Quotes on Liberty, Constitution, Bill of Rights, 2nd Amendment, Self-Reliance, This Day in History

“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.” – H.L. Mencken

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“A billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”
- Senator Everett Dirksen

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“No man’s life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session.” – Judge Gideon Tucker

 

@Yard Dart, I submit the following quote from from 500 B.C. in elaboration on your excellent George Washington quote above: "Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company."

In a conversation between the Buddha and his disciple Ananda in which Ananda enthusiastically declares, 'This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.' The Buddha replies:
'Don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, and comrades, he can be expected to develop and pursue the noble eightfold path.'[3]

Kalyāṇa-mittatā - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

“We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” – Dr. Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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“Suburbs have become the heirs to their cities’ problems. They have pollution, high taxes, crime. People thought they would escape all those things in the suburbs. But like the people in Boccaccio’s Decameron, they ran away from the plague and took it with them.”- Charles Haar

 

On Leftists and Generosity:
“Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples’ money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people’s freedom and security.” – William F. Buckley, Jr., founder of the National Review. (William F. Buckley - Conservapedia)

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On the Leftist Nanny State Laws:
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” – atheist Ayn Rand, from the novel Atlas Shrugged (Atlas Shrugged (criticism) - Conservapedia)

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On the Leftist Nanny State versus Cars - Guns - Home Schooling:
“Thomas Sowell" (America's most famous african-american conservative author), "who is one of our favorite commentators, points out three things that make the collectivists uneasy. These are cars, guns and home schooling, all of which grant to the individual a degree of independence of action which terrifies the champions of the super state (Big Government-Police State-Nanny State-Welfare State-Statist). Cars, guns and home schooling reduce the need for the statism so prized by the socialists. They do not wish you freedom to move around. They do not wish you to be able to protect yourself. And they do not wish you to decide what your children should be taught. Such things reduce the power of the state over the citizen. If you know any Democrats you might make that point to them.” – Jeff Cooper, Cooper’s Commentaries, 9-98 (Jeff Cooper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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A Rifle Behind Every Blade of Grass?:
“By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia’, the ‘security’ of the nation, and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms’, our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.” – John F. Kennedy (John F. Kennedy - Conservapedia)

 

"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win"---Think it is a quote from Gen. George Patton.

 

"I don't like what I see in the society ...It's too loud. Too colorful. The lack of aesthetics. The crudeness. The inanities. The trivia."
The North Pond Hermit

 

Moar like most of us at least to some degree.

 

“I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor edge of danger and must be fought for, whether it’s a field, or a home, or a country.” – Thornton Wilder

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“Anything that is complex is not useful and anything that is useful is simple. This has been my whole life’s motto.”
- Mikhail Timofeyevitch Kalashnikov, Designer of the AK-47

 

Today in History: September 05, 2014:
On September 5, 1774, fed up with the meddling of the crown and being mostly independent-minded, our nation’s Founding Fathers met together in the First Continental Congress, in Philadelphia, laying the foundation of what would become the world’s greatest nation.

Here's 8 Quotes on the Subject:

“We had strayed a great distance from our Founding Fathers’ vision of America. They regarded the central government’s responsibility as that of providing national security, protecting our democratic freedoms, and limiting the government’s intrusion in our lives — in sum, the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They never envisioned vast agencies in Washington telling our farmers what to plant, our teachers what to teach, our industries what to build. The Constitution they wrote established sovereign states, not mere administrative districts for the federal government. They believed in keeping government as close as possible to the people.” – Ronald Wilson Reagan

“The only purpose of a government is to protect a man’s rights, which means: To protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, an agent of man’s self defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper function s of a government are: The police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud from others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective laws. – John Galt in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

“Very few in history, the ranks of which include George Washington and Ronald Reagan, have held a disdain and suspicion of government, and not changed that viewpoint once they themselves were a part of it.” – Rourke

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” – Ronald Wilson Reagan

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment" (incremental-ism) "by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”- Justice Louis D. Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Judge. Source: Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States,
277 US 479 (1928)

“When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence.” – Gary Lloyd

“Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle. There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you da*n well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.” – P.J. O’Rourke

“It is customary in democratic countries to deplore expenditures on armament as conflicting with the requirements of the social services. There is a tendency to forget that the most important social service that a government can do for its people is to keep them alive and free.” – RAF Air Marshall Sir John Slessor

 

Today in History: September 7, 2014:

"September 7th is the 99th birthday of Richard Cole, one of just four living Doolittle Raiders. He was General Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot."
Fair Use Source: Notes for Sunday – September 07, 2014 - SurvivalBlog.com

In thankfulness for his daring service against the Japs, I submit this quote:

“But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.” – John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), “The Contest in America.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume 24, Issue 143, pp. 683-684. Harper & Bros., New York, April 1862

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"Today is also the birthday of Dr. Ludwig Vorgrimler, who was born 1912 in Freiburg, Germany and died in 1983. Vorgrimler was the designer of the Spanish CETME rifle (The CETME and the SAIGA MAIN INDEX SALES INDEX SHOTGUNS FOR SALE RIFLES FOR SALE HANDGUNS FORSALE COMMO GEAR FOR SALE NIGHT VISION from which sprang a plethora of roller-lock descendants from HK, including the G3, HK21, and MP5. His bolt design was also copied by the Swiss for their excellent PE57 and SIG 510 rifles. (Although the Swiss felt obliged to mount a “beer keg” charging handle on the right side of the receiver, for the sake of familiarity to Schmidt-Rubin shooters.)" Fair Use Source: Notes for Sunday – September 07, 2014 - SurvivalBlog.com

In response, I submit this quote:
“If you don’t understand weapons you don’t understand fighting. If you don’t understand fighting you don’t understand war. If you don’t understand war you don’t understand history. If you don’t understand history, you might as well live with your head in a sack.” – The Late Col. Jeff Cooper (jeffcooperbooks.com - TRIBUTE by Lindy Cooper Wisdom, and The Jeff Cooper Legacy Foundation)

“I have never been taken with the idea of selling a gun. When you possess a firearm, you possess something of importance. If you trade it for cash, you have lost it – and the cash in your hand will soon be gone. Sell something else! – The Late Jeff Cooper, Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries, June 11, 1993

“…To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state’s totalitarian reach.” – Jeff Snyder, A Nation of Cowards -- Read excerpts at: A Nation of Cowards

“The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.” – George Orwell

 

Democracy in America (1835): by Alexis Clérel de Tocqueville (Paris 1805 - Cannes 1859) was a French historian and politician who published an insightful review of the United States entitled Democracy in America (1835),[1] based on a nine month tour of the young country.[2] It remains the most comprehensive treatise of early American society to this day.

“Thus the men of democratic times require to be free in order to procure more readily those physical enjoyments for which they are always longing. It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste they conceive for these same enjoyments makes them surrender to the first master who appears. The passion for worldly welfare then defeats itself and, without their perceiving it, throws the object of their desires to a greater distance. There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people.

When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and will lose all self-restraint at the sight of the new possessions that they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all. It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold.

The discharge of political duties appears to them to be a troublesome impediment which diverts them from their occupations and business. If they are required to elect representatives, to support the government by personal service, to meet on public business, they think they have no time, they cannot waste their precious hours in useless engagements; such ideal amusements are unsuited to serious men who are engaged with the more important interests of life.

These people think they are following the principle of self-interest, but the idea they entertain of that principle is a very crude one; and the better to look after what they call their own business, they neglect their chief business, which is to remain their own masters….By such a nation [a wealthy, self-absorbed one] the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual. When the bulk of the community are engrossed by private concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting the upper hand in public affairs.

At such times it is not rare to see on the great stage of the world, as we see in our theaters, a multitude represented by a few players" (see New Study Confirms: “The United States Is No Democracy… But Actually An Oligarchy” Dominated By The Economic Elite) "who alone speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd; they alone are in action, while all others are stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change the laws and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country; and then men wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless hands a great people may fall.”

– Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, 140–4

 

On Business - Free Enterprise:

"Something happens when an individual owns his home or business. He or she will always invest more sweat, longer hours and greater creativity to develop and care for something he owns than he will for any government-inspired project supposedly engineered for the greater social good… The desire to improve oneself and one’s family’s lot, to make life better for one’s children, to strive for a higher standard of living, is universal and God-given. It is honorable. It is not greed." – Rush Limbaugh, The Limbaugh Letter, 1993

"The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business." -- Milton Friedman, from The Tyranny of Control, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 2 transcript)

 

On Military Architecture: “The larger [Persian] Ismaili fortresses provide outstanding examples of military architecture. Their strategic position and the skilled use of natural resources to ensure, that despite the difficulties of the terrain, the castles were well supplied with food and water and therefore able to withstand a prolonged siege of many months, even years. In his account of the destruction of Alamut by the Mongols, the historian Juwayni (d. 1283) describes with considerable admiration the vast underground store rooms built by the Ismailis and the difficulty the Mongols had to destroy the castle’s fortifications.”

- from Peter Willey, The Eagle's Nest: Ismaili Castles of Iran and Syria, published by the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London

"...with its complex and highly efficient water storage system. Wherever the slope of a fortified hill was large enough, a well-constructed water catchment area was installed." -- excerpts: The Institute of Ismaili Studies - Eagle’s Nest: Ismaili Castles of Iran and Syria, and The Nizari Ismailis of the Alamut period: Engineers

 

“I’d like France to have two Armies — one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little Soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and doddering Generals and dear little regimental officers, who would be deeply concerned over their General’s bowel movements or their Colonel’s piles: an Army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country.

The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage battledress, who would not be put on display but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the Army in which I should like to fight.” – Jean Larteguy, The Centurions.

Jean Larteguy's The Centurions: It's coming back into print.
The Centurions by Jean Lartéguy — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists
The centurions - Jean Lartéguy - Google Books

 

On Diplomacy:

“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice Doggie!’ while you are looking for a rock.” – Will Rogers

“It was this idea (Be nice!) that fueled liberals' rage at Reagan when he vanquished the Soviet Union" (see Death toll of communism ) "with his macho 'cowboy diplomacy' that was going to get us all blown up. As the Times editorial page hysterically described Reagan's first year in office: 'Mr. Reagan looked at the world through gun sights.' Yes, he did! And now the Evil Empire is no more.” – Ann Coulter from "Are videotaped beheadings covered by Geneva?" (20 September 2006)

 

On Speaking Out and Free Speech:

“Which part of no doesn’t Congress understand? The First Amendment says: ‘Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people to peaceably assemble.’ I don’t see any exceptions there, do you?” – Mark Tapscott
Freedom of Speech by Norman Rockwell, 1943:

“When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners. As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occasions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father’s, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well. I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. “In a few years,” reasons one of them, “I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good.” Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don’t be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.” – John J. Chapman, Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900

“Freedom of speech and of the press guarantees one’s right to speak or publish at one’s own expense, but not to be heard nor read.” – Rourke

"The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government." – Charles Evans Hughes, "one of the greatest conservative jurists of his time."

"Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme', not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case." – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) Ch. 2, Mill (1985). On Liberty. Penguin. p. 108.

 

Today in History: September 10, 2014:
"On September 10, 1776, George Washington asked for a spy volunteer. Nathan Hale stepped up to the challenge of an intelligence-gathering mission in New York City. Unfortunately, the British captured and executed him. He is probably best known for his last words before being hanged: “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” He has long been considered an American hero, and in 1985, was officially designated the state hero of Connecticut. It is good for us to remember that every American patriot and hero from the times leading up to and during the American Revolutionary War would have been considered traitors to the crown and would have suffered much the same fate as Hale, had America not won her independence." Fair Use Source: Notes for Wednesday – September 10, 2014 - SurvivalBlog.com