Fr. Frog's Favorite Sayings
(Words of wisdom on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness)

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
#133

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." -- Patrick Henry (1788)

"The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them." -- Zacharia Johnson (1788)

"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." -- John Adams (1797)

"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)

"Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading." -- Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government... That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation." -- Alexander Hamilton (1788)

"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)

"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)

"Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself." -- Benjamin Franklin (1747)

"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship." -- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence." -- Joseph Story (1833)

"They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it." -- Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson (1781)

"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of opinion." -- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)

"There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism." -- Alexander Hamilton (1775)

"The constitutional right of free speech has been declared to be the same in peace and war. In peace, too, men may differ widely as to what loyalty to our country demands, and an intolerant majority, swayed by passion or by fear, may be prone in the future, as it has been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions with which it disagrees." -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941)

"If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great Security." -- Samuel Adams (1779)

"I am persuaded that a firm union is as necessary to perpetuate our liberties as it is to make us respectable." -- Alexander Hamilton (1788)

"A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love." -- Basil of Caesarea (3330-379 AD)

"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)

"It is a part of the function of 'law' to give recognition to ideas representing the exact opposite of established conduct. Most of the complications arise from the necessity of pretending to do one thing, while actually doing another." -- Thurman Arnold (1891-1969)

"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 (1788)

"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 (1879-1955)

"Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropriate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good." -- Oliver Ellsworth (1787)

"If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly." -- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

"Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest." -- Thomas Sowell

"War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice." -- Thomas Jefferson (1797)

"Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated." -- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." -- John Adams (1808)

"Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed." -- Havell (1936-2011)

"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 happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature." -- Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD)

"If it takes a law to stop you from holding a classroom discussion with 5-year-olds about sex, you shouldn't be a teacher. Actually, you shouldn't be allowed within several miles of a school." -- Allie Beth Stuckey

"It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness." -- James Wilson (1791)

"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)

"The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"In planning, forming, and arranging laws, deliberation is always becoming, and always useful." -- James Wilson (1791)

"In war, truth is the first casualty." -- Aeschylus (525-456 BC)

"Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy." -- Alexander Hamilton (1788)

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein (1879--1955)

"Newspapers ... serve as chimneys  to carry off noxious vapors and smoke." -- Thomas Jefferson (1802)

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." -- Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965)

"One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda." -- General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

"Judges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men." -- John Adams (1776)

"Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-18865)

"The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defense of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day."-- Joseph Story (1833)

"Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends." -- Isabel Paterson (1886-1961)

"The general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." -- James Madison (1787)

"You may not be interested in war, but war is very interested in you." -- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi (1828-1910))

"Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed." -- Mao Tse-Tung (1893-1976)

"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 (1788))

"There are two histories: official history, lying, and then secret history, where you find the real causes of events." -- Honor de Balzac (1799-1850)

"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired." -- Alexander Hamilton (1775)

"History teaches us that men and nations only behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." -- Abba Eban (1915-2002)

"The Shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shephard as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty." -- Abraham Lincoln (11809-1865)

"We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It follows the substance like its shade; but while a man walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost always in the dirt. It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. It strips virtue of her honors, and lends to faction its wildfire and its poisoned arms, and in the end is its own enemy and the usurper's ally, It would be easy to enlarge on its evils." -- Fisher Ames (1807)

"From a 'pragmatic' point of view, political philosophy is a monster, and whenever it has been taken seriously, the consequence, almost invariably, has been revolution, war, and eventually, the police state." -- Henry David Aiken (1912-1982)

private pleasures, passions and interests, nay, their private friendships and dearest connections, when they stand in competition with the rights of society." -- John Adams (17776)

"Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings." -- Jan C. Smuts (1870-1950)

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." -- John Adams (1756)

"Be it or be it not true that Man is shaped in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression." -- Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

"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 (1787)

"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation." -- General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience." -- Thomas Jefferson (1782)

"He who wants peace must prepare for war." -- Claudius (10 BC-54 AD)

"The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population." -- Joseph Story (1833)

"If you view abortion as somehow more sanitized and less vile than racism, you've been conditioned to accept the dominant paradigm our secular world expects you to conform to in order to neutralize you. Christianity condemns abortion & racism because all humans bear God's image." -- Andrew T. Walker

"It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for." -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." -- Thomas Jefferson (1802)

2024-02-21-#133


Please email comments to Fr. Frog by clicking here.


| Back to Fr. Frog's Home Page |


2022024-02-21 @ 1245