Author: James Wesley Rawles

“We’ve forgotten much. How to struggle, how to rise to dizzy heights and sink to unparalleled depths. We no longer aspire to anything. Even the finer shades of despair are lost to us. We’ve ceased to be runners. We plod from structure to conveyance to employment and back again. We live within the boundaries that science has determined for us. The measuring stick is short and sweet. The full gamut of life is a brief, shadowy continuum that runs from gray to more gray. The rainbow is bleached. We hardly know how to doubt anymore.” – Richard Matheson, in “The …

“Let me say for the record, Mr. Speaker, not one human death or injury resulting from a grizzly bear attack is acceptable to this Congressman. In fact, it should not be accepted by anyone who values human life. I do not want to have to stand up before a spouse, a parent, a child, brother, or sister who have lost their loved one because of a rare occurring brutal grizzly bear attack and explain that this tragedy would not have occurred had we not introduced this dangerous animal into Idaho in the first place.” – Congressmember Helen Chenoweth

“You really don’t understand. We don’t worry about What counts is that many millions of people have the knowledge that they can go to a weapon shop if they want to protect themselves and their families. And, even more important, the forces that would normally try to enslave them are restrained by the conviction that it is dangerous to press people too far. And so a great balance has been struck between those who govern and those who are governed.” Cayle stared at her in bitter disappointment. “You mean that a person has to save himself? Even when you get …

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”  – Mark Twain

“I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies.” – Annie Oakley

“I will not knowingly initiate force. I am a self owner. Let the record show that I did not consent to be governed. I did not consent to any constitution. I did not consent to any president. I did not consent to any law. I did not consent to the police. Nor any tax. Nor any prohibition of anything. Nor any regulation or licensing of any kind.” – The Late Susan Callaway (aka Mama Liberty)

“It is a fact that throughout human history humans have attempted to enslave one another.  So long as one can compel someone to work in some fashion that does not reflect economic pressures you can profit from this, and some percentage of people will.  That person or organization will succeed on a profit basis where others who do not adopt that policy will fail.  This inevitably encourages such behavior until only those who engage in it remain in business! As such the only constraint on such behavior is laws that are actually enforced so that the cost of such behavior is higher than the benefit.” – Karl Denninger