maniacs and crime, but, in reality, it is bureaucrats protecting their own power and position... Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh no, they do not! What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock-step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in the hands of those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear!" -- Stanislav Mishin of Pravda

"Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings -- give us that precious jewel, and you may take every things else! Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel." -- Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Convention, 1788

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." -- Samuel Adams (1775)

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." -- Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1779

"I am committed to non-violence, so much so that I will cheerfully kill someone for imposing their violence on me." -- TB

"Today we need a nation of minute men; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom." -- John F. Kennedy, 1961

"Frome whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia ... could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men well will live forever or die by suicide." -- a presentation to The Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield IL, 27 January 1838 by Abraham Lincoln.

"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

"Criminals obey gun laws the way politicians obey their oath of office." -- Unk

My how things have changed. "As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them." -- Tench Coxe, An American Citizen, No. 2, 1787

"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

"We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lost that war, and in doing so lost this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. ... If we lost freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth." -- Ronald Reagan

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States." -- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." -- Herbert Spencer

"In these modern times, many are wounded for not having weapons, nor knowledge in their use." -- Achille Marozzo, Sword Master and author of The New Text on the Art of Arms, 1536AD

"We should never despair, our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new exertions and proportion our efforts to the exigency of the times." -- George Washington, letter to Philip Schuyler, 1777

"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." -- Congressman Ron Paul

"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government." -- Mercy Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805

"War is less costly than servitude. The choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." -- Jean Dutourd

"Once religion is reduced to nothing more than privatized conscience, the public square has only two actors in it; the State and the individual." -- Richard Neuhaus; The naked public square

"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Duane, 1811

"It is important to keep in mind that no tyrant, no matter how deranged or brutal, has ever lacked for a following. Some of them have caused quite a fuss." -- Bill Jeans

"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; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass." -- George Washington

"Anyone who has ever shown a desire to exercise political power over other adults has demonstrated his or her unfitness ever to be trusted with such power." -- Ken Maurer

"[T]o preserve ... independence, 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, 1816

"I've come to realize what a good test one's attitude towards guns is about whether someone's mind is liberty oriented. If one is okay with police having guns -- whoever is designated as having authority -- but panicked at the thought of their fellow man or themselves having guns, then that is someone who does not think like a free person. He places a magical aura around whoever is in charge and only thinks they can wield power. This will come up again in other areas, such as letting government make economic decisions but fearing individual people making those decisions themselves." -- columnist Frank J. Fleming

"It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law ... that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts." -- American journalist H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 4, 1777

"No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." -- George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head." -- Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary." -- author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously." - Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots." -- Albert Einstein

"We are often saved from evil by the ineptitude of evil people. Not reliably, but enough to make a substantial difference." -- Lyon's Law of Compensatory Incompetence

"No one is going to give you anything worth a damn. If you have anything of value, it's because you worked for it. You earned it. If you lose it, it's because you gave it away" -- Jeff Tappan

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families." -- John Adams

"It's kind of sad when the difference between being a World Power and being a laughingstock is a couple magazines of 5.56 mm." -- Jim Smith

"The only thing new under the sun is the history that you don't know." -- Harry Truman

"There is really not very much in this world I am willing to die for. On the other hand, the list of things that I am willing to kill for is getting longer by the day. If I happen to die in pursuit of a good cause, one that I would be willing to kill for, I can make my Peace with that." -- B. N.

"As a behavior modification technique, killing is unparalleled, and works with even the slowest of learners." -- Unknown

"A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot..." -- Robert A. Heinlein

"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. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves." -- Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775

"If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave." -- John Adams, Rights of the Colonists, 1772

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path." -- Ronald Reagan

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." -- Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

"Useless laws weaken necessary laws." -- Baron de Montesquieu Charles-Louis de Secondat (1689-1755)

"When you have personal integrity, nothing else matters. When you don't, nothing else matters!" -- Benjamin Franklin

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of." -- Confucius

"I don't know who started the idea that a President must be a politician, instead of a businessman. A politician can't run any other kind of business, so there is no reason why he can run the U.S. That's the biggest single business in the world." -- humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge William Johnson, 1823

"As we learned many years ago, happiness may never be pursued as an end to itself, because happiness is the by-product of accomplishment. That may be the reason why we see no element of happiness on the faces of people in the casinos of Las Vegas and Reno. Nobody has accomplished anything, and nobody is likely to. Hitting a jackpot may be fun, but you did nothing to achieve it, and it cannot bring you happiness." - Jeff Cooper

"If you cannot be both loved and feared then it is better to be feared than loved." -- Machiavelli

"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann

Pain, nor damage, don't end the world, or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back! -- Ian McShane as Al Swearengen in Deadwood

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

"Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence." -- Alexander Hamilton, Pacificus, No. 6, 1793

"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 more people chant about their freedom and how free they are, the more loudly I hear their chains rattling." - -English novelist George Orwell (1903-1950)

"Every nation has the government it deserves." -- Savoyard philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821)

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country." -- Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

"[T]he crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves." -- George Washington (1774)

"Among the many inspiring statements presented to the NRA membership at the national meeting at Reno, we note the following: "You cannot give up a right granted to you by God!" The rights originally enumerated in the Declaration of Independence were: life, liberty and property. There are others. (Clearly

happiness may not be pursued as an end in itself, because happiness is the byproduct of accomplishment.)" -- Jeff Cooper

"Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence." -- Ronald Reagan

"Self-respect, like happiness, is a by-product of accomplishment, and accomplishment is available to all in some line of endeavor. But accomplishment does not come without effort, and the person who gives up because the struggle is hard deserves neither achievement nor happiness. -- Jeff Cooper

"Since happiness is the byproduct of accomplishment, the search for excellence in both major and minor things is the key to happiness." -- Jeff Cooper

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