Category: Quote of the Day

“Mystical references to ‘society’ and its programs to ‘help’ may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.” –  Thomas Sowell

“When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper . . . despotic in his ordinary demeanour – known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty – when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity – to join in the cry of danger to liberty – to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government and bringing it under suspicion – to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day – It may justly be suspected that his object is …

“If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow from within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state. No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have a real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon the absolute. This was the issue with the early church in regard to the Roman Empire, and though the specific issue will in all probability take a different form than Caesar-worship, the basic issue of having an absolute by which to judge …

“The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace both from the enormous expenses with which they are attended and the facile means which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers to subvert the government or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of …

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue …

“And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel. Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abiah: they were judges in Beersheba. And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment. Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But …

“Unjust authority confers no obligation of obedience.” – Alexander Hamilton

“The churches represent the great area of freedom from statist controls in many countries. This is a condition which the modern state finds intolerable and is determined to alter. The state’s great ally in this struggle is all too often the church itself. The humanism of so many churchmen makes them dedicated allies of statist objectives.” – R.J. Rushdoony, Christianity and the State

“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” – Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

“All of anarchism, libertarianism, and anti-Statism can be traced back to the rise of Protestantism. The USA – founded by Protestants (often extremist Protestants expelled from their own countries) is where the love of the individual and hatred of the collective is practically written into its Constitution, which is extremely Protestant in its character.” – Steve Madison, The Quality Agenda: The Search for Excellence

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” – Groucho Marx

“For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we …

“Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me; and, behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings. And it came to pass, that when they had made an end of eating the grass of the land, then I said, O Lord God, forgive, I beseech thee: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small. The Lord repented for this: It shall not be, saith the Lord. Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and, behold, the Lord God called to …

“I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.” – James A. Michener

“Many of the women I met there [at Yale University] had come from the most privileged of circumstances, yet they often referred to themselves as “oppressed.” I found it hard to take their “oppression” seriously, since I’d spent the first part of my life living among black women who cooked and kept house for the middle and upper class whites of Savannah. They never talked about being oppressed. What right, then, did the elite white women of Yale have to complain about their lot?” – Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, from his book My Grandfather’s Son