Category: Quote of the Day

“The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. He is my ally of the moment and I should presume nothing more.” – Rourke

"Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being." – Lord Acton [John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton] (1834-1902), First Baron Acton of Aldenham

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But …

"People commit crimes because they are people—because they are innately selfish and do not care how their behavior affects other people, unless they have been raised to behave otherwise or unless they fear the criminal justice system." – Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays, p. 21

"It is an uphill struggle, but I wish that we could distinguish more carefully between freedom and liberty. These conditions are not the same, though they are certainly related. Freedom is the absence of restraint – a physical circumstance. Liberty, on the other hand, is a political situation denoting the lawful capability of the citizen to defend himself and his near and dear without interference from the state. Note that the Declaration of Independence forcibly and particularly establishes the blessings of liberty upon ourselves and our posterity. I like to carry a pocket copy of the Declaration, plus the Constitution, …

"Politicians cannot be trusted with a monopoly of power over other people’s lives. Thousands of years of history have demonstrated this again and again and yet again." – Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays, p. 12

"Even a dog knows the difference between being tripped over and being kicked." – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson

"There is nothing more terrifying than ignorance in action.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You can kid yourself and say I’m only going along because they have all the guns, but day by day, year by year, your integrity erodes. Finally, you become like the tyrants: just one more liar.” – Franklin Sanders

“‘It has never happened!’ cannot be construed to mean, ‘It can never happen!’– might as well say, ‘Because I have never broken my leg, my leg is unbreakable,’ or ‘Because I’ve never died, I am immortal.’ One thinks first of some great plague of insects – locusts or grasshoppers – when the species suddenly increases out of all proportion, and then just as dramatically sinks to a tiny fraction of what it has recently been. The higher animals also fluctuate. During most of the nineteenth century the African buffalo was a common creature on the veldt. It was a powerful …

"Men think in herds, go mad in herds, but recover their senses, one by one." – Charles Mackay

"Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." – Thomas Paine

"The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth." – Alan Blinder, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, on the PBS Nightly Business Report, 1994

“During the 1980s we were told (by the media) that if a nuclear war broke out, we’d all be dead anyway. The reality is now hitting a few (like me, LOL) that yes some people will die, but most will be alive and suffering if they are not prepared. I will not let my children suffer because I had my head in the sand, so I’m doing what I can to get ready for whatever comes.” – Tarran (A lady who is a member of the Yahoo discussion group “survivalretreat”, quoted with Tarran’s permission, courtesy of Rourke)