Thoughts
From William Graham Sumner
Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best on ones self individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling ones place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.
2017-02-22 at 14:30:34
From Will Rogers
Somebody is always telling us in the paper how to prevent war. There is only one way in the world to prevent war and that is for every nation to tend to its own business. Trace any war and you will find some nation was trying to tell some other nation how to run their business. All these nations are interfering with some other nations personal affairs but with an eye to business. Why do we not let the rest of the world act like it wants to.
2017-02-17 at 15:05:58
More From Thomas Jefferson,
It is inconsistent with the principles of civil liberty, and contrary to the natural rights of the other members of the society, that any body of men therein should have authority to enlarge their own powers, prerogatives or emoluments without restraint.
2017-02-16 at 18:07:30
From Reverend Martin Niemoller
In Germany they came first for the Communists and I did not speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.
2017-02-15 at 13:42:29
From Ludwig von Mises
The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial - - that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written in constitutions.
2017-02-14 at 12:55:29
From Benjamin Franklin
Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death taxes.
2017-02-10 at 12:56:26
From Victor Hugo
More powerful than armies is an idea whose time has come.
2017-02-09 at 13:31:25
From Henry David Thoreau
The State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.
2017-02-08 at 14:04:18
And More From Thomas Paine
If there is a sin superior to every other it is that of willful and offensive war. Most other sins are circumscribed within narrow limits, that is, the power of one man cannot give them a very general extension, and many kind of sins have only a mental existence from which no infection arises; but he who is the author of a war, lets loose the whole contagion of Hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
2017-02-03 at 17:28:24
From Ayn Rand
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force!!
2017-01-31 at 20:12:29
From Robert E. Lee
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
2017-01-31 at 12:35:35
From Anthony de Jasay
The transition to socialism, in the sense of an almost subconscious, sleep-walking sort of "maximax" strategy by the state, both to augment its potential discretionary power and actually to realize the greatest possible part of the potential thus created, is likely to be peaceful, dull, and unobtrusive. This is its low-risk high-reward approach. Far from being any noisy "battle of democracy .. to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state"; far from involving some heroic revolutionary break with continuity; far from calling for the violent putting down of the propertied minority, the transition to socialism would probably be the more certain the more it relied on the slow atrophy of initially independent, self-regulating subsystems of society. As their free functioning was constrained, the declining vitality of successive chunks of the "mixed economy" would eventually lead to a passive acceptance of a step-by-step extension of public ownership, if not to a clamour for it.
2017-01-30 at 13:09:11
From William Ellery Channing
I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinions, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than mans.
2017-01-27 at 13:54:36
More From Cousin Lucky
Alas, " freedom " is just another " illusion " believed by the masses!! Anyone in the way of " the government " is the enemy!!
2017-01-26 at 15:50:20
From United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
The militia is the natural defense of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpation of power by rulers. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally ... enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
2017-01-25 at 12:13:52