Famous Quotes

[mmckee1952]

“The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.” Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
Thomas Jefferson

“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

“The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.” George Washington
The world is a dangerous place to live; not only because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it Albert Einstein
We the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts – not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. Rev. Martin Niemoeller

[BC1]

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
Thomas Jefferson

He also said...

"Democracy is where 51% of the people take away the rights of the other 49%."

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner. Liberty is a 'well-armed' lamb contesting the vote."

[jameshd]

When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every
other correction is either useless or a new evil. --Thomas Jefferson

The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. Politicians should consider themselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves. --Thomas Jefferson

John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: "This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

[Rhino]

There's probably some duplicates in these.

Part 1.....

"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Richard Henry Lee, Senator, First Congress, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer (1788) at 169.


Dialing 911 takes seconds, waiting for help could take the rest of your life.

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in 7 years."
--- Mark Twain

“The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer”
--- Teddy Roosevelt

“Republicans believe every day is the 4th of July. Democrats believe every day is April 15th.”
--- Ronald Reagan

“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”
--- Robert Frost

“I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me.”
--George Patton

“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
--- Abraham Lincoln

“Every immigrant that comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
--- Teddy Roosevelt

lib•er•al: ‘li-b(&-)r&l
noun
A person so open-minded their brains have fallen out.
--- unknown

“All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; The states created the federal government.”
--- Ronald Reagan

Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself --- --- "Lillian, you should have remained a virgin."
--- Lillian Carter (mother of Jimmy and Billy Carter)

I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: "No good in a bed, but fine against a wall."
--- Eleanor Roosevelt

Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.
--- Mark Twain

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.
--- George Burns

Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year.
--- Victor Borge

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
--- Mark Twain

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
--- Socrates

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.
--- Groucho Marx

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe.
--- Jimmy Durante

I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.
--- Zsa Gabor

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
--- Alex Levine

My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying.
--- Rodney Dangerfield

Money can't buy you happiness: but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
--- Spike Milligan

I am opposed to millionaires ... but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
--- Mark Twain

Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was SHUT UP.
--- Joe Namath

I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap.
--- Bob Hope

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.
--- W.C. Fields

We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.
--- Will Rogers

Don't worry about avoiding temptation, as you grow older, it will avoid you.
--- Winston Churchill

Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty ... but everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.
--- Phyllis Diller

By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere.
--- Billy Crystal

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have --- Davy Crockett"

"Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?"
--- Ronald Reagan --- Inaugural speech."

"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 carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."
--- Marcus Tullius Cicero 42 B.C.

“It it weren't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all.”
--DoctorDoom

“If you want to lobotomize a liberal, shoot him in the ass.”
--DoctorDoom

"I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."
--- Booker T. Washington, 1911

"Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color."
--- Booker T. Washington

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro (his word) race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs.”
--- Booker T. Washington

"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in... and how many want out."
--- England 's Prime Minister Tony Blair on why he believes so much in America

The gentlest man cannot live in peace if it does not please his wicked neighbor.
--- Friedrich von Schiller

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
--- John Stuart Mill

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
--- George Orwell

"Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."
--- Colin Powell, Address to World Economic Forum, January 26, 2003, wherein Powell defended the U.S. position that the use of military force against Saddam Hussein was not only justified but necessary.

Dude, you would be in awe of an unflushed Ron Paul turd...
--- Elucidator, FreeConservatives, 1/6/08, “The ABC Debate”

" The meek shall inherit the earth but in small plots."
--- Unknown

"Television--- a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done."
--- Ernie Kovacs (1919-1962)

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
--- Benjamin Franklin

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--- Benjamin Franklin

"We worry too much about what other countries think of us.....actually they should be worrying about what we think of them!"
--- George Wallace

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
--- Sir Winston Churchill

We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
--- James Madison

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
--- Patrick Henry

Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rulers.
--- John Jay

Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
--- John Adams (1814)

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "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 specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
--- James Madison

To maintain the ascendancy of the Constitution over the lawmaking majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the [American] system must depend; unless that ascendancy can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the Executive, by influence of its patronage, will supersede the laws ...
--- John C. Calhoun (1782-1850)

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
--- Thomas Jefferson

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.
--- Thomas Jefferson (1801)

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.
--- Thomas Jefferson

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
--- Samuel Adams

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
--- Thomas Jefferson (1781)

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 to the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1775

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
--- Thomas Paine

Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one.
--- Thomas Paine

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
--- Thomas Jefferson (1800)

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.
--- George Washington

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.
--- Thomas Jefferson (1823)

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.
--- John Quincy Adams (1821)

An Avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
--- Thomas Paine

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
--- Daniel Webster (1834)

Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.
--- Thomas Paine (1776)

If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government that is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
--- James Madison

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
--- Thomas Jefferson (1801)

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 (1782-1852)

In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
--- Thomas Jefferson

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

The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.
--- Thomas Jefferson

If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread.
--- Thomas Jefferson

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.
--- James Madison

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?
--- Daniel Webster

When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
--- Thomas Jefferson

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

On every question of construction, 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

When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.
--- Thomas Paine

The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any body of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.
--- Noah Webster

I believe the states can best govern our home concerns and the federal government our foreign ones.
--- Thomas Jefferson

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.
--- Thomas Jefferson

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
--- Thomas Paine

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.
--- Thomas Paine

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but the newspapers.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
--- George Washington

I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Resistance to tyranny is service to God.
--- James Madison

Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
--- Thomas Jefferson

The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but a swindling futurity on a large scale.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
--- James Madison

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

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, if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be like tomorrow.
--- James Madison, Federalist Paper #62

If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its Republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
--- Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address

Experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms [of government], those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
--- Thomas Jefferson 1779

The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
--- Benjamin Franklin

In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.
--- Thomas Jefferson, 1824

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.
--- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1846), U.S. President, Letter to Abigail Adams, 22 February 1787

To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
--- President Thomas Jefferson

[Rhino]

Part 2........

It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.
--- Benjamin Franklin

No nation was ever ruined by trade.
--- Benjamin Franklin

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

If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.
--- Thomas Jefferson

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
--- James Madison (1751-1836)

If people let 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

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.
--- Thomas Jefferson

I cannot undertake to lay my finger upon an article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
--- James Madison

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 law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.
--- Thomas Jefferson

To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.
--- Richard Henry Lee

The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature … the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
--- James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
--- James Madison

It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
--- Thomas Paine

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.
--- George Washington

Where Liberty dwells, there is my country.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.
--Thomas Jefferson

Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.
--- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to F. W. Gilmer, 1816

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.
--- Thomas Jefferson

With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
--- James Madison

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself public property.
--- Thomas Jefferson

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.
--- Thomas Jefferson

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.
--- George Washington

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
--- Winston Churchill (1903)

It's no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense of duty.
--- Albert Einstein

It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
--- Winston Churchill

Politics is the art of obtaining money from the rich and votes from the poor on the pretext of protecting each from the other.
--- Anonymous

"I've got a firm policy on gun control. If there's a gun around, I want to be the one controlling it."
--- Clint Eastwood

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is --- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
--- George Bush, Speech to Israeli Knesset, May 16, 2008

Once you rip the screen off of the window, you cannot complain about what kinds of bugs come in.
--- DoctorDoom

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
--- Harry Truman

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.
--- Harry Truman

My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.
--- Harry Truman

Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.
--- Harry Truman

When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.
--- Harry Truman

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
--- Harry Truman

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.
--- Harry Truman

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
--- Ronald Reagan

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
--- Winston Churchill

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
--- Winston Churchill

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
--- Winston Churchill

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
--- Winston Churchill

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
--- Winston Churchill

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
--- Winston Churchill

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
--- Winston Churchill

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
--- Winston Churchill

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

There is no such thing as a good tax.
--- Winston Churchill

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
--- Winston Churchill

"I will not fight a battle of wits with an unarmed man"
--- Winston Churchill

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
--- Edmund Burke

I've never understood why bars (or in England's case, pubs) are subjected to smoking bans... I really don't know a single person who goes into a bar seeking to be healthy.
--- jayson, Freeconservatives forum, 6-23-08

Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, “the greatest,” but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.
--- Sydney J. Harris

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.
--- John F. Kennedy

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
--- John Philpot Curran

We have confused the free with the free and easy.
--- Adlai Stevenson

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
--- George Washington

When firearms go, all goes. We need them every hour.
--- George Washington

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
--- George Washington

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
--- Thomas Jefferson

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.
--- Ronald Reagan

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not to run their lives.
--- Ronald Reagan

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.
--- Ronald Reagan

"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."
--- Mark Twain

"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress...but then I repeat myself."
--- Mark Twain

"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
--- G. Gordon Liddy

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
--- George Bernard Shaw

"I don't make jokes...I just watch government and report the facts."
--- Will Rogers

"No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session."
--- Mark Twain

"There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress."
--- Mark Twain

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
--- Thomas Jefferson

"If hooking up an Iraqi prisoner's scrotum to a car's battery cables will save one American GI's life, then I have just two things to say: red is positive, black is negative."
--- T. Bubba Bechtol, Pensacola Councilman

I swear to God, some of these people are so anal that they would call you racist for mentioning that your shadow is darker than you are.
--- jayson, Freeconservatives forum, 8-14-08

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
--- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

We are Dyslexia of Grob...Futility is Resistant, Your Ass will be Laminated
--- Timberwolf, Freeconservatives forum, 10-24-08

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA -- ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."
--- Heinrich Himmler

Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen.I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.
-- Mark Twain

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe.
-- Jimmy Durante

I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
-- Alex Levine

My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap.
-- Bob Hope

We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.
-- Will Rogers

Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty ... But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.
-- Phyllis Diller

By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere.
-- Billy Crystal

And the cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good spit it out.
-- Unknown

Trying to spend your way out of an economic crisis is like trying to get your virginity back by having more sex.
-- Pennville Bill, FreeConservatives, 1/9/2009

The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.
-- Robert Bloch

Men are like parking spots, the good ones are taken and the free ones are handicapped.
-- unknown

I told my wife that a husband is like a fine wine; he gets better with age. The next day, she locked me in the cellar.
-- unknown

Men are like parking spots, the good ones are taken and the free ones are handicapped.
-- unknown

Girls are like phones. We love to be held, talked too but if you press the wrong button you'll be disconnected!
-- unknown

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.
-- unknown

What are the three words guaranteed to humiliate men everywhere? 'Hold my purse.'
-- unknown

Men are like bank accounts. Without a lot of money they don't generate a lot of interest.
-- unknown

What you call dog with no legs? Don't matter what you call him, he ain't gonna come.
-- unknown

Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
-- unknown

I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them.
-- George Bush

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the END any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
-- The late Dr. Adrian Rogers , 1931 to 2005, Former Pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.
-- John Adams

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well armed sheep.
-- Ben Franklin

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

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!
-- P.J. O'Rourke

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire (1764)

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!
-- Pericles (430 B.C.)

Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it.
-- Anonymous

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
-- Ronald Reagan

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of Misery.
-- Winston Churchill

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-- Mark Twain

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
--- Edward Langley, Artist (1928 - 1995)

I can remember way back when a liberal was generous with his own money.
--- Will Rogers

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
--- William F. Buckley Jr.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get rich quick theory of life.
--- Teddy Roosevelt

Let us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, San Francisco, May 13, 1903

There is no place for the hyphen in our citizenship... We are a nation, not a hodge-podge of foreign nationalities. We are a people, and not a polyglot boarding house.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, "The Square Deal"

I would rather go out of politics feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I had acted as I ought not to.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, Speech to the New York Assembly, 1884

Avoid the base hypocrisy of condemning in one man what you pass over in silence when committed by another.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, March 11, 1890, Cambridge, Massachusetts

We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, New York State Fair, September 3, 1903

When we undertake the impossible, we often fail to do anything at all.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, Chicago, September 3, 1900

It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty, and intelligence.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, Review of Reviews, January 1897

If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, Review of Reviews, January 1897

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user
--- Teddy Roosevelt, Autobiography

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
--- Teddy Roosevelt

If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness.
--- Teddy Roosevelt

Life brings sorrows and joys alike. It is what a man does with them - not what they do to him - that is the true test of his mettle.
--- Teddy Roosevelt

[Rhino]

Part 3.......

The hardest lessons to learn are those that are the most obvious.
--- Teddy Roosevelt

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above is character.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, The Outlook, March 31, 1900

Character is far more important than intellect in making a man a good citizen or successful at his calling- meaning by character not only such qualities as honesty and truthfulness, but courage, perseverance and self-reliance.
--- Teddy Roosevelt, North American Review, August, 1890

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
--- Thomas Edison

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.
--- Author unknown, though often cited to have originated from the Czech Republic

If liberals interpreted the 2nd amendment the way they do the 1st, carrying a gun would be mandatory.
--- unknown

I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.
--- Abraham Lincoln

Democracy has many definitions, but what's in it for me is not an element of any of them.
--- Col. Jeff Cooper

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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

It is a great mistake to suppose that the paper we are to propose [the Constitution] will govern the United States. It is the men whom it will bring into the government and the interest in maintaining it that is to govern them. The paper will only mark out the mode and the form. Men are the substance and must do the business.
--- John Francis Mercer

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
--- John Stuart Mill

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
--- John Stuart Mill

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 January 12, 1848

The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90 MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20.
--- SAM COHEN (inventor of the neutron bomb)

One man with courage makes a majority.
--- Andrew Jackson

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
--- Thomas Jefferson

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
--- Franklin D. Roosevelt

The buck stops here.
--- Harry S. Truman

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
--- John F. Kennedy

Life's tough ... it's even tougher if you're stupid.
--- John Wayne

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.
--- Will Rogers

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
--- George Washington

The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.
--- George Washington

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power . . . and treats him accordingly.
--- Henry David Thoreau

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
--- Doug Larson

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
--- George Washington

Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars.
--- Unknown

We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.
--- Abraham Lincoln

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.
--- Patrick Henry

A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 70, 1788

But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 32, 1788

As to Taxes, they are evidently inseparable from Government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Address to the Electors of the State of New York, 1801

I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, 1788

Here sir, the people govern.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788

If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws – the first growing out of the last. [...] A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, 1794

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; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 62, 1788

It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity. But it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed – that is, an extension of the revenue.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21, 1787

Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 74, 1788

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34, 1788

Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 62, 1788

While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense. In these are comprehended the regulation of commerce that is, the whole system of foreign intercourse; the support of armies and navies, and of the civil administration.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Remarks on the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.
--- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 22, 1787

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.
--- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1749

All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.
--- Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Robert Morris, 1783

All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?
--- Benjamin Franklin, To Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention, 1787

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.
--- Dalai Lama, talk with Oregon and Washington high school students, May 14, 2001

A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders.
--- Larry Elder

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
--- G. K. Chesterton

The right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.
--- Martin Luther King

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
--- John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)

The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, ... or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed...
--- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824

War is not the best way of settling one's differences; it is, however, the only way of preventing their being settled for you.
--- G.K. Chesterton

I can explain it to you. I can't understand it for you.
--- Kathy30, FreeConservatives.com, 2/4/11

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. The Marines don't have that problem."
--- Ronald Reagan

It's Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long
--- Song by The Notorious Cherry Bombs

The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.
--- Les Morris

Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
--- Unknown

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
--- Albert Einstein

It’s not life that’s important, but those you meet along the way that make the difference.
--- Unknown


Gun control: The theory that 110lb. women have the 'right' to fistfight with 210lb. rapists.
--- Unknown

Gun control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.
--- Unknown

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Drive thy business or it will drive thee.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended.
--- Benjamin Franklin

God heals, and the doctor takes the fees.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A penny saved is a penny earned.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A place for everything, everything in its place.
--- Benjamin Franklin

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.
--- Benjamin Franklin

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.
--- Benjamin Franklin

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
--- Benjamin Franklin

And whether you're an honest man, or whether you're a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Applause waits on success.
--- Benjamin Franklin

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
--- Benjamin Franklin

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Beauty and folly are old companions.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Beware the hobby that eats.
--- Benjamin Franklin

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Creditors have better memories than debtors.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Diligence is the mother of good luck.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Distrust and caution are the parents of security.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Fatigue is the best pillow.
--- Benjamin Franklin

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
--- Benjamin Franklin

God helps those who help themselves.
--- Benjamin Franklin

God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Half a truth is often a great lie.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that can have patience can have what he will.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
--- Benjamin Franklin

[Rhino]

Part 4.......

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that rises late must trot all day.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that won't be counseled can't be helped.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He that's secure is not safe.
--- Benjamin Franklin

He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?
--- Benjamin Franklin

Honesty is the best policy.
--- Benjamin Franklin

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.
--- Benjamin Franklin

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.
--- Benjamin Franklin

I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.
--- Benjamin Franklin

I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.
--- Benjamin Franklin

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.
--- Benjamin Franklin

I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.
--- Benjamin Franklin

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.
--- Benjamin Franklin

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
--- Benjamin Franklin

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
--- Benjamin Franklin

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.
--- Benjamin Franklin

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.
--- Benjamin Franklin

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Industry need not wish.
--- Benjamin Franklin

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.
--- Benjamin Franklin

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.
--- Benjamin Franklin

It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.
--- Benjamin Franklin

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.
--- Benjamin Franklin

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
--- Benjamin Franklin

It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Lost time is never found again.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Marriage is the most natural state of man, and... the state in which you will find solid happiness.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones - with ingratitude.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Necessity never made a good bargain.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Never confuse motion with action.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.
--- Benjamin Franklin

No nation was ever ruined by trade.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Observe all men, thyself most.
--- Benjamin Franklin

One today is worth two tomorrows.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Our necessities never equal our wants.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Remember that credit is money.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The discontented man finds no easy chair.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The doors of wisdom are never shut.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.
--- Benjamin Franklin

The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.
--- Benjamin Franklin

There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
--- Benjamin Franklin

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.
--- Benjamin Franklin

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means - either may do - the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.
--- Benjamin Franklin

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
--- Benjamin Franklin

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.
--- Benjamin Franklin

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory, sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Those that won't be counseled can't be helped.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Time is money.
--- Benjamin Franklin

To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.
--- Benjamin Franklin

To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.
--- Benjamin Franklin

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Tomorrow, every fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.
--- Benjamin Franklin

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
--- Benjamin Franklin

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.
--- Benjamin Franklin

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Well done is better than well said.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
--- Benjamin Franklin

When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.
--- Benjamin Franklin

When in doubt, don't.
--- Benjamin Franklin

When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?
--- Benjamin Franklin

When you're finished changing, you're finished.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Where liberty is, there is my country.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?
--- Benjamin Franklin

Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.
--- Benjamin Franklin

You may delay, but time will not.
--- Benjamin Franklin

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.
--- Benjamin Franklin

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
--- James Madison

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
--- James Madison

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
--- James Madison

A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.
--- James Madison

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
--- James Madison

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
--- James Madison

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
--- James Madison

All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.
--- James Madison

America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.
--- James Madison

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
--- James Madison

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
--- James Madison

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
--- James Madison

Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
--- James Madison

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.
--- James Madison

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
--- James Madison

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
--- James Madison

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.
--- James Madison

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
--- James Madison

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.
--- James Madison

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
--- James Madison

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
--- James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
--- James Madison

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.
--- James Madison

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
--- James Madison

[Rhino]

Part 5.....

In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
--- James Madison

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
--- James Madison

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
--- James Madison

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

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
--- James Madison

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
--- James Madison

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
--- James Madison

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
--- James Madison

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
--- James Madison

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
--- James Madison

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
--- James Madison

Philosophy is common sense with big words.
--- James Madison

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.
--- James Madison

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
--- James Madison

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
--- James Madison

The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.
--- James Madison

The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.
--- James Madison

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.
--- James Madison

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
--- James Madison

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
--- James Madison

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
--- James Madison

The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.
--- James Madison

The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
--- James Madison

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.
--- James Madison

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
--- James Madison

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.
--- James Madison

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
--- James Madison

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
--- James Madison

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.
--- James Madison

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
--- James Madison

There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
--- James Madison

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
--- James Madison

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.
--- James Madison

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
--- James Madison

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.
--- James Madison

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
--- James Madison

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
--- James Madison

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
--- James Madison

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?
--- James Madison

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?
--- James Madison

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
--- James Madison

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
--- James Madison

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
--- James Madison

Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.
--- Thomas Paine

Russians can give you arms but only the United States can give you a solution.
--- Anwar Sadat

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
--- James Madison

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
--- James Madison

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?
--- Patrick Henry

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.
--- Thomas Jefferson

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
--- Thomas Jefferson

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
--- James Madison

To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.
--- Richard Henry Lee

The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.
--- Niccolo Machiavelli

Free men have arms; slaves do not.
--- Sir William Blackstone

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
--- Aristotle

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
--- Mahatma Gandhi

The police don't protect individuals. They draw chalk outlines around individuals who don't protect themselves.
--- Deanimator, usacarry.com, 2/22/2012

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
--- Plato

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
--- Plato

As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.
--- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, 9/19/1785

I would never invade the United States. There would be a gun behind every blade of grass.
--- Isoroku Yamamoto, Imperial Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy (unconfirmed)

A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end, a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to render them independent on others for essential, particularly for military supplies.
--- George Washington, First Annual Message to Congress, January 8, 1790

“Everybody has asked the question, … ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, … let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.”
--- Frederick Douglass, 1865

“I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.”
--- Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery, 1901

[fudo]

Rhino - Thanks for posting that.

[dcselby1]

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have," Gerald Ford in an address to a joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974