“I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
— Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)
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)
Makework "stimulus" jobs are welfare, not employment
A private job pays for itself and more, a form of wealth creation that is self-sustaining;
But a government job only sucks at taxes, burdening the economy, until the money runs out.
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)
Our constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U. S. Senators. There ought to be one day (just one) when there is open season on senators.
— Will Rogers, Autobiography
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
— Frederick Douglass, An address on West India Emancipation (1857)
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right…The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds.
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.
— John Adams, November 23rd, 1797, First Address to Congress
Even if what you say is technically true, if you knowingly leave a false impression, you are a liar
Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Home Book of Quotations, Classical and Modern (1937)
Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785)
Never be offended by an honest opinion:
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
— Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest
Temperate, sincere, and intelligent inquiry and discussion are only to be dreaded by the advocates of error. The truth need not fear them…
— Dr. Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Provisions of the Last Will and Testament of Dr. James Rush
A right is not what someone gives you;
it’s what no one can take from you.
– Ramsey Clark, U. S. Attorney General, New York Times, 2 October 1977
But Now You Know
Words of the Sentient 
