"We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish." -- F. A. Hayek

"Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right?" --Jean-Baptiste Say

"Mandrake! The Redcoats are coming! Get over here and feed me that belt, boy!" -- General Ripper

Krusty the Clown's reason for guns:
1.. To protect your family and loved ones.
2.. To kill dangerous and delicious animals.
3.. To keep the King of England out of your face.

"If you're happy and you know it, clank your chains..."

Study the following, kids .. never know when you might have a pop quiz:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your councils or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --- Sam Adams

"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." - Charles A. Beard

"You have the right to remain helpless. Should you choose to waive this right, anything you do can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an assailant. If you cannot find one for yourself, the court will release one for you."

One person on that Long Island commuter train was shot because a maniac had a gun. The rest were shot because nobody *else* had a gun.

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws" Tacitus, Roman Historian, 55-117 A.D.

"Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have." -Davy Crockett .... in an address to Congress

"Armed victim" is a contradiction in terms.

Treachery makes for single-issue politics.

"A well-educated electorate being necessary to the prosperity of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed."

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point me satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --- C.S. Lewis

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." -- Not really Julius Caesar on Patriotism but it sounds like it could have been.

"I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free." -William F. Buckley Jr.

"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." -- Thomas Paine

"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."

"I am not robbed by people who have more money than I. I am robbed by a government that wants to penalize my industry and give increasing portions of what I earn to people who do not emulate my principles, morals and ethics... We once taught our young people the virtues of hard work, saving, personal responsibility and accountability for one's actions, chastity before and fidelity and commitment in marriage, honesty, integrity and virtue-not to mention the Ten Commandments (especially the one about not coveting that which belongs to your neighbor). We now teach them entitlement, victimhood, class envy and rights to other people's money." -- Cal Thomas

"As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright moron." -- H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Another Mencken special: "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."

"War is an ugly thing. But not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." -- John Stuart Mill, 1850

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

The country is in the state it's in because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by the people who vote for a living.

I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke, and found that life was duty.