Thread: Quotes

The White House under Bill and Hillary Clinton was a moral and political slum, where a decent woman could be molested in the Oval Office and defamed and harassed when she complained..." -- Christopher Hitchens

"I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag." -- Major General Smedley Darling Butler (1981-1940) Major General USMC, "Old Gimlet Eye'' and "Hell Devil Darling", most highly decorated military men from the pre-World War II era. Source: from a speech in 1933


Whenever a people... entrust the defence of their country to a regular, standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power of that country will remain under the direction of the most wealthy citizens." -- A Framer Anonymous 'framer' of the US Constitution - Source: Independent Gazetteer, January 29, 1791



"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."--William Edgar Borah

"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent."- Charles Eliot Norton - (1827-1908) American scholar



"[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom." - John Quincy Adams - (1767-1848) 6th US President - Source: Speech before the House of Representatives, July 4, 1821; quoted in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Editors), The Idea of America (Les Belles Lettres, 2003), p. 237



"To die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic

"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket." -- Major General Smedley Darling Butler - (1981-1940) Major General USMC, "Old Gimlet Eye'' and "Hell Devil Darling", most highly decorated military men from the pre-World War II era. Source: from a speech in 1933



"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." -- Herbert Sebastien Agar - (1897-1980) Source: The Time for greatness, 1942



"The key to wisdom is this -- constant and frequent questioning ... for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth." -- Peter Abelard (1099-1142) Source: Sic et non, c. 1120



"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.": - Aldous Huxley - (1894-1963) Author

"When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know." - P.J O'Rourke, 1989

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see how much it will cost when it's free. - P.J. O'Rourke

'If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.' Paul Wellstone



It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. (1790): John Philpot Curran:



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:



Patriotism does not oblige us to acquiesce in the destruction of liberty. Patriotism obliges us to question it, at least: Wendy Kaminer:



Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason: Erich Fromm:



Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom: Marilyn Ferguson:

"It is time for the great silent majority of Americans to stand up and be counted." -- Richard Nixon

I think, therefore, I am.

"There are two distinct classes of men .. those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon taxes." ~ Thomas Paine



"The State enjoys a monopoly not only on the lawful use of violence, but on the power to define the extent of its authority." ~ Butler Shaffer, 17 March 2006



"You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it." ~ Isabel Paterson, New York Herald Tribune

"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin." - James Monroe 1758-1831), 5th US President Source: First Inaugural Address, 1817



"Who ordained that the few should have the land (of Britain) as a prerequisite; who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?" -- David Lloyd George (1863-1945) British statesman, and Prime Minister



"All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it." -- Benjamin Franklin - (1706-1790) US founding Father Source: letter to Robert Morris, 25 December 1783, Ref: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 1082


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"I recall during the Gulf War -- the previous one -- Clovis Maksoud, an American Arab leader said in an interview something to the effect that it wasn't fair to judge Muslims by the standards of the 20th century. I remember thinking, 'Hmm, is that supposed to be a plea for tolerance or an admission of guilt?'" - David D. Perlmutter

"These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their county; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered yet we have this consolation with us, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value." -- Tom Paine after the Declaration of Independence

"Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having." -- Juvenal [Decimus Junius Juvenalis] (c.55-c.128 AD) Roman satirical poet



"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." -- Samuel Adams- (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution."



"The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government." -- Daniel Webster - (1782-1852) US Senator

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.": - Abraham Lincoln - (1809-1865) 16th US President



"The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along." -- Clarence S. Darrow -1857-1938 Source: Address to the Court, The Communist Trial, People v.. Lloyd, 1920



"The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it's invalid on its face." -- Justice Potter Stewart : (1915-1985), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: Walker v. Birmingham, 1967



"We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free men." -- Gerald W. Johnson - (1890-1980) Source: American Freedom and the Press, 1958

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then." -- Thomas Jefferson - (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Source: letter to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787; reproduced in Thomas Jefferson, Writings (The Library of America, 1984), p. 889-890



"The right to revolt has sources deep in our history." -- William O. Douglas: (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: An Almanac of Liberty, 1954



"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good." -- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi - (1869-1948)



"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." -- Woodrow Wilson: (1856-1924) 28th US President Speech, 1912

"We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free men." -- Gerald W. Johnson - (1890-1980) Source: American Freedom and the Press, 1958



"And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other
half for the freedom to speak." -- James Russell Lowell: - (1819-1891) Poet and author Source: A Fable for Critics, 1848



"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." -- Simon Heffer Source: Daily Mail, 7 June 2000



"An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment." -- Justice Hugo L. Black: (1886-1971) US Supreme Court Justice Source: New York Times Company vs. Sullivan, 1964

"Political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters." - George Orwell

"A zebra doesn't change its spots." -- algore, 1992

"The left practices the politics of envy and the economics of failure. They may have their hearts in the right place but their heads are usually in an awkward place." - M. Simon

"Jimmy Carter?! He's history's greatest monster!" - Someone in a crowd after a statue of Carter is unveiled, The Simpsons

About this time 60 years ago, six weeks after the Normandy beach landings, Americans were dying in droves in France. We think of the 76-day Normandy campaign of summer and autumn 1944 as an astounding American success � and indeed it was, as Anglo-American forces cleared much of France of its Nazi occupiers in less than three months. But the outcome was not at all preordained, and more often was the stuff of great tragedy. Blunders were daily occurrences � resulting in 2,500 Allied casualties a day. In any average three-day period, more were killed, wounded, or missing than there have been in over a year in Iraq. -- Victor Davis Hanson