| Home Page | Contents | Index | Comments? |
| Chapter — Curmudgeon's Corner |
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
There is no country with a military so powerful, an economy so strong, and a culture so great that its politicians cannot pull it down.
No man who depends on the caprice of the ignorant rabble can be accounted great.
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
The most important reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, if necessary, at last resort to protect themselves from tyranny in government.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both.
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.
What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Letter to Col. Williams S. Smith, November 13, 1787
Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master!
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
National Gazette, March 29, 1792
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
There is no such thing as a "liberal democrat." A democracy — literally, a government by the people — cannot exist in an environment wherein some of the people are compelled to support their fellow citizens. Equal representation by one's government cannot occur in a climate of unequal responsibility to pay for it.
The Founders were not democrats and socialists...but conservatives who had a healthy distrust of political passions and who devised a complex system designed to frustrate the schemes of social redeemers and others convinced of their own invincible virtue.
Your politicians are only as good as their advisors.
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority is wrong.
To lend someone a hand when they've fallen and really can't get up, or move without assistance, is one thing. To have them demand a piggyback ride from you when they are perfectly capable of getting up and walking on their own, is quite another.
In the long-run, every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom.
When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
A tyrant...is always stirring up some war or other, in order that people may require a leader.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
writing in Caesar and Christ
The law in the hands of the unskilled and the unknowing is a terrifying thing.
John Ramsey commenting on the police investigation of the murder of his daughter, Jon Benet
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Policies are judged by their consequences, but crusades are judged by how good they make the crusaders feel.
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.
But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet, notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
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.
People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
Affirmative action — the proposition that jobs should be given to people who can't do them.
Bilingualism — the belief that countries work best when people can't talk to each other.
Multiculturalism — the view that societal comity is best achieved by dividing the country into groups that hate each other.
Welfare — the idea that money should be given to those who haven't earned it.
No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.
Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.
It is not often that a dominant class legislates its own downfall with quite as much thoroughness as the parliaments of the western world, filled as they are with men passing equal opportunities legislation in favour of women, have done.
David Thomas, "Not Guilty- In defence of the Modern Man", page 63.
In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.
Never in the history of the world has there been a situation so bad that the government can't make it worse.
The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people's money.
A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own.
When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.
James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.
There is no cruder tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.
Only with a government service would you increase prices and decrease customer service in the face of declining demand for your service.
Tad DeHaven, Cato Institute, 2010
Commenting on U.S. Postal Service's fifth price increase in five years
You give a good leader very little and he will succeed, you give a mediocrity a great deal and he will fail.
Testifying before the Truman Committee, April 15, 1941
1. Cows — Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a single cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.
2. The Constitution — They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.
3. The Ten Commandments — The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this: You cannot post "Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery," and "Thou Shall Not Lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment
| Home Page | Contents | Index | Comments? |
| Chapter — Curmudgeon's Corner |