“The Wall Street crash doesn’t mean that there will be any general or serious business depression. For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game… Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before.” – Business Week, November 2, 1929
"Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city." – Jerry Pournelle, in a reply to reader e-mail, in Chaos Manor Mail # 141, February 19-25, 2001
“The more the government is allowed to do in taking over and running the economy, the deeper the depression gets and the longer it lasts. That was the story of the [19]30s and the early [19]40s, and the same mistakes are likely to be made again if we do not wake up.” – Congressman Ron Paul, from The Crisis Is Upon Us
"The decisive Revolutionary battle of Saratoga was fought near there on the bluffs and hills overlooking the Hudson in 1777. You wonder what the heroes of that battle would think of what we have become. What would they make of the word "consumer" that we use to describe our relation to the world? What would they think of excellent river bottom-land that is now barely used for farming – or, where it is still farmed (dairying if anything), of farmers who will not even put in a kitchen garden for themselves because it might detract from their hours of TV …
“One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!” – Winston Churchill
"God forbid that I should go to any Heaven in which there are no horses." – R.B. Cunninghame Graham, letter to Theodore Roosevelt, 1917
"The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits." – Plutarch
"…[P]art of your diversification strategy should be to have a farm or ranch somewhere far off the beaten track but which you can get to reasonably quickly and easily. Think of it as an insurance policy…Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food. It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.” – Barton Biggs, in “Wealth, War & Wisdom"
"One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." – Thomas Sowell
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." – Thomas Paine
“He created all men to be equal, and endowed them with ‘certain unalienable rights,’ among them ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ These words, in our Declaration of Independence, also convey the absolute conviction that without God and collective faith in His provision, human beings have no claim to this unprecedented freedom – that they might dream of it, long for it, try to accomplish some of it, but with no authority for it whatsoever.” – Pat Boone
"He who goes about unarmed in Paradise, had better be sure that is where he is." – James Thurber
"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it." – William Faulkner
"People kill people for Air Jordan tennis shoes. What do you think they will do for food if they are starving?" – SurvivalBlog Reader DK in Texas
“The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” – Benjamin Franklin