Some Of My Favorite Quotes

Tyranny

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.  It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.  The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep...his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."    C. S. Lewis

"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."    Thomas Jefferson

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." Daniel Webster

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." Robert Heinlein

"If tyranny & oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."    James Madison

“The price of apathy toward public affairs is to be ruled over by evil men.”    Plato

“You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders & decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.”    Mahatma Gandhi

"The strength & power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance."    Thomas Paine

"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."    James Madison (1751–1836)

"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.’" Adolf Hitler

"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not."    Thomas Jefferson

"I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."    Douglas MacArthur

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the Government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”    Thomas Jefferson

“Through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny.”    Friedrich Hayek

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."    Abraham Lincoln

"Just because some people cannot be trusted with freedom does not mean that others may be trusted with power."    Unknown

 “For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero, from his book De Republica, speaking of his childhood friend Julius Caesar

"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins."    Benjamin Franklin

Liberty

"When I say liberty...I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and to live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they want to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world; liberty of every local community to decide how its children shall be educated, how its local services shall be run, and who its local leaders shall be; liberty of a man to choose his own occupation; and liberty of a man to run his own business as he thinks it ought to be run, as long as he does not interfere with the right of other people to do the same thing."    Sen. Robert A. Taft

"We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest -- which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves."    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."    Benjamin Franklin

"Error of Opinion may be tolerated where Reason is left free to combat it."    Thomas Jefferson

"Those who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be."    Thomas Jefferson

"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government."    Thomas Paine
“Statesmen my dear Sir may plan and speculate for liberty but it is RELIGION and MORALITY alone which can establish the PRINCIPLES upon which FREEDOM CAN SECURELY STAND.  The only foundation of a free Constitution is PURE VIRTUE and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now they may change their rules and the form of government but they will not obtain lasting liberty.”    John Adams

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”    Thomas Jefferson

"Liberty is not collective, it is personal.  All liberty is individual liberty."    Calvin Coolidge

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me...Give me liberty or give me death!”     Patrick Henry

"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so many of the territory as they inhabit."    Abraham Lincoln on Sucession  January 12, 1848

“Freedom has a thousand charms to show, that slaves, howe'er contented, never know.”    William Cowper

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy.”    Alexander Hamilton

“On every question of constitution [let us] carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”    Thomas Jefferson

Christianity

"The gospel is not an announcement that God has relaxed his justice or lowered the standard of His holiness."    A.W. Pink

"Some people, when they use the word ‘salvation’, understand nothing more by it than deliverance from hell and admittance into heaven.  Now, that is not salvation: those two things are the effects of salvation."    Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”    Jim Eliot

"You don't have a Soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."    C.S. Lewis

“Love is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”    Answers to Questions on Christianity    C.S. Lewis

“Everyone knows the God of mercy and love. Do you know the God of Jeremiah?”

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities - against powers - against the rulers of the darkness of this world - against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all - to stand.”    Ephesians 6:12-13

"Lord save me from trendy religion that makes cheap cliches out of timeless truths."    Rich Mullens - "Save Me"

“I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian Socialism.”    Charles H. Spurgeon

"The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever."    John Piper (Adapted from the Westminster Catechism)

"And what does the LORD require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."    Micah 6:8

"If God is for us, who can be against us?"    Romans 8:31

“Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.”    Colossians 2:6-9

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.”    Hosea 4:6   

“So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?’”    Hebrews 13:6

Government

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."    Thomas Paine

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”    Thomas Jefferson

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates."    Tacitus  

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."    P.J. O'Rourke

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.  I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom.  My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.  It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden.  I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed'' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.  And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests,'' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”    Barry Goldwater

“[A] wise and frugal government shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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.”    Thomas Jefferson

"Don't steal - the government hates competition."

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and Bible."
George Washington

"If men were angels, there would be no need of government."    James Madison

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government."    Patrick Henry

Economy/Thrift

"There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means."    Calvin Coolidge

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”    Benjamin Franklin, 1766 

"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."    Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, 1824

"Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his."    Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The fact is, we'll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before."      Ronald Reagan

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.  A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”    Thomas Jefferson

Courage

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”    Robert Fritz

"You have enemies? Good. That means at some point in your life you stood up for something."    Sir Winston Churchill

“Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?”    Patrick Henry

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”    T.S. Eliot

"All that the best men can do is to persevere in doing their duty to their country and leave the consequences to Him who made it be their duty."    John Jay

Truth
"There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world."    Thomas Jefferson

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."    George Orwell

“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”    George Washington

"Do what you believe to be right, and ever hold it for a maxim, that if the skies fall through your doing right, honest men will survive the ruin."    Charles Spurgeon

States’ Rights

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."    James Madison, Federalist No. 45

"The foundation of the Constitution is laid on this ground: "All powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition"    Thomas Jefferson

“The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government.”    Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson explains in the Kentucky Resolutions the relationship between the national government and the states: “Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”

Education

"Schooling confuses teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new."    Wendy Priesnitz

"Let it be remembered, that I do not speak to the wild, giddy, thoughtless world, but to those that fear God. I ask, then, for what end do you send your children to school? 'Why, that they may be fit to live in the world.' In which world do you mean, this or the next? Perhaps you thought of this world only; and had forgot that there is a world to come; yea, and one that will last forever! Pray take this into your account, and send them to such masters as will keep it always before their eyes. Otherwise, to send them to school (permit me to speak plainly) is little better than sending them to the devil. At all events, then, send your boys, if you have any concern for their souls, not to any of the large public schools, (for they are nurseries of all manner of wickedness,) but private school, kept by some pious man, who endeavours to instruct a small number of children in religion and learning together."    John Wesley, "On Family Religion"

"The most prevalent form of child abuse in the country today is carried out by parents who send their children to government school." Talk show host Neal Boortz

2nd Amendment

"The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."    Thomas Jefferson

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”    Thomas Jefferson

"Japan would never invade the United States. We would find a rifle behind every blade of grass."    Isoroku Yamamoto

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." Thomas Jefferson

Consequences

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good."    Thomas Sowell

“I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.” General Robert E. Lee

“He does not believe, that does not live according to his belief."    Thomas Fuller

Taxes

"I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well."    John F. Kennedy

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” Thomas Jefferson

Bureaucracy

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”    James Madison

"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!"    President Ronald Reagan

Socialism

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure.  The creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.  Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." Winston Churchill

"The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people's money."    Margaret Thatcher  

Corruption

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."    Alexis de Tocqueville

"If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake."    Mahatma Gandhi

Patriotism

“...when the day of reckoning comes, complacence will be punished as guilt.”    Matthew Collins

“Loving a country that hates you isn’t patriotism. It’s servility.”    Harold Crews

Life

"Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves already been born."    Ronald Wilson Reagan

Wisdom

"Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”    Charles H. Spurgeon

Honor

"We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."  Irish novelist C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Persistence

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."    Gandhi

Capitalism

"The purpose of all regulation is to cut out the competition."    Franklin Sanders

Citizenship

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual - or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country."    Samuel Adams

Conservatism

“Conservatism’s history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward to perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It tends to risk nothing serious for the sake of truth.”    Robert L. Dabney

Opportunity

“The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become what God intends he should become.”    Ronald Reagan

Security

“Do not blame Caesar; blame the people of Rome who have rejoiced in their loss of freedom…who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of…more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.”     Cicero

Democracy

“When the people find they can vote themselves money; that will herald the end of the republic.”    Benjamin Franklin

Liberalism

"A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own."    Unknown

Redistribution

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”    Thomas Jefferson

Anti-Federalism

"This Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints towards monarchy; and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American?"    Patrick Henry

Foreign Policy

"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world."    George Washington