“The whole aim
of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to
be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of
them imaginary.” “The Power of Nightmares - Politics of Fear” A Classic BBC Video Perspective “An elective
despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only
be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government
should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that
no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked
and restrained by the others.” ~Thomas Jefferson~ Notes on Virginia [1782] “It would be a dangerous delusion
were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the
safety of our rights... Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism.
Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy
and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those
whom we are obliged to trust with power... Our Constitution has accordingly
fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go... In
questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind
him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” ~Thomas Jefferson~ Draft Kentucky Resolution [1798] “Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by
interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and
prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or
caprice?” ~George Washington~ Farewell Address [September 17, 1796] “Avoid the necessity of those overgrown
military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious
to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to
republican liberty.” ~George Washington~ Farewell Address [September 17, 1796] “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 pretense, 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.” “An
Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution” [1787] “Above this
race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone
to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is
absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the
authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men
for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
childhood: It is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they
think of nothing but rejoicing.” “Democracy in America” [1835] “The will of man is not shattered,
but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they
are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it
prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates,
extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be
nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the
government is the shepherd.” ~Alexis de Tocqueville~ “Democracy
in America [1835] “It is therefore most especially in the present democratic times
that the true friends of the liberty and the greatness of man ought
constantly to be on the alert, to prevent the power of government from
lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the general
execution of its designs. At such times, no citizen is so obscure that it is
not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed; no private rights are so
unimportant that they can be surrendered with impunity to the caprices of a
government.” ~Alexis de Tocqueville~ “Democracy in America” [1835] "We'll know our disinformation program is complete
when everything the American public believes is false." Former CIA
director, at his first staff meeting (1981) “The truth is that the state must hide not only its wars
but all of its activities. It hides its inflation. It hides the effects of
its taxation and its protectionism. It fears anyone who draws the cause-and-effect
connection between its activities and their deleterious consequences for the
rest of us. It is the most destructive force in our world. Because that truth
is so momentous, the state does everything possible to hide the smallest drop
of blood.” “The Seen, the Unseen, and the Hidden “Nothing alarms me more than the thought of an irrational
person in the White House. I'm OK with stupid. I can live with venal. I can
tolerate a womanizer, even a drunk, but a crazy person in command of our
nuclear forces gives me the heebie-jeebies. Somebody who can't tell the
difference between a nuclear-free Iran with no ICBMs and Russia with
thousands of nuclear warheads sitting atop advanced intercontinental missiles
has no business being allowed in the White House, even as a tourist.” Syndicated Columnist & Political Commentator “Americans should remember that if it's a messiah or
salvation they seek, neither is to be found in politics or in government.” Syndicated Columnist &
Political Commentator (SCROLL DOWN)
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then
they fight you, then you win." “When the people fear their
government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is
liberty.” ~Thomas Jefferson~ “In the beginning of a change, the
Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds,
however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot.” “The object of life is not to
be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of
the insane." “History is lies agreed upon.” “God cannot alter the past,
though historians can.” “Who controls the past
controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” “All democracies turn into dictatorships,
but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it is
Julius Caesar, Napoleon, or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population
goes along with the idea.” ~George Lucas~ Film Maker: Dark Victory – (April 23, 2002) “Modern nationalism and collectivism
have, by the restriction of migration, perhaps come nearest to the “servile state.”
…Man can hardly be reduced more to a mere wheel in the clockwork of the
national collectivist state that being deprived of his freedom to move....
Feeling that he belongs now to his nation, body and soul, he will be more
easily subdued to the obedient state serf which nationalist and collectivist
governments demand.” ~Wilhelm Röpke~ Economist "Perhaps it is a universal truth
that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against
danger, real or pretended, from abroad." ~ James Madison~ (1798)
“Modern war is merciless, it does not
spare pregnant women or infants; it is indiscriminate killing and destroying.
It does not respect the rights of neutrals. Millions are killed, enslaved, or
expelled from the dwelling places in which their ancestors lived for
centuries. Nobody can foretell what will happen in the next chapter of this
endless struggle. This has little to do with the atomic bomb. The root of the
evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the
spirit of conquest. It is probable that scientists will discover some
methods of defense against the atomic bomb. But this will not alter things,
it will merely prolong for a short time the process of the complete destruction
of civilization.” ~Ludwig von Mises~ Human Action “..War memorials, while they pay
homage to those who made ‘the ultimate sacrifice,’ dignify slaughter. They
perpetuate the old lie of honor and glory. They set the ground for the next
inferno. The myth of war manufactures a collective memory that ennobles the
next war. The intimate, personal experience of violence turns those who
return from war into internal exiles. They cannot compete against the power
of the myth. This collective memory saturates the culture, but it is ‘a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’” ~Chris
Hedges Author, International Columnist,
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist "Wartime brings the ideal of the State out into
very clear relief, and reveals attitudes and tendencies that were hidden. In
times of peace, the sense of the State flags in a republic that is not
militarized. For war is essentially the health of the State." ~ Randolph Bourne~ (1919) "Is it not just possible that we may become
corrupted at home by the reaction of arbitrary political maxims in the East
upon our domestic politics, just as Greece and Rome were demoralised by their
contact with Asia?" ~ Richard
Cobden~ (1850) 'When fascism comes to this country
[America], it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." “Washington, D.C. is a place where
delusions go to thrive.” ~Steve Chapman~ Columnist and
editorial writer - The Chicago Tribune "Any gang of politicos is like the
eighth circle of Hell, but the American breed is ‘specially awful because
they take it seriously and believe it matters." ~George
MacDonald Fraser~ Author: "Flashman and the
Redskins" (1982) “It's important to understand that
the cause of terrorism is political, and therefore there is no military
solution. If killing terrorists were the solution, the Israelis wouldn't be
enclosing themselves inside a wall and
carrying guns all the time. Unless you solve the political problems that
cause terrorism, you will never eliminate it.” ~Charley Reese~ Syndicated Columnist
& Political Commentator “The concept of nonintervention
in foreign policy was never difficult for me to reach,
although over the years it has grown on me to the point where I am convinced
it is the key, most important issue that we have to deal with right now in a
political sense.” ~Rep Ron Paul, M.D./OBGYN~ From his speech delivered at The Future of Freedom
Foundation's 2007 conference "Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties” “The greatest crime since World War
II has been U.S.
foreign policy.” "I worship Christ who was the prince of peace, not pre-emptive
war. A superpower like the United States should use all of its resources ...
to promote peace.” “It is part of the general pattern of
misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was
bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon
an incessant propaganda of fear.” “If you take the profit out of war...there is no
war. Today’s cowardly patriotism resides only within the perimeter of profit
– and safety. If you require those calling loudest for war to fire the first
shot, the guns remain silent.” “No protracted war can fail to
endanger the freedom of a democratic country.” “A hated government does not long
survive.” ~Seneca~ "My paramount objective in this
struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy
slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do
it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would
also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because
I believe it helps to save the Union." ~Abraham Lincoln~ Lincoln explained
the purpose of the war in a
letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley
(August 22, 1862) "The crimes of the U.S.
throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless,
and fully documented but nobody talks about them. " ~Harold Pinter~ British
Nobel Laureate, Playwright, Author “After all, it is setting a high value
upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.” I believe in only one thing: liberty;
but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. “The urge to save humanity is almost
always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” “Terrorism is the war of the poor,
and war is the terrorism of the rich.” The enormous gap between what US
leaders do...and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the
great propaganda accomplishments...” "America is a quarter of a billion
people totally misinformed and disinformed by their government. This is
tragic but our media is -- I wouldn't even say corrupt -- it's just beyond
telling us anything that the government doesn't want us to know." “All government bureaucracies, if
allowed to fester, metastasize like a malignant cancer cell… once created,
the bureaucratic imperative becomes paramount.” ~Werther~ “The greatest of all oxymorons is
‘public servant’. Rather, that term is the cover or spin for the ruling
elite and the political class.” ~Harry E. Teasley Jr. ~ Political/Economic Commentator, Investor & Philanthropist ”I believe that if we had and would
keep our dirty, bloody, dollar soaked fingers out of the business of these
[Third World] nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will
arrive at a solution of their own.... And if unfortunately their revolution
must be of the violent type because the “haves” refuse to share with the
“have-nots” by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own,
and not the American style, which they don’t want and above all don’t want
crammed down their throats by Americans.” ~ General
David Sharp ~ Former US Marine Commandant,
(1966) “The state is the most destructive institution human
beings have ever devised, and nothing promotes its growth as much as war.
Wars not only impose huge financial costs, they also leave institutional
legacies that enhance government power at the expense of the people’s
liberties. Perhaps most important, war has effects on the dominant ideology that work in favor of long-lasting
government power and the permanent reduction of public liberties. In this
way, government war measures change the very characters of once-free people,
by breaking down their will to be free and their determination to resist
tyranny.” ~ Robert Higgs ~ “All governments rely
directly or indirectly on the cultivation of fear to prop up their rule. If
the people were not afraid, either of the government itself or of some threat
from which the government purports to protect them, they would not submit to
being fleeced and bullied as they are by their rulers, and the government
would collapse.” ~Robert
Higgs ~ “The President Is Trying to Scare Us
Again” (August 6, 2007) “As a rule of thumb, don't believe anybody above
the rank of lieutenant colonel. That is the rank at which most warriors are
forced to retire. Most of the rest are politicians in uniform. “As for the moral burden of guilt on
the state, don’t worry. The state is a machine. It has no conscience and no soul.
The state kills innocent people all the time, usually in wars.”
“History is a record of human
stupidity writ in blood. I have often said that history is a lot scarier than
Stephen King’s horror stories.” ~ Charley Reese~ “There is a tragic flaw in our
precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is
it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only
clearly disturbed people ran for class president.” ~Kurt
Vonnegut~ A Man Without a Country “There is no "smart" way to
run an empire: in the end, it runs you.
And then it ruins you. The smart thing to do is to refrain from acquiring an
empire, and, if one seems about to acquire you, then the really smart
strategy is to run, not walk, away from it.” “This is
what it means to be an empire: foreign lobbyists and satraps gather 'round
the imperial throne, scheming and plotting to gain the emperor's favor and
the privilege of using his praetorians as an instrument to advance their own ends. If it wasn't the Israelis, it would be someone else – perhaps
the Brits, as in the two previous world wars. In any case, until and unless we make real changes in our
foreign policy – fundamental changes – we'll never get out of this box, and
war clouds will loom large on our horizon well into the foreseeable future. ”Concentrated political power is the
most dangerous thing on earth.” “No one can find a safe way out for himself if society
is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests,
must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand
aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result.” ~Ludwig von Mises~ “Constant apprehension of war has the same tendency to render
the head too large for the body. A standing military force with an overgrown
executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” "Although ancient states were
great, they inevitably perished when they were fond of war." “During war, the laws are silent.” "Guard against the imposters of
pretended patriotism." “The dangerous patriot… is a defender
of militarism and its ideals of war and glory.” ~Colonel James A. Donovan~ USMC “Governments have never learned anything
from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.” ~Friedrich Hebbel~ German poet and dramatist
”Liberty and democracy become unholy
when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.” “The selection of government rulers
by means of popular elections makes it essentially impossible for a harmless
or decent person to ever rise to the top. Presidents and prime ministers come
into their position as a result of their efficiency as morally uninhibited
demagogues. Hence, democracy virtually assures that only dangerous men will
rise to the top of government.” ~Hans Hermann-Hoppe~ Democracy: The God That Failed I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” ~Thomas Jefferson~ "If ye love wealth better than
liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of
freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly
upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." ~Samuel Adams~ Hero of the American Revolution “The federal government does not have
even one small agency that spends a minute to discover new or expanded rights
for our citizens. There is no agency whose mission is to find and discard
unneeded laws, each one having some impact on liberty. How foolish to assume
that any branch of the federal government is watching out for our freedoms.
Today the federal government serves somebody's idea of a utopian collective
good. Patrick Henry's style of plainspoken English has been replaced by
legalistic doubletalk that allows bureaucrats to trample our liberties.
Freedom of speech and the freedom to bear arms are threatened. Any freedoms
that may offend an aggrieved special-interest group are snatched away without
regard to the future impact on our national character, such as the virtues of
thinking independently or questioning authority.” ~Gary
Aldrich~ Former FBI agent and later Author who served in
the Clinton White House “In America
the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within
these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes
beyond them.” “Fear is perhaps the greatest enemy of
candor. How many men fear to follow their conscience because they would
rather conform to the opinion of other men than to the truth they know in
their hearts? How can I be sincere if I am constantly changing my mind to
conform with the shadow of what I think others expect of me?” ~ Thomas Merton~ From No Man Is
an Island (1955) “None are more hopelessly enslaved
than those who falsely believe they are free.” “Great is the guilt of an unnecessary
war.” ~John Adams~ Federalist, 6th President of the United States who ironically
lost any chance at reelection because he decided to keep America out of war
with France ”The intention makes the crime.” “We cloak ourselves in cold
indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others--even when we cause it.” ~James Carroll~
Author, Columnist-Boston Globe "We always obeyed the law. Isn't
that what you do in America? Even if you don't agree with a law personally, you
still obey it. Otherwise life would be chaos." ~Gertrude Scholtz-Klink~ Chief of the Women's Bureau under Adolph
Hitler explaining the Jewish policy of the Nazis
“We are all part monsters in our
subconscious, so we have laws and religion…” ~Commander John J. Adams~ From the movie: The Forbidden Planet, (1956) “A tyrant... is always stirring up
some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.” ~Plato~ "Rulers who destroy men's
freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its form." ~Alexis
de Tocqueville~ ”The shepherd always tries to
persuade the sheep that their interest and his own are the same.” ~Marie
Beyle~ Government is
the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense
of everybody else. ~Frederic Bastiat~ French Economist (1801-1850) In general, the art of government consists
of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to
the other. ~Voltaire~ (1764) “The State calls its own violence law, but that of the
individual crime.” ~Max
Stirner ~ The Ego
and His Own (1907) “... What an immense mass of evil
must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may
happen…” “One of the penalties for refusing to
participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
...”
“There is nothing more difficult to
plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than a creation
of a new order of things.” ~Niccolo Machiavelli~ The Prince (1513) “The gods do not smile on efforts to remake the world in one’s
own image. They did not smile on Napoleon when he invaded Spain and Russia.
They did not smile on Hitler when he invaded Russia. They did not smile on
Japan when it bombed Pearl Harbor. The lesson: If you are going to try to do
good, you are best advised to be careful and modest about it. Do not attack
anybody. Do not steal anyone's money. Say 'please' and 'thank you.' Remember
that you are a fool, too – along with everyone else.” ~Bill Bonner ~ Publisher, Author, Financial Pundit “We live together, we act on, and react
to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The
martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced,
the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single
self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is
doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights,
fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand,
incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the
experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society
of island universes. Most island universes are sufficiently like one another
to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or
"feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and
humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put
ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their
places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or
even nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the
insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where
ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of
memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are
uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols
refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience.” ~Aldous
Huxley~ The Doors of
Perception “The
Mills of the Gods Grind Slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." “New opinions are always suspected, and
usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already
common.” “Power
always thinks…that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his
laws.” “You
can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out
that God hates all the same people you do.” ~Anne Lamott~ Writer “Name
me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.” “A tyrant
must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are
less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider
god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against
him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”
~Aristotle, philosopher~ (384-322 BCE) “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” ~Voltaire~ philosopher (1694-1778) “We
burned the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo
lighters.... Ho Chi Minh had said people were like the sea in which his
guerillas swam. We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea
uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference does it make
if you shoot your enemy or starve him to death?” ~Colin Powell~ Former Secretary of State - United States of America “The
most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are
individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by
the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels
not their own.” ~Aldous Huxley~ “Military men are just
dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” ~Henry Kissinger~ as quoted in the book “Kiss the Boys Goodbye” “Whoever imagines himself a favorite with
God holds others in contempt.” ~Robert Green Ingersoll~ lawyer and orator (1833-1899) “Every
war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an
act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.” ~George Orwell~ “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear
the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for
every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” ~Sun Tzu ~ “Of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob
on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it
is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want
war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That
is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine
the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a
communist dictatorship... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell
them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” ~Hermann Goering~ Nazi leader In custody at the Nuremberg Trials, shortly before
being sentenced to death. “The history of liberty is a history
of the limitation of government power, not the increase of it.” ~Woodrow
Wilson~ A historically ironic
observation by America’s 28th president “When a candidate for public office faces the
voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief
distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing
ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental~men whose whole
thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of
what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark
with the pack or be lost. All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically,
the most devious and mediocre ~ the man who can most adeptly disperse the
notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year,
to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and
more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On
some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their
heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright
moron.” ~H. L. Mencken~ The Baltimore (Sun, July
26, 1920) “Man has no right to kill his
brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy
of servitude to the crime of murder.” ~Percy
Bysshe Shelley~
|
||||
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of
trumpets.” ~Voltaire~ (1694-1778) “Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us
in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national
emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some
monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly
rally behind it.” ~General Douglas MacArthur~ (1957) “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter
which side he’s on.” ~Joseph Heller~ novelist (1923-1999)
~Senator Arthur Vandenberg~ Telling President Harry Truman what he needed to do in
order to tax the American people to pay for the weapons and covert activities
of the US National Security State that was being planned, to destroy the
Russian Communist State ”Government, even
in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an
intolerable one.” ~Thomas Paine~ Common Sense (1776) “Inflation is not caused by the actions of private
citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money
supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank
robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable
to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.” ~Ayn Rand~ "Who
Will Protect Us From Our Protectors?"
~ Thomas Paine~ From: The
Age of Reason -To Paine belongs the honor of naming our country the United
States of America. He was the first to use the name in print, and it was his
own creation “Men never do evil so completely and
cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” “Necessity is the plea of every
infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the
creed of slaves.” ~William Pitt ~
“We should... be able to see that our
interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our
values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse
some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not
love.” ~Richard Mitchell~ “Mystical references to ‘society’ and
its programs to ‘help’ may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really
means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.”
~ H. L. Mencken~ ~John Stuart Mill~ Essay: On Liberty “A ‘right’ is a moral principle
defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There
is only one fundamental right (all others are its consequences or
corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of
self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right
to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action--which means; the
freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being
for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his
own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness.)” ~Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
[1964] “Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised
for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to
live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber
baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without
end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be
more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of
earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured”
against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is
to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or
those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic
animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it,
because we “ought to have known better,” is to be treated as a human person
made in God’s image.” “The majority, oppressing an individual, is
guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of
the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.” ~Thomas
Jefferson~ “In a society in which it is a moral offense to be
different from your neighbor your only escape is never to let them find out.” ~Robert Heinlein~ From
the notebooks of Lazarus Long
“There is nothing to fear from the gods. There is
nothing to fear from death. Pain can be endured. Happiness can be attained.” ~Epicurus~ “Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream
up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a
spoiled child.” ~ Robert Heinlein~ “It’s amazing how much panic one
honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.” ~Thomas Sowell~ “Mothers are fonder than fathers of
their children because they are more certain they are their own.” ~Aristotle~ “Throw moderation to the winds, and
the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.”
~Robert Heinlein~
~Thomas Sowell~
“Mankind is at its best when it is most
free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We
must recall that the basic principle of liberty is freedom of choice, which
saying many have on their lips but few in their minds.”
~ H. L. Mencken~ ”Force and mind are opposites;
morality ends where the gun begins.” ~ Ayn Rand~ “No one ever heard of the truth being
enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to sustain an idea,
whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is
downright idiotic.” ~H. L. Mencken~
~H. L. Mencken~
~George Orwell~
~Ludwig von Mises~
~Filemon
Vela~ Hispanic United States Federal Judge comments after being stopped for the
second time on the way to court in south Texas by the highly militarized U.S.
INS Border Patrol(October 1, 2000). “The more arbitrary power government employees
possess, the more they are transformed into a master class. At some point,
the sheer accumulation of penalties and threats in the statute book
fundamentally changes the citizen’s relation to the government. Rather than a
government of laws, it becomes a government of threats, intimidation, and
browbeating. If Congress and the courts want to restore the credibility of
the federal government, the federal statute book and the Code of Federal
Regulations must be stripped of those edicts that hang like thousands of swords
of Damocles over the heads of peaceful Americans. The time is come to end the
reign of the czars and to cease expecting salvation from arbitrary power.” ~James Bovard~ ”Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of
Government Power under Clinton-Gore” “If you have ever seen a
four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the
basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing
larger and ever more intrusive.” ~Thomas Sowell~ “The human race divides politically into those
who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” ~Robert Heinlein~ “The plans differ; the planners are
all alike.” ~Frederic Bastiat~ “How perilous it is to free a people
who deserve slavery.”
~Richard Mitchell~
~Thomas Paine~
~Lord Hailshan~
“Only two things are infinite, the
universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
~ Walter Bagehot~
~ Mark Twain~
~ Ludwig von Mises~
~Kathleen Norris~
~Mark Twain~
~Lord Lytton~
~Milton Friedman~
~Matt Groening~
~H. L. Mencken~
~Ralph Waldo
Emerson~
~Thomas Paine~
~Milton Friedman~
~Alexis de Tocqueville~ “The most fundamental fact about the
ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not
be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not
have to work in order to survive.” ~Thomas Sowell~
~Ludwig von Mises~
~Thomas Jefferson~
~Thomas Jefferson~
~H. L. Mencken~
~Robert Heinlein~ “You can have no dominion greater or less than
that over yourself.” ~Leonardo da Vinci~
~W. Somerset Maugham~
~H. L. Mencken~
~Edmund Burke~ ~Walter Williams~ ~Ludwig von Mises~
~Mark Twain~
~Thomas Sowell~ “The ability to get along without an
exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor.” ~Eric Hoffer~ “The part always has a tendency to reunite with
its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.” ~Leonardo da Vinci~
~William Pitt~ “Education is a weapon, whose effect
depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” ~Joseph Stalin~
“But if thought corrupts language, language can
also corrupt thought.” ~George Orwell~
~Thomas Edison~
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe~ “Unless a man has talents to make
something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom
to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape
individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be
free from freedom.” ~Eric Hoffer~
~Leonard Peikoff~
~H. L. Mencken~
~Anton Pavlovich Chekhov~
~Bertrand Russell~ “It is the
invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and every-where, to assume...
that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a
relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a
fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere
suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe,
seeking what is his right
under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from
him.” ~H. L. Mencken~
~H. L. Mencken~
~Eric Hoffer~
~Ayn Rand~
~Bertrand Russell~ “All people, however fanatical they may be in
their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it
by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out.” ~Ludwig von Mises~ “Wine makes everyone hopeful.” ~Aristotle~ Top of
Page
|