"A wayfaring man, traveling in the desert, met a woman standing along and terribly dejected. He inquired of her. "Who art thou?" "My name is Truth " she replied. "and for what cause, " he asked, "have you left the city, to dwell alone here in the wilderness?" She made answer, "Because in former times, falsehood was with few, but is now with all men, whether you would hear or speak." – The Fables of Aesop, Henry Altemus Company, 1899
“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success, than against those of the rulers of an individual State. In a single State, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens …
"America is the land which fought for freedom and then passed laws to get rid of it." – A. Neuman
"Despair is most often the offspring of ill-preparedness." – Don Williams, Jr.
“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all your things be done with charity.” – 1 Corinthians 16:13-14 (KJV)
“Shoulda, coulda, and woulda won’t get it done.” – Pat Riley
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories." – Thomas Jefferson
“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