“Why did she have to go So young I just don’t know why Things happen half the time Without reason without rhyme Lovely, sweet young woman Daughter, wife and mother Makes no sense to me I just have to believe She flew up to Heaven on the wings of angels By the clouds and stars and passed where no one sees And she walks with Jesus and her loved ones waiting And I know she’s smiling saying Don’t worry ’bout me.” – Alan Jackson, from Sissy’s Song
“Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.” – from the novel Hope by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith
"But what do you mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The revolution was effected before the war commenced. The revolution was in the minds and heart of the people." – John Adams
“It will not be quick and it will not be easy. Our adversaries are not one or two terrorist leaders, or even a single terrorist organization or network. It’s a broad network of individuals and organizations that are determined to terrorize and, in so doing, to deny us the very essence of what we are: free people. They don’t live in Antarctica. They work, they train and they plan in countries. They’re benefiting from the support of governments. They’re benefiting from the support of non-governmental organizations that are either actively supporting them with money, intelligence and weapons or allowing them …
“When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else’s money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn’t care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else’s money on someone else, he doesn’t care …
"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens…. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." – John Maynard Keynes
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." – Patrick Henry
“When in doubt, overbuild.” – Eric Flint, 1635: The Cannon Law
"Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday." – Psalm 37:3-6
"A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality." – Winston Churchill
"…if the debt should once more be swelled to a formidable size… we shall be committed to the English career of debt, corruption and rottenness, closing with revolution." – Thomas Jefferson
“If you’re not shootin’, you should be loadin’. If you’re not loadin’, you should be movin’, if you’re not movin’, someone’s gonna cut your head off and put it on a stick.” – Clint Smith, Director of Thunder Ranch
“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious.But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. …
“They didn’t have rounds for the Buhnder, but we’re ammoed up pretty good. Got a discount too, on account of my intimidating manner.” – Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Firefly Episode 12, “The Message”. Screenplay by Joss Whedon and Tim Minear
“You gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?” – Clint Eastwood in the title role of The Outlaw Josey Wales, (1976). Screenplay by Phillip Kaufman and Sonia Chernus, based on the novel Gone to Texas by Asa Earl Carter, under the pen name Forrest Carter. (He also authored The Education of Little Tree.)