“Survival begins not with guns, gold, and a garden. It starts with self-reliance, strong family and communal bonds, a plan of subterfuge, and clandestine acts centered in the refusal to be subdued. You can’t have it all so you had better spend the scarce time, energy and resources you have left to prepare.” – Tim Case
“For the record, every program the government put in place in 2009 has failed. Yet, we keep doing the same thing, at a cost of literally trillions of dollars. This is madness to the nth power.” – Editor of The Investor’s Business Daily, December, 2009
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." – Mark Twain
"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." – Aldous Huxley
“Unattended children will be given an espresso and a puppy.” – Sign seen posted at the Real Goods store, Hopland, California
Vizzini: “He didn’t fall? Inconceivable!” Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” – Wallace Shawn as Vizzini, and Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, in The Princess Bride (1987). Screenplay by William Goldman
“Gold – the ultimate money – Why? Because it is the only monetary asset that isn’t someone else’s liability. It doesn’t represent a promise to pay and it isn’t dependent up the survival of a particular power or group of powers. In a word, it is valuable because it is.” – C. M. Allen, 1974
"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others." – Thomas Jefferson
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." – U. S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, in the Public Utilities Commission v. Pollack decision, 1952
"A danger foreseen is half avoided." – The words in a Chinese fortune cookie recently handed to SurvivalBlog reader David W. in Colorado
“I am the good shepherd, and know my [sheep], and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, [and] one shepherd.” – John 10:14-18 (KJV)
“Look at the means which a man employs; consider his motives; observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself.” – Confucius [Ware’s translation, The Sayings of Confucius, p .26]
“The clocks stopped at one seventeen one morning. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it’s October but I can’t be sure. I haven’t kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. Each night is darker – beyond darkness. The world gets colder week by week as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived. All the crops are long gone. Someday …
“Now it becomes my duty to carry out the sentence which I have imposed on these men for killing and stealing within the territory under my jurisdiction. However, I want it strictly understood that there will be no undo shooting or cheering or drunken talk when I pull that lever on account it would offend the dignity of the occasion.” – John McIntire, as Skagway Sheriff Gannon in The Far Country (1954). Screenplay by Borden Chase.