“We won’t take a dime if we ain’t earned it When it comes to weight brother we pull our own If it’s our backwoods way of livin’ you’re concerned with You can leave us alone We’re about John Wayne, Johnny Cash and John Deere Way out here, way out here Our houses are protected by the good Lord and a gun And you might meet ’em both if you show up here not welcome son ” – Josh Thompson, from the lyrics to his song: Way Out Here
"No investment will pay returns as high as paying down debt." – Nolan Lickey, Business, Seventh Edition, by Pride, et.al., Houghton Mifflin Publishers, 2002
“I started noticing in the 1980s the growing gulf between the country’s thought leaders, as they’re called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we’ll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views. But I’ve never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm.” – Peggy Noonan in an August, 2010 essay titled: America Is At Risk Of Boiling Over, in The Wall Street Journal
"When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else." – David Brin
“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” – Isaiah 35:10 (KJV)
“There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk ‘his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor’ on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children and can never be anything else.” – The fictional character Jill Boardman, accepting the challenge to oversee the safety of the Man from Mars, in the novel Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
“Near civil war between town and country was a pervasive feature of this break-down in social order. Large mobs of half-starved and vindictive townsmen descended on villages to seize food from farmers accused of hoarding. The diary of one young woman described the scene at her cousin’s farm: ‘In the cart I saw three slaughtered pigs. The cowshed was drenched in blood. One cow had been slaughtered where it stood and the meat torn from its bones. The monsters had slit the udder of the finest milch cow, so that she had to be put out of her misery immediately. …
"Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it." – John Adams
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” – Edmund Burke
“Interestingly, NPR ran a local story over the weekend — an obscure little item — saying that Amtrak was determined to raise the average speed of its passenger trains running north from Connecticut through Vermont from 40 miles-per-hour to 60 mph. That would be some triumphant accomplishment! It would bring us back to about an 1860 level of service. Of course, I happen to believe that we will be lucky in a few years if we are able to enjoy an 1860s standard-of-living, so maybe this little side venture in public transport is perfectly in tune with America’s future.” – …
"I heartily accept the motto, — "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." – Henry David Thoreau – 1849 (The opening lines of Civil Disobedience)
“Now there was no food in all the land; for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished by reason of the famine. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, for the grain which they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house. And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph, and said, “Give us food; why should we die …
"It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste." – Henry Ford
"A wild boar stood under a tree, and rubbed his tusks against the trunk. A fox passing by asked him why he thus sharpened his teeth when there was no danger threatening from either huntsman or hound. He replied, "I do it advisedly; for it would never do to have to sharpen my weapons just at the time I ought to be using them." To be well prepared for war is the best guarantee of peace." – The Fables of Aesop, published by Henry Altemus Company, 1899.
"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) by quiet men in clean, carpeted and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices." – C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters