Category: Quote of the Day

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In …

“We must recollect…what it is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay, for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as Englishmen, it is for everything dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave.” – William Pitt, House of Commons, July 22, 1803

“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.” – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think of them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1816.

“Toute loi qui viole les droits imprescriptibles de l’homme, est essentiellement injuste et tyrannique; elle n’est point une loi” Translated: “Any law which violates the imprescriptable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.” – Maximilien Robespierre 1758-1794

“For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, …

“Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men. They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. The Lord shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at …

“The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.” – Stanley Kubrick

“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.” – Edmund Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, (1777)

“Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.” –  Ernest Hemingway, Toronto Star Weekly, March 4, 1922

“There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.” – James Russell Lowell

“If you thought Kamala Harris was a sure win in 2024, then you haven’t been paying attention to the epic shift in the cultural zeitgeist over the past few years. The thing that bothers me most about political and social analysis is dealing with people who foolishly assume nothing ever changes. Things change all the time. People can and do learn from the past. Nothing is hopeless, and nihilists are lazy and incompetent. For example, since 2020 within liberty movement circles there has been a contingent of naysayers claiming that red states were being subversively “turned blue” by leftists relocating …

“And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: Who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep: and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood …

“Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired; Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord‘s anger come upon you. Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord‘s anger. For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up. Woe …

“No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.” –  Harriet Beecher Stowe