"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority." – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 22, December 14, 1787
“And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for [your] journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence. And when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let …
“Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.” – Proverbs 3:25-26 (KJV)
“Few can foresee whither their road will lead them, till they come to its end.” – Legolas in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers
"Always do right; it will gratify some people and astonish the rest." – Mark Twain
"The only things of value which we have at present are our arms and our courage. So long as we keep our arms we fancy that we can make good use of our courage; but if we surrender our arms we shall lose our lives as well." – Xenophon, The Persian Expedition
“Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind. Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and of physical effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different types of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort required to perform unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end, what the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in …
“We don’t need no stinkin’ permission to exercise our rights. We need to exercise our rights whether the government wants us to or not.” – Michael Boldin
“And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and [I know] the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but [are] the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast [some] of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown …
And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner [being] an hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses, and inhabit [them]; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another …
"…A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude…" – Aldous Huxley in the Foreword to the 33rd printing of Brave New World in 1966 (originally published in 1939)
"When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation." – Dr. Adrian Pierce Rogers
"Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones." – Benjamin Franklin
"But the people cannot have wells, and so they take rainwater. Neither can they conveniently have cellars, or graves, the town being built upon "made" ground; so they do without both, and few of the living complain, and none of the others." – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
“We are now in the final stages of what economist Ludwig von Mises termed the “crack-up boom,” with the Fed (and other central banks abroad) printing money frantically to try to stave off the inevitable collapse and hyperinflation. We have been warning about this outcome for several years now, and it is indicative of how dire circumstances have become that the likes of Forbes magazine — not a purveyor of Austrian economics by a long shot — is now frankly acknowledging it.” – Charles Scaliger, The New American, July 26, 2011.