Category: Quote O’ The Day

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
–T.S. Eliot.

If you look at every issue in this country, every issue I believe traces back to this fact: On the one hand, the elites in the ruling class in this country are robbing us blind, and on the other, if you dare complain about it, you are a bad person.
 – J.D. VANCE

Our Constitution is our rule of law, and the first 10 amendments of that venerable document contain our Bill of Rights. Those First Amendment rights, such as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom to assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievance, do not come with any requirement to obtain a permit.
– Allen West

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
— Patrick Henry

“Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of “emergency”. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And “emergency” became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains.”
– President Herbert Hoover

Those, who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please.
Thus, there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people. — Aristotle

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About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.

But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter.
If all men are created equal, that is final.
If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.
If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.

Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.
They are reactionary.
Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers…………………

—Calvin Coolidge, Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 5, 1926.

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.
— James Madison

Quote O’ The Day
The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society.
— Mark Skousen

Observation O’ The Day
However, as history teaches us, it sometimes does take downright force to ‘persuade’ those who want to exert control over others by using an authoritarian goobermint. Does that mean that that society isn’t civilized?