One mark of a deteriorating society is when people cannot discern between truth and lies. Another is that they don't care and will believe whatever their itching ears want to hear.
— Cal Thomas
Homo-sexuals should not be censored, but neither should those who oppose their point of view. That's called free speech.
— Cal Thomas
The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.
— G. K. Chesterton
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
— Ronald Reagan
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."
— Ronald Reagan (October 27, 1964)
We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around.
— Ronald Reagan
Clip of Clinton on 60 Minutes: "I think if Ken Starr didn't run the investigation, I would have confessed."
Stewart: "Let me get this straight...if you weren't investigated, then you would have come clean? That's what I love about Clinton: he has the highest integrity when the situation is at its most hypothetical."
— John Stewart (quoted at The Corner)
Reagan's biggest badge of honor was winning the Cold War; Clinton's is getting away with perjury and obstruction of justice.
— James Taranto
It is in vain, sir, to extentuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 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
Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant or an enemy, must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves.
— Aesop
The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.
— P. J. O'Rourke
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
— P. J. O'Rourke
At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.
— P. J. O'Rourke
Democracy without morality is impossible.
— Jack Kemp
You stop trifling with our Constitution, and we'll stop talking about amending it.
— Ken Starr
Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.
— Thomas Sowell
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
— C. S. Lewis
When nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, the Left was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute, and the handful of us who survived would be walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now anyone with a few thousand bucks and an unlisted number in Islamabad in his Rolodex can get a nuke, and the Left couldn't care less.
— Mark Steyn
Joseph Lieberman was the only Democrat who had modest credentials as a moderate, though he experiences some confusion as to whether he should carry moderation to excess or practice excess in moderation.
— Norman Liebmann
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility 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 Adams, via Pejman Pundit
Nuclear weapons are to be worried about only when they're in the hands of Ronald Reagan - not so much when they're in the hands of a Third World anti-imperialist like Saddam Hussein. Can't you see?
— Jay Nordlinger
Liberal soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax in the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking.
— Ann Coulter
It is no secret that Hillary badgers everyone relentlessly until she gets her own way, which may explain why her favorite album is, Barbra Streisand Nags Cole Porter.
— Norm Liebmann
If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.
— William Penn
In a lecture, Werner von Braun once said "Ve haf alvays been aiming for zer stars" and a little voice at the back replied "But ve keep hittink London".
— Matt Economou's .signature
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
— Thomas Jefferson
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.
— F. A. Hayek
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
— Thomas Jefferson
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
— Thomas Jefferson
Those words, 'temperate' & 'moderate', are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction... A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is a species of vice.
— Thomas Paine
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
— Often attributed to Barry Goldwater, actually written by Karl Hess
But 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 limits of the law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.
— Thomas Jefferson
Any large extension of the Government into business affairs - no matter what the pretense and no matter how the the extension is labeled - will be bound to promote waste and put a curb on our prosperity and progress.
— Thomas Alva Edison
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
— Barry Goldwater
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
— H. L. Mencken
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
— Alexis de Tocqueville (After prompting by an email correspondent, I did some digging and determined that this is definitely not a genuine quote, see The Tocqueville Fraud?. I've left it here so that others won't make the same mistake I made in accepting its authenticity.)
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, and all that is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
— Thomas Jefferson (From his 1801 inaugural address)
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 (From his 1801 inaugural address)
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
— Samuel Butler
All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all.
— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (be sure to read the next quote!)
We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society.
— Hillary Clinton
A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.
— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (take the Teddy cure, next!)
There is but one answer to terrorism and it is best delivered with a Winchester rifle.
— Teddy Roosevelt
Government, today, is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world; there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters; they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
— H. L. Mencken
You sound surprised. We're talking about a government department here - they have procedures, not intelligence.
— Ben Hutchings (cam.misc)
If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
— Winston Churchill
...it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
— Bruce Schneier
Facts are mere speed bumps on the road to lefty moral outrage.
— Jonah Goldberg
Absolutely no bedwetting liberals or race warlords were harmed or mistreated in the creation of this web page --- though the temptation was certainly very tough to resist.
— Neal Boortz, found at Neal's website
