Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
— THOMAS JEFFERSON
Category: Quote O’ The Day
One of the bittersweet things about growing old is realizing how mistaken you were when you were young. As a young political leftist, I saw the left as the voice of the common man. Nothing could be further from the truth.
-Thomas Sowell
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. — Justice Learned Hand
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. — Thomas Payne
That America is an exceptional nation is unclear only to one who has not been taught its true history. It ceases to be exceptional only when its representative leaders cease to be exceptional. America, it has been said, is a nation of laws, not of men. The more it becomes a nation of men, the less it remains America.
Ron Brackin
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.–Eric Hoffer
In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.–Mark Twain
Man has to wring Liberty not only from tyrants, but also from his fellow men who are not only unwilling to fight for it, but to let anyone else fight for it.
-Paul I. Wellman
Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.— Robert A. Heinlein
Sometimes a person has to exercise personal judgement and take the chance of being mistaken, or stop calling himself or herself free.-Poul Anderson
No law ever written has stopped any robber, rapist or killer, like cold blue steel in the hands of their last intended victim. — W. Emerson Wright
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened. — Billy Graham
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. — Thomas Paine
Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty? – Patrick Henry
Every politician brings in a wide range of context, promises and characters to bring his mission of you to listen to his words and vote for him and later he won’t listen to you at any range. — Auliq Ice
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
— Thomas Paine
To trust arms in the hands of the people at large has, in Europe, been believed…to be an experiment fraught only with danger. Here by a long trial it has been proved to be perfectly harmless…If the government be equitable; if it be reasonable in its exactions; if proper attention be paid to the education of children in knowledge and religion, few men will be disposed to use arms, unless for their amusement, and for the defence of themselves and their country. — Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, 1823
The supposed quietude of a good mans allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside…Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them… — Thomas Paine
Today the taxing power, rather than chattel slavery, is the instrument by which the parasitical element of the population subsists. And that element, which includes politicians, panics at the slightest reduction in the state’s power to plunder. Once you start liberating taxpayers, even a little tiny bit, nobody knows where it may end. —Joseph Sobran