Being a student of history Fr. Frog has collected many wise and witty sayings from both the famous and infamous of our past and present. These words of wisdom deal with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the field of weaponcraft. All are applicable to modern life, and all are guaranteed to be politically incorrect. There may be occasional duplicates from past issues since I don't have the time to check.
Note: I have not tried to verify any of the quotes as to authenticity, but even if they are not authentic the sentiments stated therein are genuine.
I will try to update this section on a regular (well OK, so it's irregular) basis. Hopefully they'll appear January, March, May, July, September, and November, but lately I have fallen way behind. Hopefully things will be more consistent. but I may just go to "a couple of times a year."
If you have some gems of wisdom that you think should be included in the big list you can email them to Fr. Frog by clicking here. All submissions will be gladly accepted but your only reward will be in helping to raise the educational level of those who browse here. I hope you enjoy and profit from them.
Stout heart and good cheer!
Fr. Frog
Sayings
#136
"If we ever allow morality or law to become just a question of whose ox is gored, then we will have taken a fatal step toward national suicide. We can survive lapses into hypocrisy, but we cannot survive making hypocrisy a ruling principle." -- Thomas Sowell
"Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms: elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit." – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, published 1958
"The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world." -- George Washington (1789)
"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." -- Thomas Jefferson (1785)
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." -- George Washington (1796)
"The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man â€" every man -- is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, not a sacrificial animal serving anyone's need." -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties." -- Thomas Jefferson (1813)
"It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France. This is greatly due to a fatal desire -- learned from the teachings of antiquity -- that our writers on public affairs have in common: They desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy." -- Frederic Bastiatt (1801-1850)
"There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions." -- John Adams (1776)
"Men cannot see truth, because they love falsehood. The gospel is not seen, because it is too pure for their loose lives and lewd thoughts." -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
"Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred." -- Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (1787)
"The people are the most important element in a nation; the land and grain come next; the sovereign counts for the least." -- Chinese philosopher Mencius (372–289 BC)
"Never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you." -- Thomas Jefferson (1785)
"The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible." -- Ayn Rand ((1905-1982)
"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." -- Patrick Henryy (1775)
"If individuals be not influenced by moral principles; it is in vain to look for public virtue." -- James Madison (1789)
"Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds." -- Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)
"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 (1792)
"The false theory of progress maintains that we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test." -- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit." -- James Madison (1788)
"Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised." -- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck." -- Thomas Jefferson (1822)
"Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom." -- Jose Marti y Perez (1853-1895)
"We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it." -- George Washington (1785)
"The loss of liberty in general would soon follow the suppression of the liberty of the press; for it is an essential branch of liberty, so perhaps it is the best preservative of the whole." -- John Peter Zenger (1697-1746)
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." -- Thomas Jefferson (1816)
"The collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man's existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness." -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"I encourage [my family, players, and staff], if they have a pregnancy that wasn't planned, to go through with it. Go through with it. Let that unborn child be born, and if at that time you don't feel like you can care for it, you don't have the means or the wherewithal, then [my wife] Sarah and I will take that baby." -- Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh
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 (1788)
"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth - and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." -- Patrick Henry (1775)
"Any alleged 'right' of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right." -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"Ultimately, if we are going to win the battle to protect religious freedom in an increasingly secular society, we will need more than positive law." -- Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito
"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war." -- George Washington (1793)
"But if we are to be told by a foreign Power ... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little." -- George Washington (1796)
"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife." -- "Thomas Jefferson (1821)
"Inflation is just like alcoholism. In both cases, when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first. The bad effects only come later. That's why in both cases there's a strong temptation to overdo it. To drink too much and to print too much money. When it comes to the cure, it's the other way around. When you stop drinking or when you stop printing money, the bad effects come first and the good effects only come later." -- Milton Friedman (1912-2006)
"Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression." -- James Madison (1788)
"If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds." -- Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993))
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." -- James Madison (1792)
"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 (1792)
"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government." -- Mercy Warren (1805)
"To the extent that the West is to blame at all for the ills of the Third World it is to the extent that the West created Marx and his successors, among whom must be numbered many of those who advised the Third World leaders in post-war years." -- Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." -- John Marshall (1819)
"If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights." -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." -- John Adams (1765)
"The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist. But at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you." -- Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heissenberg (1901-1976)
"Our work is at its best when it's focused on what people care about. Let me tell you what people care about. They don't care as much about buying solar panels and electric cars as they do about having to live in a community where violent crime is rampant and you've got some crazy prosecutor that refuses to put people in jail, that refuses to prosecute entire categories of crime. People are worried about that and rightfully so. We have these beautiful cities that were once world-class cities that have become unlivable all over this country because we have these lunatic prosecutors that have decided they're not going to â€" entire categories of crime they will not prosecute. That's the kind of stuff we should be working on here tonight. ... Don't waste time on stuff that doesn't matter to real people working every single day who are not going to be driving an electric car next year or the year after that. But they might get mugged. But they might be a victim of a violent crime." -- Senator Marco Rubio
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?" -- Thomas Jefferson (1781)
"The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom." -- Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." -- Thomas Jefferson (1816)
"There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him." -- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check." -- Thomas Jefferson (1811)
"Communism was the regime for the privileged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man." -- Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)
"A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people." -- Alexander Hamilton (1788)
"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men." -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period." -- George Washington (1783)
"Communism never sleeps, never changes its objectives, nor must we. Our first duty to freedom is to defend our own. Then one day we might export a little to those peoples who have to live without it." -- Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)
"There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust." -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"Be honest, don't you and most of your friends constantly scratch your heads in disbelief at the things going on in this country? But what makes this different than before is that it's not a matter of unintended consequences, but deliberately disastrous consequences." -- David Limbaugh
"Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." -- James Madison (1794)
"The principle of the Constitution is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions, except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend of free government." -- Thomas Jefferson (1797)
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." -- Thomas Jefferson (1821)
"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech." -- Benjamin Franklin (1722)
"The mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain." -- James Madison (1788)
"Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." -- Alexander Hamilton (1787)
"The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people." -- Thomas Jefferson (1801)
2024-09-09 @ 1200 #136
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2024-02-21 @ 1200