Category: Quote of the Day

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship." – Alexander Fraser Tyler, 18th century Scottish historian, The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic

“Survival depends a great deal on a person’s ability to withstand stress in emergency situations. Your brain is without doubt your best survival tool. It is your most valuable asset in a survival situation. It isn’t always the physically strong who are the most effective or better at handling fear in emergency situations. Survival more often depends on the individual’s reactions to stress than upon the danger, terrain, or nature of the emergency. To adapt is to live.” – Chris Conway, in The Attitude of Survival

“Government is not reason;  it’s not eloquence;  it is force.  Like fire, it’s a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” – George Washington

“The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality, yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its’ exactitude is obvious; but its’ inexactitude is hidden; its’ wildness lies in wait.” – G. K. Chesterton

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” – Thomas Jefferson

“It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” – Howard Ruff

"Perhaps you’ve heard the one about the 700 firefighters from various states who volunteered to do rescue work following Hurricane Katrina? They sat in a hotel room in Atlanta for days getting sexual harassment training from Federal Emergency Management Agency officials. No joke. Note to Republicans eager to shovel new money at federal agencies: This is how government works." – Columnist Mona Charen

“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.   We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.  This is a prescription for disaster.   We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” – Dr. Carl Sagan

"We loved a great many things–birds and trees and books and all things beautiful and horses and rifles and children and hard work and the joy of life." —Theodore Roosevelt

"Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

"Its better to have one and not need it, then to need one and not have it." – Author Larry McMurtry explains the logic of having a gun, in Lonesome Dove

"No matter where you go… …There you are!" – Dr. Buckaroo Banzai

"…whatsoever the anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." – Patrick Henry

“Suburbs have become the heirs to their cities’ problems. They have pollution, high taxes, crime. People thought they would escape all those things in the suburbs. But like the people in Boccaccio’s Decameron, they ran away from the plague and took it with them.” – Charles Haar

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" – Thomas Jefferson