Category: Quote of the Week

“The free market is not a creed or an ideology that political conservatives, libertarians, and Ayn Rand acolytes want Americans to take on faith. The free market is simply a measurement. The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That’s all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can’t pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can.” – P.J. O’Rourke

“Taxing is much like plucking a goose. It is the art of getting the greatest number of feathers with the least amount of hissing.” – Republican Presidential candidate Robert Dole, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal, 16 December, 1983.

“Governments do not know what they cannot do until after they cease to be governments. Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction.” – Frank Herbert

“Requirements for an ID are not voter suppression – they are just commonsense steps to ensure people don’t vote if they are ineligible, don’t vote using false identities and don’t vote more than once.” – The Late Charlie Kirk

“The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to known good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually fumed up on one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature: being a right inherent in a us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation, when he endued him with the …

“And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers, And brought them to the magistrates, saying, These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, And teach customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans. And the multitude rose up together against them: and the magistrates rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely: …

“Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, …

“Liberals measure compassion by how many people are given welfare. Conservatives measure compassion by how many people no longer need it.” – The Late Rush Limbaugh

“Many of the benefits from keeping terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability.” – Glenn Greenwald

“The Enlightenment diamond-shaped society, with a huge, prosperous, socially-mobile, empowered middle class, is by far the most productive and creative system the world has ever seen.” – David Brin

“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of Liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.” Alexis de Tocqueville

“Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man….It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty… [who] mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or …

“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore …

“The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion. For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof: but by a man of understanding and knowledge the state thereof shall be prolonged. A poor man that oppresseth the poor is like a sweeping rain which leaveth no food. They that forsake the law praise the wicked: but such as keep the law contend with them. Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek the Lord understand all things. Better is the poor that walketh in his uprightness, than he that is …

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” – John Adams, from A Defence of the Constitutions of the Government of the United States of America, 1787