FAVORITE QUOTES
Quotes have been separated into the categories of: Economics, Government, War and Peace, Success, Education and, Miscellaneous.
Five persons have their own quote page:
The Best of Ronald Reagan
The Best of Mark Twain
The Best of Benjamin Franklin
The Best of Donald Rumsfeld
The Best of Janice Rogers Brown
Economics
Friedrich A. Hayek
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Matthew
17:25-26
……and Jesus said, What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take custom or
taxes? From their sons, or from strangers?
Peter said to Him, from strangers. Jesus said to him, Then truly the
sons are free.
Dave Barry
See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.
Megan McArdle
I am more interested in making the poor and middle class better off than I am in making the income distribution more equal.
Ayn Rand
Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
George Washington (First inaugural address, 30 April 30 1789)
No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States.
Milton Friedman
It is a mystery to me why... it is regarded as a sign of Japanese strength and American weakness
that the Japanese find it more attractive to invest in the U.S. than Japan. Surely it is precisely
the reverse - a sign of U.S. strength and Japanese weakness.
Alan Greenspan
It turned out that with greater
freedom to fire, the risks of hiring declined.
Jane Jacobs
Poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes... Poverty can be overcome only if the relevant
economic processes are in motion.
Nathan
Rosenberg
The
perception of poverty as morally intolerable in a rich society had to await the emergence of a rich
society.
Ronald
Reagan
A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his
face and went as a liberal economist.
Ronald
Reagan
We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar
debt because we spend too much.
Adam Smith
It
is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch
over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and
without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.
Ronald
Reagan
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short
phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald
Reagan
Economists are people who see something that works in practice and wonder if it would work in
theory.
George Gilder
The belief that all wealth comes from stealing is popular in prisons and at Harvard.
Harry Browne
If government had taken over the auto industry in 1920, today we'd all be driving Model-T cars -- and saying, 'If it weren't for the government, we'd have no cars at all.'
P.J. O'Rouke
The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk."
Ronald Reagan
Believe me, you cannot create a desert, hand a person a cup of water, and call that
compassion. You cannot pour billions of dollars into make-work jobs while destroying the economy
that supports them and call that opportunity. And you cannot build up years of dependence on
government and dare call that hope.
Robert R. Wason
Progress
in America has resulted from the freedom of the individual to venture for himself and to assure the
gains and take all the losses as they come.
Ayn Rand
America's
abundance was not created by public sacrifices to "the common good," but by the productive
genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private
fortunes.
Headline
of a Jan. 14, 1987 New York
Times Editorial
The Right Minimum Wage:
$0.00.
P.J. O'Rourke
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
Ambrose Bierce
TARIFF,
n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his
consumer.
Adam Smith
As
soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and
each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the
totalitarian state.
Ronald Reagan
The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.
Mark Twain
Over
here [Europe] the Government runs everything - so everything's slow; slow and ill-managed. But with
us, everything's done by private enterprise, and there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on
it.
Aldadoc
When was the last time any of you were hired by a poor man?
Ayn Rand
I
am rich and proud of every penny I own. I made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and
through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with — the voluntary consent of those who
employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary
consent of those who buy my product. I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me
openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to
sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at
a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to
whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I
refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to
support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and do it well. I refuse to
accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people — the fact that my work
is of greater value than the work of my neighbours and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse
to apologize for my ability — I refuse to apologize for my success — I refuse to apologize for
my money.
Milton Friedman
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.
Government
John Stuart Mill
[A] State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.
William Pitt, the Elder (speech to the British Parliament describing a basic American
principle [every man a king] that would become ingrained in our Constitution)
The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its
roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter, the rain may enter -- but the
King of England cannot enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined
tenement!
Barry
Goldwater
Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as
good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me
remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.
H L Mencken
The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule.
George
Washington
Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Thomas Jefferson
He who governs least, governs best.
Thomas Jefferson
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take
everything you have.
Thomas Paine
Society
in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in
its worst state an intolerable one.
Henry Louis Mencken
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.
Thomas Jefferson
Let the general
government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of
all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they
are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple
organization, & a very unexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.
Thomas Jefferson
When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
Mark Twain
The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens
is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to
obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of
thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of
the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked,
to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of
humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to
paradise.
Ronald
Reagan
Man is not free unless government is
limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics:
As government expands, liberty contracts.
Barry Goldwater
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is in liberty, and in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
James Madison
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.
James Madison
The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.
Franklin Pierce
I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity.
Grover Cleveland
I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds. ... I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and the duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit... The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.
1st Edict passed by the Billings County (South Dakota Terr) Council April 12th
1886
[Promising] ..to hang, burn, or drown any man that will ask for public improvements at the
expense of the County.
Robert Houghwout Jackson, Associate Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court
It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from
falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into
error.
Ronald
Reagan
Almost all the world's Constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what
their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which "We the people" tell the
government what it is allowed to do. "We the people" are free.
CA
Justice Janice
Rogers Brown
Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society
disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under
siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the
rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The
result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue
contemptible.
CA
Justice Janice
Rogers Brown
We no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not
just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate. The drug of choice for multinational corporations
and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior
citizens.
CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown
The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable. Indeed, the majority's zeal is more than a little endearing. There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court.
CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown
Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.
Ronald
Reagan
Today we are told we must choose between a left and right or, as others suggest, a third
alternative, a kind of safe middle ground. I suggest to
you there is no left or right, only an up or down. Up
to the maximum of individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of
totalitarianism; and regardless of their humanitarian purpose those who would sacrifice freedom for
security have, whether they know it or not, chosen this downward path.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
James Madison
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
James Madison
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
P.J. O'Rouke
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
Thomas Jefferson
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
P.J.
O'Rouke
Government seems to operate on the principle that if even one individual is incapable of using his freedom competently, no one can be allowed to be free.
Charles Austin Beard
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.
Charles Murray
The most troubling aspect of social policy toward the poor in late twentieth-century America
is not how much it costs, but what it has bought.
Ronald
Reagan
Government
does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
Ronald
Reagan
Government
is not the solution. Government is the problem.
Leo Tolstoy
The more that is given the less people will work for themselves, and the less they
work the more their poverty is increased.
Ronald
Reagan
The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or
charitable concern.
Ronald
Reagan
Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.
Theodore
Roosevelt
It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off
that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than
in his own industry, honesty, and intelligence.
Benjamin Franklin
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think
the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving
them out of it.
Theordore
Roosevelt
[The New York Anti-Poverty Society is about as] ..effective as an anti-gravity society.
Ayn Rand
They
proclaim that every man is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary
notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his "minimum sustenance" — his food, his
clothes, his shelter with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it —
from whom?
Albert Jay Nock
Once we might have been inclined to give a quarter to a beggar. Now, however...we might tell him that the State has confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and that he might as well go to the State about it.
Fredrick
Douglas
What shall we do with the Negro? I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do
nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us! Do nothing with us!..-<>-..
..just let him alone! Your interference is doing him a positive injury!
Booker T. Washington
There is (a) class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the
wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to
make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their
wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not
want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs ... There is a
certain class of race problem-solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the
disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium
through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
Clarence Thomas
I
don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.
Clarence Thomas
When I was a kid, we said that we were precluded from going to certain neighborhoods because
of the color of our skin… Now the neighborhoods are the neighborhoods of ideas, you’re not
supposed to be there because … of the color of your skin.
Lizavetta
Modern liberalism requires everyone to look different but think the same.
Robert Half
Family is the most effective form of government.
Freepatriot32
Everything not forbidden is mandatory.
Ronald Reagan
If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.
The New York Times, in a 1909 editorial opposing the very first income tax
When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot easily
be cured of it.
Plutarch
The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties,
donations, and benefits.
Benjamin
Franklin
When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will
herald the end of the republic.
Mark Twain
No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
Calvin Coolidge
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
Brad From Tennessee
Anything a politician gives you he has first stolen from you.
Ayn Rand
There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one's silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender - the recognition of his right to one's property. What value or concession did the burglar offer in return? and once the principle of unilateral concessions is accepted as the base of a relationship by both parties, it is only a matter of time before the burglar would seize the rest...
William E. Simon
If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at a point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you.
Thomas Jefferson (Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805)
The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. ... The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles, is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboards and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and pride of an American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer, ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States?
Benjamin Franklin
It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income.
Unknown
A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.
Winston
Churchill
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a
bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Barry
Goldwater
The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
Ayn Rand
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has
is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough
criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it
becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation
of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the
kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively
interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers-and then you cash in on
the guilt.
Lenin
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
Fletcher
Knebel
Our
forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation.
Benjamin
Franklin
The king's cheese is half wasted in parings;
but no matter, 'tis made of the people's milk.
Pericles
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an
interest in you.
James Bovard
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for
dinner.
Calvin
Coolidge
Never attempt to build up the weak by tearing down the strong.
Calvin
Coolidge
The
government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people,
with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.
Lenin
In reality the state is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another.
Winston Churchill
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings; the inherent
vice of socialism is the equal sharing of the miseries.
David
D. Boaz
The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community.
C. S. Lewis
The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.
Mark
Twain
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
American criminal class except Congress.
Ronald
Reagan
To compare Congress to drunken sailors is an insult to drunken
sailors.
William F. Buckley
I'd
rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston
telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
Ayn Rand
The
idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning:
that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of
others.
Thomas Jefferson
State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.
Frank Chodorov
Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man - in temperament, character, and capacity - and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.
David Shapiro
Lao Tse said that the evil leader is the one whom the people despise, the good leader is the one whom the people revere, but the greatest leader of all is the one who causes the people to cheer that "we did it ourselves".
Lao Tse
A wise leader has said, "I will not try to change things, and the people will be transformed by themselves; I will be fond of tranquility, and the people will by themselves become correct. I will not pursue riches, and the people will by themselves become rich; I will manifest no ambition, and the people will become as natural as uncarved wood."
Lao Tzu
The
more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are
impoverished....
The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
The wisest course, then, is to keep the government simple and for it to take no action, for then the
world stabilizes itself.
Therefore the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence
and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves....
Swami Sivananda
Political and economic freedom is essential for the welfare of a people. Real freedom is lordship over oneself.
Calvin Coolidge
Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been
minding my own business.
Thomas Paine
All
national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than
human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Justice Hugo Black
Its [the Establishment Clause] first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a
union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion...
War and Peace
Joseph Sobran
After two world wars, countless smaller wars, mass murders, religious and racial persecution, several species of tyranny, punishing taxation, erosions of ancient liberties, debasement of money, and state-sponsored moral decadence, you’d think modern man would have drawn certain lessons about the modern State. All of us ought to talk about the State the way the Jews talk about Hitler.
James Oliver
War: What you get when Governments are in charge
The World Wide Web: What you get when they're not.
James Madison
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
Frederic Bastiat
When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will.
William F. Buckley
They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened.
John Stuart Mill
War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral
and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing
for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a
miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of
better men than himself.
Benjamin Franklin
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither
liberty or safety.
Thurgood Marshall
History
teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights
seem too extravagant to endure.
Thomas Jefferson
From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of
tyrants and patriots.
Thomas Jefferson
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and
armed militia is their best security.
Tench Coxe
The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People.
Richard Henry Lee
To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.
Edward Abbey
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Benjamin Franklin
Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.
Noah Webster
Before
a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in
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. A military force, at the command of Congress, can
execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will
possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a
law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.
Jon Roland
Rights don't defend themselves. People have only those rights they are willing and able to unite to defend, with armed force if necessary. If you don't defend others when their rights are violated, don't expect anyone to defend yours, and those rights will be violated if they are not defended.
Barry
Goldwater
Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue; extremism in the defense of freedom is no
vice.
Plato
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to
fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may
require a leader.
Spinoza
Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence;
confidence; and justice.
Ralph Bunche
There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.
C.S. Lewis
I would rather be ruled by robber barons than omnipotent, moral busybodies.
Andre Malraux
In
the course of history, all empires have been created with premeditation, by an effort often
sustained over several generations. Every power has been Roman to a degree. The United States is the
first nation to become the most powerful in the world without having sought to be so. Its
exceptional energy and organization have never been oriented toward conquest.
SUCCESS
Uknown Buddhist
If you want to know your past, look at where you are. If you want to know your future, look at what you are doing.
William Dean Howells
The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.
Abraham Lincoln
Nearly all men can withstand adversity; if you want to test a man’s character, give
him power.
Ayn Rand
If
any part of your uncertainty, is a conflict between your heart and your mind — follow your mind.
Donald Rumsfeld
Success
tends to go not to the person who is error-free, because he also tends to be risk-averse.
Mistakes are the portholes of discovery.
Thomas Edison
Results! Why, man I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that
won’t work.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like
work.
Thomas Edison
If I had let myself believe that a work day was
only 8 hours I could not have accomplished most of my life’s work.
Margaret Thatcher
Look
at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounged around doing
nothing -- it's when you've had everything to do -- and you've done it.
Dr. Robert Schuller
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
G.K. Chesterton
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then
going away and doing the exact opposite.
Robert Heinlein
Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and
why. Then do it.
Ayn Rand
Achievement
of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness —not pain or mindless
self-indulgence — is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of
your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
Wall Street Journal
Money is an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except
heaven, and as a universal provider for everything except happiness.
Benjamin
Franklin
Who is rich? He that rejoices in his Portion.
Calvin Coolidge
Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they
create character.
Benjamin
Franklin
The poor have little,
Beggars none;
The rich too much
Enough not one.
CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown
The public school system is already so beleaguered by bureaucracy; so cowed by the demands of due process; so overwhelmed with faddish curricula that its educational purpose is almost an afterthought.
Agatha Christie
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.
William Lowe Bryan
Education is one of the few things a person is willing to pay for and not get.
Albert Einstein
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Shanker
When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.
Mark Twain
Never
let your schooling interfere with your education.
Paul Zane Pilzer
Despite a documented low correlation between money spent and improvement in the quantity and quality
of public education, the reform of public education has focused almost exclusively on the financial
issue.
Thomas Jefferson
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.
Secretary of Education Rod Paige
The NEA is a terrorist organization.
Lenin
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Joseph Stalin
Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns. Why
should we allow them to have ideas?
B.F. Skinner
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
John Taylor Gatto
One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted.
Dr. Thomas Sowell
It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad
motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not
believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.
Donald Rumsfeld
Learn
to say "I don't know." If used when appropriate, it will be often.
Alec Burbon
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely
uneducated.
In every man there is something wherin, I may learn of him and in that I am his
pupil.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Mark
Twain
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance — it is the
illusion of knowledge.
Miscellaneous
A Psychoanalyst
We see our own faults in others.
C.S. Lewis
I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness.
A. Whitney Brown
I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals; I’m a vegetarian
because I hate plants.
Unknown
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Rahul Mishra
Humor is finding familiar things in unsuspecting places.
Frank Chodorov
The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as `free education' is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education - just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office - and cannot possibly be separated from political control.
Ronald
Reagan
One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything
that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all.
Mark Steyn
It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog faeces and
mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That's the problem with
the UN. If you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn't
that they'll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters,
seven-eighths of the way.
Ayn Rand
All your life, you have heard yourself denounced; not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called anti-social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose. You have been called greedy for the magnificence of your power to create wealth. You, who've expended an inconceivable flow of energy, have been called a parasite. You, who've created abundance where there had been nothing but wastelands and helpless, starving men before you, have been called a robber. You, who've kept them all alive, have been called an exploiter. You, the purest and most moral man among them, have been sneered at as a 'vulgar materialist.' Have you stopped to ask them: by what right? — by what code? — by what standard?
Mark Twain
Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
Mark Twain
Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
Philippe Pinel
Men who are strangers to the principles of medicine guided by only sound judgment or some obscure tradition, have devoted themselves to the treatment of the insane, and they have effected a great many cures.
C.S. Lewis
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking down, you can't see something that's above you.