I think we can all agree that this is very important.
We need our highest judicial body to stop this childish bickering and get back to debating the kinds of weighty constitutional issues that have absorbed the court in recent years, such as whether a city can legally force an exotic dancer to cover her entire nipple, or just the part that pokes out.
— Dave Barry, Dave Barry is Not Making This Up
Blackstone’s Ratio, mentioned by Ben Franklin in this quote, identifies why the benefit of the doubt must always be given to the accused, especially if the accusation is really bad.
That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.
— Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan (1785)
When laws are carried out not only for the public good, but also to target and punish, it dos society great harm.
The more numerous the laws,
the more corrupt the government.
— Publius Tacitus, Annals (117 AD)
(Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges)
In the later novel, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, a character refers to the earlier book’s comment: “Dr. Harshaw says that ‘the word ‘love’ designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one’s own happiness.”
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
— Robert Anson Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
“When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth…and take all the fun out of it.”
Life does not cease to be funny when people die
any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
— George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)
Gerald Ford's famous paraphrasing of Nock's statement: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."Address to Congress (08-12-74)
You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it;
and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.
— Albert Jay Nock, The Criminality of the State (1939)
(note that the famous version is often misattributed to Jefferson, Goldwater, or Reagan, but is actually from Gerald Ford)
Evelyn Beatrice Hall was paraphrasing Voltaire's mindset, not quoting him. The closest he ever came was "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too", in Essay on Tolerance
‘What a fuss about an omelette!‘ he had exclaimed when he heard of the burning. How abominably unjust to persecute a man for such an airy trifle as that!
‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ was his attitude now.
— Evelyn Beatrice Hall, in The Friends of Voltaire, summarizing Voltaire’s defense of a censored book (1906)
"I would like to think that if we had a freer society, it would take care of blacks and whites and everybody equally. But if we had equal justice under the law, it would be a big improvement"
Libertarians are incapable of being racists, because racism is a collectivist idea; you see people as groups. A civil libertarian like myself sees everyone as an individual.“It’s not the color of the skin that’s important” as Martin Luther King said, “it’s the character of the individual“.
You know what is really interesting, though, and might be behind [the racism claims]. Because I, as a Republican candidate, am getting the most black votes and black supporters, and now that has to be undermined.
~ Ron Paul, CNN interview at Myrtle Beach, CA (2008)
Why is it that any unseasonably warm weather is proof of global warming, but unseasonably cold weather isn't evidence of the past six years of global cooling?
Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods.
- From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age.
- From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming.
- From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age.
- This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.
~Senator James Inhofe, Senate Floor speech (2006)
Click here for the entire timeline of Global Warming / Ice Age scares
Click to view the actual quote, in President Jefferson's own handwriting.
Still one thing more, fellow-citizens–a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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 this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
— Thomas Jefferson‘s First Inaugural Address (1801)
The federal government of the United States of America takes away between a fifth and a quarter of all our money every year. That is eight times the Islamic zakat, the almsgiving required of believers by the Koran; it is double the tithe of the medieval church and twice the royal tribute that the prophet Samuel warned the Israelites against when they wanted him to annount a ruler…
…remember that all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody’s head.
Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don’t pay taxes, you’ll be fined. If you don’t pay the fine, you’ll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you’ll be shot.
Thus I:
- in my role as citizen and voter
- am going to shoot you
- in your role as taxpayer and ripe suck
- if you don’t pay your fair share of the national tab.
Therefore, every time the government spends money on anything, you have to ask yourself, “Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?”
"What world can afford this sort of thing for long? We are in an armaments race. Where will it lead us...At best, to robbing every people and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil."
Every gun that is made,
every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
the genius of its scientists,
the hopes of its children.The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this:
a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war,
it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
— General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his speech The Chance for Peace (1953)
200 years later, they still haven't learned.
The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.
— President John Adams, First Annual Address (1797)
Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, inspiration for the move The Patriot, was the best tactician of the Revolution...and opposed to preemptive war
As to war, I am and always was a great enemy, at the same time a warrior the greater part of my life, and were I young again, should still be a warrior while ever this country should be invaded and I lived — a Defensive war I think a righteous war to Defend my life & property & that of my family, in my own opinion, is right & justifiable in the sight of God.
An offensive war, I believe to be wrong and would therefore have nothing to do with it, having no right to meddle with another man’s property, his ox or his ass, his man servant or his maid servant or anything this is his. Neither does he have a right to meddle with anything that is mine, if he does I have a right to defend it by force.
— Brigadier General Daniel Morgan of the American Revolutionary War, letter to Miles Etting (1798)
Government programs are driven by greed, not altruism.
It is the selfish who demand that politicians take money from others, and redistribute it to themselves.
— KAZ Vorpal, But Now You Know (2011)
Any time you see a talking head advocating "national interest" above what is right and good, remember this saying
The man of character cares about what is right,
the inferior man cares about his advantage.
— K’ung-fu-tzu, according to the Analects, 4.16 (225 BC)
Early to bed and early to rise is a bad rule for anyone who wishes to become acquainted with our most prominent and influential people.
— George Ade, True Bills (1904)
Each of the last five American presidents, treating the evil Egyptian dictator like a friend, thereby helping isolate America in the eyes of the world
It is not we non-interventionists who are isolationsists.
The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders.
The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seek change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example.
—Ron Paul, I advocate the same foreign policy the Founding Fathers would, Union Leader (2007)
There is a recent push to censor political speech like the above picture, ban guns, et cetera, to "protect politicians"...but crazed maniacs aside, their fear is healthy for liberty
Where the people fear the government you have tyranny.
Where the government fears the people you have liberty.
— John Basil Barnhill, Indictment of Socialism (#3), transcript of Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism (1914)
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
— Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later (1978)
Each little blurry light in this picture is a galaxy, full of billions of stars. This is just from one tiny square of the sky. It goes on endlessly, even if we don't know about it.
The Arizona shooting is just the latest in an endless series of efforts by corrupt political thugs to exploit crisis and tragedy
You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
— Rahm Emanuel, Interview to the Wall Street Journal, (2008)
A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper.
He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.
— Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, the Limits of Government Activity
Fosdick is one of our favorite quote-makers.
Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick, On Being a Real Person (1943)
The hundreds of billions wasted on foreign aid go straight into the pockets of the tyrants
That’s where all the foreign aid (which might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries) went as well.
The U.S. government still squanders about $20 billion a year this way, and European governments spend proportionally even more; it’s all gone straight down a giant rathole.
— Douglas Casey, Opportunity in Mozambique
If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it. In our country — it is not the same in all countries: it was not so in republican France, and it is not so in the USA today — it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect
— George Orwell, Freedom of the Press (1948)
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force!
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
— Cited by Upton Sinclair, in The Cry for Justice (1915), as having been said by George Washington
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.
In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
— Ben Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, 1776
Defend your opponents' rights, or lose your own
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, First Principles of Government (1795)
It is beyond belief that we know so little about how people get rich or poor, about how it is they come to dwell in comfort and health or die in penury and disease.
Financial markets are the machines in which much of human welfare is decided; yet we know more about how our car engines work than about how our global financial system functions. We lurch from crisis to crisis. In a networked world, mayhem in one market spreads instantaneously to all others—and we have only the vaguest of notions how this happens, or how to regulate it.
So limited is our knowledge that we resort, not to science, but to shamans. We place control of the world’s largest economy in the hands of a few elderly men, the central bankers.
— Benoît Mandelbrot, The (Mis)Behavior of Markets (2004)
Mandelbrot was also a brilliant mathematician, the father of Fractal Geometry
Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr (1787)
Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.
— Leonardo da Vinci, Writings of Leonardo da Vinci (1833)
Climate bureaucrats violate the scientific method, by claiming certainty
Science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.
— Bertrand Russel, Religion and Science (1935)
But Now You Know
Words of the Sentient 