"And David said unto his men, Gird ye on every man his sword. And they girded on every man his sword; and David also girded on his sword: and there went up after David about four hundred men; and two hundred abode by the stuff." – 1 Samuel 25:13
"Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics … It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing." – Vaclav Havel
“The cops are the experts on the current criminal trends. If they have determined that a “high capacity” semiautomatic pistol and a .223 semiautomatic rifle with 30-round magazines are the best firearms for them to use to protect people like me and my family, they are obviously the best things for us to use to protect ourselves and our families.” – Massad Ayoob, writing in Backwoods Home magazine
"If even the concepts of individual responsibility and individual ability to make social agreements volitionally are to survive, then our competence in such survival skills as creativity and community must be constantly of concern, along with our tools. When it comes to tools, however, we have our our own emphasis also. There is coverage galore these days of ways to turn back full circle to subsistence living, voluntary simplicity, and virtually technology-free ways of working. That is an option, of course. Our own experience strongly suggests that people cannot be held to such limits. Human creativity always leaps over limits." …
"Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts." – William S. Burroughs
“Health, love and peace be all here in this place By your leave we shall sing, concerning our King. Our King is well-dressed in silks of the best In ribbons so rare no king can compare. We have travelled many miles over hedges and stiles, In search of our King unto you we bring. We have powder and shot to conquer the lot, We have cannon and ball to conquer them all. Old Christmas is past, twelve tide is the last And we bid you adieu, great joy to the new.” – Lyrics to The King (as sung by Steeleye …
"High noon behind the tamarisks, The sun is hot above us. As at home the Christmas Day is breaking wan, They will drink our health at dinner, Those who tell us how they love us, And forget us till another year be gone!" – Rudyard Kipling, Christmas in India
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find [me], when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:13 (KJV)
"Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." – Alexander Hamilton, 1787
“The complexity of social organization does not change. Our technologically sophisticated industrial society is more complex than the agrarian society of America in the eighteenth century. In this regard, that was ‘a simpler world.’ But the complexities of politics (politics here meaning the science of governing) do not change much. The basic political problems confronting the Framers of our Constitution were as complex as our political problems today—perhaps more so, because they were striking off into the dangerous unknown, whereas all we need do is return to the fine highway we were once on.” – Congressman Larry McDonald
"Note to Mayor Bloomberg: No guns in America isn’t quite as easy as no 32-ounce soft drinks in New York City." – SurvivalBlog Reader J.B.G.
"Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; So that, at the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal." – The Book of Common Prayer, 1662
“And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, Blessed [be] the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; To perform the mercy [promised] to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our …
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” – Isaiah 9:6 (KJV)
"A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent." – Dietrich Bonhoeffer