Quotes From Various Sources
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Quotes From Various Sources |
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Political Quotes Index We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. --Declaration of Independence In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. --Thomas Jefferson If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power of money should be taken from banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies. --Thomas Jefferson Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation. --James Madison Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right. --W E Gladstone It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right. --W. E. Gladstone I always admired Mrs. Grote's saying that politics and theology were the only two really great subjects. --W. E. Gladstone The people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants. --Wm. Penn Restraint of government is the true liberty and freedom of the people. --John P. Reid It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than even by good laws. --Aristotle Civilizations die from suicide, not murder. -- Arnold Toynbee All the best in the civilization of today is the fruit of Christ's appearance among men. --Daniel Webster I would rather be right than President --Henry Clay Any government is better than no government. --Cato [pace libertarians and anarchists] The proper function of government is to make it easy for people to do good and difficult for them to do evil. --William Gladstone You cannot help men permanently by doing for them the things they could and should do for themselves. --Edward Everett Hale As John Adams said, more than two centuries ago: "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --Thomas Sowell The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. It is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.” --Thomas Jefferson Most Americans are still clueless because calculating the worth of that particular price-value equation would require facts and we no longer believe in facts. Facts are hard and we like emotions because emotions are soft with a creamy center. It would require self-examination and self-criticism while Americans prefer self-esteem. It would require rational thinking and being rational is mean spirited. It would require making a judgement and being judgmental is the only remaining sin in a culture that has lost all sense of sin. --Ed Cobb The simple fact is that when I took up my little sling and aimed at Communism, I also hit something else. What I hit was the forces of that great socialist revolution, which, in the name of liberalism, spasmodically, incompletely, somewhat formlessly, always in the same direction, has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades. ...[T]hough I knew it existed, I still had no adequate idea of its extent, the depth of its penetration or the fierce vindictiveness of its revolutionary temper, which is a reflex of its struggle to keep and advance its political power. --Whittaker Chambers Humanism is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: 'Ye shall be as gods'. --Whittaker Chambers To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. --Voltaire Government may be a necessary evil, given sinful man, but as the product of men, government should be limited to a few and carefully specified functions. --Steven Yates I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class. --Fredrick Douglas ...Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger. --Patrick Henry No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. --George Mason Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." --Proverbs 14:34 A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot. --Plato "To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem (Judges always want to expand their jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." --Thomas Jefferson If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. --Samuel Adam They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Benjamin Franklin The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. -- Justice Joseph Story (James Madison's Supreme Court appointee ) The socialist state requires greater and greater degrees of force to make it function. If resources and wealth are allocated on the basis of need rather than production, people will compete to be more needy rather than more productive. --Linda Bowles How you treat the helpless is the real test of morality. Lots of people are flunking that test big time.--Thomas Sowell The genius of republican liberty seems to demand that...those entrusted with [power] should be kept in dependence on the people by a short duration of their appointments... --James Madison Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose. -- Ronald Reagan The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. --Ronald Reagan Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. --Ronald Reagan
It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have
learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.
--Ronald Reagan The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program. --Ronald Reagan A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the best means by which that object can be attained...The happiness of society is the first law of every government. --James Madison Federalist No. 62) Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. --James Madison [Yet that is what our President Bush has declared, on the elusive abstraction, 'terror.'] A Conservative is “a person who endeavors to conserve the best in our traditions and our institutions, reconciling that best with necessary reform from time to time." --Russell Kirk Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems. --Reinhold Niebuhr The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world. --Reinhold Niebuhr Unity without verity is no better than conspiracy. --John Trapp The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it. --John Ruskin “...but cool and candid people will at once reflect that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the GREATER, not the PERFECT good...” --Madison (Federalist No 41). “Doesn’t human experience tell us that momentary passions and immediate interest exercise a more imperious control over human conduct that the more remote considerations of policy, usefulness, or justice” paraphrase of Hamilton (Federalist No. #6) It is political correctness, scourge of our times. That intellectual burlesque that places greater value on protecting political sensibilities than on protecting our nation through attention to political realities. --Kathleen Parker As an American nationalist, Buchanan's concern is the interests of this country as fundamentally distinct from all others, and deserving of a special place – indeed, the only place – in the affections of our makers of policy. He is, above all, an American patriot, deeply in love with the tradition and spirit of a people uniquely averse to empire-building on account of their love of liberty. Yet any assertion of this kind of Americanism is "shouted down as 'isolationist!'" he complains, and "it is time to expose this malevolent myth of 'isolationism,' so that our foreign policy debate can proceed on the grounds of what is best for America." What is best for America – not the multinational corporations, or the United Nations, or the peoples of the world, or even the New World Order. No, not any of these, but for America First – a slogan that Pat has revived single-handedly, and one that deserves the widest possible circulation. --Justin Raimondo A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it. --Dean William Inge Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. --Dean William Inge He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself. --C. S. Lewis There are two conflicting philosophies of governing in the world. One, the American view, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, states that all people have rights they are born with and that government’s only job is to protect those rights at all costs. The Declaration says that these rights are forever and unquestioned. It is the foundation for human freedom. The other says that government decides the rights we should have, professing that all such rights give way to an undefined, common good whenever the situation is warranted. That means that all so called rights are subject to the whim of whatever gang is currently in power at the time, making the definitions of what constitutes the "common good." --Tom DeWeese In Germany they first came 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. -- Pastor Martin Niemoller It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny. -- James Fenimore Cooper Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. [Who will police the police?] -- Latin proverb If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM." --Lyndon B. Johnson We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate. --Kim Hubbard We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. --Aesop A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. --G. B. Shaw On America: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" --Samuel Johnson (Taxation No Tyranny) How small, of all that human hearts endure, / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! ---Samuel Johnson African-American leaders complain that black people aren't getting anywhere politically. They're right. That's because they've perfected the recipe for how to become politically irrelevant — allow yourself to be taken for granted by one party and written off by another. --Ruben Navarette All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -- Edmund Burke I have some advice for these learned souls. If they want to understand the American electorate, maybe they should spend less time at Starbucks sipping double lattes over the Sunday Times and more time at church or the local high school football game or in line at a Wal-Mart. They might actually learn something about the values that drive most Americans: faith, family and an abiding love of their country. Maybe if the elites would stop lecturing instead of listening to the American public, they'd be less surprised at the outcome of our elections. --Linda Chavez Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. --Frederick Douglass 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. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe [and how much more the Middle East? RK] has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the cause of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. --George Washington The Hollywood wings of the vast loony conspiracy have feathered their nests with capitalist spoils. They live more opulently than royalty; yet put a microphone in front of their faces and they channel the spirit of Che Guevara. --Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner
Only that which has understanding can act in free judgment. For such a being comprehends the universal concept of good and can therefore see that this or that object is good. Wherever therefore intellect is found there is also freedom. --Thomas Aquinas
Madison refers (Federalist 43) "to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed." --James Madison
A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the best means by which that object can be attained. --James Madison (Federalist 62).
The stoic notion that the chief good of man is to live according to nature has a certain amount of truth to it, since man was created to live according to his best nature. Man is created for virtue: the moral law is built into man. --Richard Kirby (unless I just forgot where I read it)
This just might work: "The jury may not at any time be removed from the courtroom during a trial to prevent them from hearing evidence. ... The judge has no power to strike any evidence from the record. It is expected that juries are reasoning Adults who are as competent as the judge to decide who is lying and who is not. Evidence uncovered by an illegal search WILL be allowed in Court. Unlike corrupt countries that allow both the criminal and the arresting officer to go free when an illegal search is made, Oceania will prosecute both." --Eric Klien and Mike Oliver in the Constitution of Oceania
Sometimes those who oppose capital punishment talk about 'the sanctity of human life.' ... But the issue of capital punishment comes up only because the murderer has already violated the sanctity of human life. Are we to say that his life has more sanctity than the life or lives he has taken?" --Thomas Sowell 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 he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among 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 traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and 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 a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. --Marcus Tullius Cicero If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. --Joseph Goebbels Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight; But roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right. --Hilaire Belloc My own view of war can be put simply; a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them. --Murray Rothbard The cultural captivity of Christianity has not spared evangelicals in America. Witness the bellicose tone of many evangelical leaders applauding America's military intervention in Iraq, making religious militancy a partner with America's military might in a joint assault in the war on terror and on Islam. The flag has become a more prominent symbol in many evangelical churches than the cross. --Lamin Sanneh The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one. --Adolph Hitler Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. --Voltaire The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers, which are cited to justify it. --John F. Kennedy Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past. --(from '1984') George Orwell War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it. --Martin Luther A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. --Alexander Tyler In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? --Augustine The purpose of all wars, is peace. --Augustine Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured. --Thucydides Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. --Alexis de Tocqueville America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be
good, America will cease to be great. --Alexis de Tocqueville To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman. --George Santayana When you have robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power. He is free again. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it. --Samuel Richardson I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both. --Thomas Babington Macaulay We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of
its periodical fits of morality. --Thomas Babington Macaulay Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny. --Jacques Maritain Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it
is a merger of state and corporate power. --Benito Mussolini Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old. --Rudyard Kipling It is unwise to propose solutions for problems – if they are problems – whose causes are not known. It is even more unwise to propose political solutions, for all politics rests on force. --Gary North Concerning the estate tax, "Any legislation that allows an agency that is not authorized by biblical law to inherit wealth from a dead man's estate is a form of legalized theft." --Gary North The essence of libertarianism is its antipathy to the State, but especially the messianic State: the State as a savior. --Gary North The need now is for order. This is not the age of reformation but of defence, when every man of goodwill should devote all his powers to preserving the few good things left to us from our grandfathers. --Evelyn Waugh
There are two kinds of fools: One says, This is old therefore it is good. The other one says, This is new therefore it is better. --William Inge
Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. --Dean William Inge
Diplomacy --- the art of saying "Nice doggie" 'til you can find a stick. --Wynn Catlin
The way my luck is running, if I were a politician I would be an honest man. --Rodney Dangerfield
In my view the Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power---political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. --Barry Goldwater (1979)
We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world. --Cecil Rhodes (1931)
I believe that in the twenty-first century human life is going to be a unity in all its aspects and activities. I believe that, in the field of religion, sectarianism is going to be subordinated to ecumenicalism, that in the field of politics, nationalism is going to be subordinated to world government. --Arnold Toynbee
The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden - that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. --C. S. Lewis The one incomparably powerful means of exploitation is the State. It is also the safest means, because it is irresponsible. It is exempt from all the basic sanctions of ordinary morality. It is free to murder, cheat, lie, steal, and persecute at its own good pleasure and without fear of reprisals. Socialists who say that the smooth and honest administration of great private concerns like General Motors shows that the collectivist State can be smoothly and honestly administered, forget the determining factor of irresponsibility. A top executive of the Steel Corporation who in his official capacity is a proven liar, spendthrift, cheat, and swindler, would not last overnight; any top executive of the State can last indefinitely under those conditions. Moreover, officials of the Steel Corporation, from top to bottom, have to show some kind of competence; officials of the State do not. How many ranking officials are there in the bureaucracy at Washington today whose judgment you would trust in a commercial transaction involving thirty-five dollars? --Albert Jay Nock It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices [i.e. the separation of powers] should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But 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. In framing a government which 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 (Federalist # 51) ...throughout history, no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing the common good. --Ayn Rand THE CREED OF FREEDOM, compiled by G. Edward Griffin INTRINSIC NATURE OF
RIGHTS SUPREMACY OF THE
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM OF CHOICE EQUALITY UNDER LAW PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT ---------------- It cannot be said too often - at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough - that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of. --George Orwell The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution...if the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. --Thomas Jefferson
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