"Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war; and this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties." – Aristophanes (B.C. 448-380)
My son, fear the LORD and the king; Do not associate with those who are given to change, For their calamity will rise suddenly, And who knows the ruin that comes from both of them? – Proverbs 24:21- 22 KJV
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States." – Noah Webster, "An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution," 1787, in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, p. 56 (New York, 1888).
"All centuries are dangerous, it is the business of the future to be dangerous. It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been the unstable ages." – Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
“The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the high powers” delegated directly to the citizen, and `is excepted out of the general powers of government.’ A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power.” – Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, at 401-402 (1859)
“The bottom line is that we’ve become a nation of thieves, a value rejected by our founders. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, was horrified when Congress appropriated $15,000 to help French refugees. He said, ‘I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.’ Tragically, today’s Americans would run Madison out of town on a rail.” – Dr. Walter Williams
"Let them fail; let everybody fail! I made my fortune when I had nothing to start with, by myself and my own ideas. Let other people do the same thing. If I lose everything in the collapse of our financial structure, I will start in at the beginning and build it up again." – Henry Ford. February 11, 1934
“We goldbugs will get our wish: the explosive price rise we have all drooled about for nearly a quarter century. The bad news it will be in the context of social anarchy and collapse. I have somewhat sardonically mentioned that I have been investing in lead, as in ammo, the other precious metal. If people think the urban mob members in evidence at the Long Island Wal-Mart on Black Friday were unusual or even particularly decadent in their behavior, they need to get out more. The rot is everywhere now. There is no hiding from it anymore. Nowhere; Nohow. My …
"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." – Thomas Sowell
“When you have no principles, your life is first worthless and then lost.” – Christopher Anvil, Pandora’s Planet
“Beware of those who say we’ve hit the bottom.” – Nouriel Roubini
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers… And this is the tendency …
“Today, a major economic crisis is unfolding. New government programs are started daily, and future plans are being made for even more. All are based on the belief that we’re in this mess because free-market capitalism and sound money failed. The obsession is with more spending, bailouts of bad investments, more debt, and further dollar debasement. Many are saying we need an international answer to our problems with the establishment of a world central bank and a single fiat reserve currency. These suggestions are merely more of the same policies that created our mess and are doomed to fail.” “The …
"Do we really think that a government-dominated education is going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government, as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires?" – Alan Keyes
“Most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame…’What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?’ And so they sit there and they… die. Because they didn’t do the one thing that would save their lives…Thinking.” – Anthony Hopkins as Charles Morse in “The Edge” (2007); screenplay by David Mamet