Category: Quote of the Week

“How come when I put my AmEx bill on my VISA, it’s stupid, but when the government does it, it’s stimulus?” – Tamara K., View From The Porch Blog

"Morals—all correct moral rules—derive from the instinct to survive; moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level…. Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics—you name it—is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be." – Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers 1959

“Pangloss is admired, and Cassandra is despised and ignored. But as the Trojans were to learn to their sorrow, Cassandra was right, and had she been heeded, the toil of appropriate preparation for the coming adversity would have been insignificant measured against the devastation that followed a brief season of blissful and ignorant optimism.” – Ernest Partridge: Perilous Optimism

“Money is a mirror of civilization. Throughout history, whenever we find good, reliable noninflated money, we almost always find a strong, healthy civilization. Whenever we find unreliable, inflated money, we almost always find a civilization in decay.” – Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? by Richard J. Maybury, Karl Hess, Kathryn Daniels, and Jane A. Williams

“Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say on the Lord." – Psalm 27:14

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” – Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale, Stockdale’s Paradox

"It is good to keep in mind that the screw that tightens the mechanism is also the one that loosens it." – From a Japanese air rifle manual, circa 1971

“No one was psychologically prepared for hard times when they hit, because, according to the tenets of positive thinking, even to think of trouble is to bring it on. Americans did not start out as deluded optimists. The original ethos, at least of white Protestant settlers and their descendants, was a grim Calvinism that offered wealth only through hard work and savings, and even then made no promises at all. You might work hard and still fail; you certainly wouldn’t get anywhere by adjusting your attitude or dreamily ‘visualizing’ success.” – Barbara Ehrenreich

“A government by representatives, elected by the people at short periods, was our object; and our maxim at that day was, ‘Where annual election ends, tyranny begins.’” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Adams, February 26, 1800

"We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land nor, perhaps, the sun and stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. The chart is the Constitution." – Daniel Webster

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and all that is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." – Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address

“By this we have come to know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives in behalf of our brothers. But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother having need, and shuts off his compassion towards him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” – 1 John 3:16-18

"A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool:–an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that." – Alan Ladd as Shane – Shane, 1953. (Screenplay by A.B. Guthie, Jr. and Jack Sher)

"You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but only for a limited period of time. Why should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" – President Ronald Wilson Reagan

"To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it." – Nelson Bunker Hunt