Category: Quote of the Week

“How can we think that setting up the Fed as monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform? The words ‘fox’ and ‘henhouse’ come to mind.” – Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin

“With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves.” – John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775

“Every man who goes into the Indian country should be armed with a rifle and revolver, and he should never, either in camp or out of it, lose sight of them. When not on the march, they should be placed in such a position that they can be seized at an instant’s warning; and when moving about outside the camp, the revolver should invariably be worn in the belt, as the person does not know at what moment he may have use for it. – Randolph B. Marcy, Captain, U.S. Army, The Prairie Traveler, 1859

“When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. …

"The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them!" – Sergeant Alvin York

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." – Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, on November 4, 1775

"If you become involved in a crisis situation, you will not rise to the occasion but, rather, default to your level of training." – A phrase first coined by firefighters, but now commonly used by shooting instructors

“In addition to some of the obvious reasons why you don’t want to cut yourself when operating a saw, blood on a bare tool steel blade can cause serious and near-immediate rusting, and good tools deserve better treatment than that. “ – H. J. Halterman, Along the Way, August 2009

“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence he is just using his memory” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The fact of the matter was that Venice was utterly demoralized. It was so long since she had been obliged to make a serious military effort that she had lost the will that makes such efforts possible. Peace, the pursuit of pleasure, the love of luxury, the whole spirit of dolce far niente (softness for nothing) has sapped her strength. She was old and tired; she was also spoilt.” – John Julius Norwich’s description of once mighty Venice’s surrender to Napoleon

“Nature is cruel and dynamic. It is a daily massacre for the lame and the newborn. Vicious spasms of violence red in tooth and claw tempered by turns of weather that can kill and nourish in the same pastoral event. Most importantly, nature is capricious in the most practical sense: the complexity is so immense as to be almost incomprehensible to human cognition. Complexity theory has tried to capture the distillate of what appears to be random phenomenon but is actually a spontaneous order much like economic market forces. Which brings us to the cruelest joke of all on the …

If liberty is not maintained with regard to education, there is no use trying to maintain it in any other sphere. If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else…. No we do not want a federal Department of Education; and we do not want, in any form whatever, the slavery that a federal department of Education would bring.” – J. Gresham Machen in Education, Christianity, and the State

For this is what the LORD says – he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. – Isaiah 43:1

“Modern military planners often talk in terms of “threat spirals” when a given threat escalates and inspires a defensive countermeasure. Ideally you should anticipate your opponent’s next escalation and take countermeasures, insulating yourself from the future threat.” – James Wesley, Rawles, discussing recent trends in home invasion robberies in “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times”

“Learn the crucial skills for self-sufficiency and self-defense. Once you’ve mastered them, share them with others. Future generations need to learn these skills. Raise your children to be God-fearing, practical, and thrifty. That will be a lasting legacy.” – James Wesley, Rawles, “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times”