Being a student of history Fr. Frog has collected many wise and witty sayings from both the famous and infamous of our past and present. These words of wisdom deal with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the field of weaponcraft. All are applicable to modern life, and all are guaranteed to be politically incorrect. There may be occasional duplicates from past issues since I don't have the time to check.
Note: I have not tried to verify any of the quotes as to authenticity, but even if they are not authentic the sentiments stated therein are genuine.
I will try to update this section on a regular (well OK, so it's irregular) basis. Hopefully they'll appear January, March, May, July, September, and November, but lately I have fallen way behind. Hopefully things will be more consistent. but I may just go to "a couple of times a year."
If you have some gems of wisdom that you think should be included in the big list you can email them to Fr. Frog by clicking here. All submissions will be gladly accepted but your only reward will be in helping to raise the educational level of those who browse here. I hope you enjoy and profit from them.
Stout heart and good cheer!
Fr. Frog
Sayings
#134
"The naive don't want to hear truth, because they can't endure seeing their delusional phantasies demolished" -- Nietzsche
"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." — H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"A warrior knows he could die in battle. He just doesn’t expect the arrow to come from his own government." — Terry Solomon
"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do." — Robert A. Heinlein
"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 A. Heinlein
"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once." — - Robert A. Heinlein
What do automobiles, guns, and home-schooling all have in common that makes the liberals hate them? All these things reduce individual dependence on the government and on the grandiose schemes for other people's lives created by liberals and imposed by government." —Thomas Sowell
"I see dead stupid people. Well technically they’re not dead, but give me a couple of minutes."— Unknown
"I’m not suggesting that we kill all the stupid people. I’m just saying let’s remove all the warning labels and let the problem sort itself out."— Unknown
"A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government." —Alexander Hamilton (1788)
"While The People are virtuous, they cannot be subdued. But, once they lose their virtue, then they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."— Samuel Adams
Fellow Patriots, on this day (March 4) in 1789, the U.S. Constitution took effect as the first session of the new Congress opened in New York City. Today, Congress, the president, and the courts prefer to simply ignore the Constitution and do whatever they want. —Mark Alexander
"It is frightful that people who are so ignorant, have so much power to influence"— George Orwell
"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."— Toms Paine
"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution."— Thomas Jefferson
"Sometimes you just have to let karma fix it, because if you fix it you’ll probably go to jail."— Unknown wise man
"There’s no time left to wake up the sheep. It’s time to wake up the rest of the lions."— Terry Solomon
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."— Issac Asimov
"Some people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want to have their illusions destroyed." Frederich Nietzsche
"There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right." —Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
"Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community." —"Benjamin Rush (1788)
"Schools are quick to blame everyone and everything but themselves for the failures of American education. To them, every bad teacher is the exception and every bad parent is the rule."— Thomas Sowell
"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction." —John Witherspooon (1776)
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." —Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)
"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech." —Benjamin Franklin (1722)
"Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself." —Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
"The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world." —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." —James Madison (1788)
"All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow." —H. L. Mencken (1880-19956)
"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)
"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable." —"George Washington (1793)
"The man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also." —Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"I think the problem with modern journalism is there might be some downsides to having the absolute worst people in society determine what everyone needs to know." —Frank J. Fleming
"The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms." —Henri Amiel (1821-1881)
"Race, ethnicity, religion, or region never counted for much; what mattered was what they had behind their belt buckles and between their ears. Did they have the guts and the brains to be Infantrymen and Rangers?" —Col. Ralph Puckett, Medal of Honor recipient
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." —John Adams (1770))
"By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion." —Lord Acton (1834-1902)
"The federal government's medical establishment releasing guidance failing at the most basic level of academic rigor shows that this was never about health care. It was about injecting political ideology into the health of our children. Children experiencing gender dysphoria should be supported by family and seek counseling, not pushed into an irreversible decision before they reach 18." —Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo
"Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind." —James Wilson (1791)
"There's never been a tougher time to be a cop than right now. After years of lopsided media portrayals and misguided attempts to defund law enforcement, many Americans have formed a wildly inaccurate view of the 800,000 good cops out there who will never wind up in the headlines for disrespecting their uniform or abusing their badge. As a result, we're not only seeing a devastating rise in crime all over the country, we're seeing unprecedented attacks on cops. ... There's a line between civilization and anarchy. It's thin, and it's blue." —"Mike Rowe
"Equal laws protecting equal rights; the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country." —James Madison (1820)
"Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message." —Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)
"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 (1833)
"Protection ... against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them." —John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
"The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men."— Alexander Hamilton (1787)
"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."— Voltaire (1694-1778)
"If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" —John Adams (1775)
"From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step." —Friedrich August von Hayyek (1899-1992)
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." —The Declaration of Independence
"Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit." —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
"The foundation on which all [constitutions] are built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every preeminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a preeminence by birth." —Thomas Jefferson (1784)
"The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression." —Earl Warren (1891-1974)
"To render us again one people acting as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot." —Thomas Jefferson (1801)
"No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed." —Helen Keller (1880-1968)
"The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defense of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day."— Joseph Story (1833)
"To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily deprives others of the right to listen to those views." —C. Van Woodward (1908-1999)
"[Judges'] minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men." —John Adams (1776)
"One of the most pathetic — and dangerous — signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason." —Thomas Sowell
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." —Alexander Hamilton (1775)
"It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies." —Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980)
"Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole." —Thomas Sowell
"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck." —Thomas Jefferson (1822)
"What is wrong with our civilization can be said with one word — unreality. We are in no danger either from the vices or the virtues of vikings; we are in danger of forgetting all facts, good and bad, in a haze of high-minded phraseology." —G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
"The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of its political cares." —Alexander Hamilton (1787)
"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers." —Aldous Huxley (18944-1963)
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." —Thomas Jefferson (1816)
"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent." —Gore Vidal (1925-2012)
"The more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew, dismantling civilization bit by bit — replacing what works with what sounds good." —Thomas Sowell
"The propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." —George Washington (17889)
"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." —Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism." —Alexander Hamilton (1775)
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." —James Madison (1787)
"The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine the animadvert upon all political institutions is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact, to their existence, that without it we must fall into despotism and anarchy." —William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
"On issue after issue, the morally self-anointed visionaries have for centuries argued as if no honest disagreement were possible, as if those who opposed them were not merely in error but in sin." —Thomas Sowell
"The real president is whoever controls the teleprompter. The path to power is the path to the teleprompter. I do feel like if somebody were to accidentally lean on the teleprompter, it's going to be like 'Anchorman.'" —Elon Musk
"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech." —Benjamin Franklin (1722)
"[Tyranny is] to compel men not to think as they do, to compel men to express thoughts that are not their own."— Milovan Djilas (1911-1995)
"The jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." —George Washington (1796)
"Every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered... History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." —George Orwell (1903-1950)
"It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions."— Thomas Jefferson (1808)
"Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure." —William Earnest Hocking (1873-1966)
"When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failures or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves." —Thomas Sowell
"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." —George Washington (1788)
"Truth and news are not the same thing."— Katharine Graham (1917-2001)
"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." —Samuel Adams (1749)
"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom." —A. Whitney Griswold (1909-1963)
"Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?" —Thomas Sowell
"In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." —George Washington (1796)
"There is nothing so unruly, so insubordinate and disobedient, as a fallen human heart. It is deep, ethereal, and irrepressible; the subtle poison of sin has vitiated all its fountains, and many of the streams it has been sending forth since the Fall, have been deep and black as hell. Human power cannot touch it, law cannot reach it, force only increases its activity, and the grace of the gospel alone can subdue it to the scepter of Christ. Warriors and kings may subjugate nations and empires, but the Lord alone can rule the heart." —Irish minister William Graham (1810-1883)
"Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." -- Robert A Heinlein
"The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side." —German novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
2024-04-19 @ 1830 -#134
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