Sayings
Issue #111 Posted Jan. 2018
"Blessed be the LORD, my Rock, Who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle." -- Ps 144:1
"If someone tells you the Constitution is a living document, they're trying to kill it." -- Lyman L
"Overall, history is not bending toward happy acceptance of ever larger government at home, nor is it moving toward submersion of national powers and identities into large and inherently undemocratic international organizations. The nation-state remains the focus of most people’s loyalties, and in a time of economic and cultural diffusion ... big-government policies designed for an age of centralization have become increasingly dysfunctional." -- Michael Barone
"That nation is surest to live in peace, that is most capable of making war; and a man with a sword always by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it." -- John Trenchard
"Sometimes you don’t go to the jungle, the Jungle comes to you" -- Walt H.
"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society." -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." -- Patrick Henry (1778)
"Liberals so desperately want us disarmed because they hate that we hold a veto over their Venezuelan dreams. But they also want us disarmed because they hate us, and they yearn to break us and humiliate us and make us give in. When you own a weapon and can defend yourself and your rights, you are a citizen. When you do not, you are a subject. Your dignity gnaws at them." -- Kurt Schlichter 2017
"Everyday, you pass complete strangers, in 3000 pound speeding hunks of steel and aluminum, with little more than 2 yellow lines of paint separating you from instant, violent death but someone carrying a gun on their hip in a grocery store is what makes you nervous?" -- Tom L.
"The problem is that we have created a system where everybody is a criminal. I read a pretty good analysis ~10 years ago that suggested the average American commits 2 felonies a day - without even knowing about it. My personal opinion is that we have FAR to many laws and FAR to many "law enforcement". I think we need MUCH less of both and perhaps more "peace enforcement." -- Barry N.
"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- Frank Outlaw
"Good laws being carried out by good men results in justice. Whenever we are lacking in either category - justice suffers." -- Unknown.
"If the government is going to make of you a criminal, be the best one you can be." -- Tom L.
"You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large." -- Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, at 401-402 (1859)
"Newspaper editors separate the wheat from the chaff -- and print the chaff." -- Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965)
"As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it" -- Job 4:8).
"It is ... reality, not an expression of misogyny, that men see the objects of their sexual desire as sexual objects. But this is too painful for feminists and other leftists. And it violates feminist theory, which says that men and women are essentially the same, and seeing a woman as a sexual object is misogyny. Therefore, this reality is rejected." -- Dennis Prager
"Wisdom is knowing what you don't know, which for all of us, especially the so-called experts, is a lot. This Christmas is a good time to remember that the only person who was ever flawless was hung from a cross." -- Stephen Moore
"We become like that which we love. If we love what is base, we become base; but if we love what is noble, we become noble, and Far better it is for you to say: ‘I am a sinner,’ than to say: ‘I have no need of religion.’ The empty can be filled, but the self-intoxicated have no room for God." -- Bishop Fulton Sheen
"A tyrant ... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." -- Plato (429-347 BC)
"Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- â€" your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness." -- George Washington (1789)
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." -- Bill of Rights (1791)
"How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments." -- Benjamin Franklin (1743)
"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."-- Theodore Dalrymple
"[W]hen 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)
"We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary." -- Fisher Ames (1807)
" Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it's coming from as it moves swiftly towards you." -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." -- James Madison (1822)
"The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the high powers" delegated directly to the citizen, and 'is excepted out of the general powers of government.' A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power." -- [Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, at 401-402 (1859)
"The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man -- every man is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, not a sacrificial animal serving anyone's need." -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." -- Thomas Jefferson (1785)
"The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power." -- Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945)
"The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon ... has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right." -- James Madison (1789)
"To prevent crimes, is the noblest end and aim of criminal jurisprudence. To punish them, is one of the means necessary for the accomplishment of this noble end and aim." -- James Wilson (1790)
"The 'mentally ill' will always be with us. Some are dangerous. Some even get elected to political office. That’s why we have guns!" -- Ano
"States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct." —Alexander Hamilton (1790)
"Our unalterable resolution would be to be free. They have attempted to subdue us by force, but God be praised! in vain. Their arts may be more dangerous than their arms. Let us then renounce all treaty with them upon any score but that of total separation, and under God trust our cause to our swords." —Samuel Adams (1776)
Insight: "It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." —Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape — that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form?" —James Madison (1788)
"It does not require many words to speak the truth." —"Chief Joseph (1840-1904)
"Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence." —Alexander Hamilton (11793)
"To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice." —Confucius (551-479 BC)
"Idleness and pride Tax with a heavier Hand than Kings and Parliaments. If we can get rid of the former, we may easily bear the Latter." -- Benjamin Franklin (1765)
"We are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline." -- Ronald Reagan
"As the circle of knowledge expands, so does the Sphere of darkness that encompasses it." —Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation." —Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"It is the press which has corrupted our political morals — and it is to the press we must look for the means of our political regeneration." —Alexander Hamilton (1804)
"If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare." —WWilliam D. Arnot (1808–1875)
"Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society." —James Madisoon (1787)
"Government has an important role in helping develop a country's economic foundation. But the critical test is whether government is genuinely working to liberate individuals by creating incentives to work, save, invest, and succeed."-- Ronald Reagan
"Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing." -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"It is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known." —George Washington (1796)
"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy." —Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Their arts may be more dangerous than their arms. Let us then renounce all treaty with them upon any score but that of total separation, and under God trust our cause to our swords." —Samuel Adams (1776)
"It was not the tycoons of big business, it was not the working classes, it was the intellectuals who reversed the trend toward political freedom and revived the doctrines of the absolute State, of totalitarian government rule, of the government's right to control the lives of the citizens in any manner it pleases. This time, it was not in the name of the 'divine right of kings,' but in the name of the divine right of the masses. The basic principle was the same: the right to enforce at the point of a gun the moral doctrines of whoever happens to seize control of the machinery of government." —Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"[The president] is the dignified, but accountable magistrate of a free and great people. The tenure of his office, it is true, is not hereditary; nor is it for life: but still it is a tenure of the noblest kind: by being the man of the people, he is invested; by continuing to be the man of the people, his investiture will be voluntarily, and cheerfully, and honourably renewed." —James Wilson (1791)
"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." —Thomas Jefferson (1781)
"Destroy the family, you destroy the country." -- Vladiimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924)
"The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people." -- George Washington (1794)
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