G-L

Quote Archives
Listed Alphabetically by Author

G-L

Henry George

“It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly.  Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from the aggressions on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve.”

George Gilder

“Capitalists are motivated not chiefly by the desire to consume wealth or  indulge their appetites, but by the freedom and power to consummate their entrepreneurial ideas.”

“Our aim, as I understand it, is neither to establish a segregated society nor to establish an integrated society.  It is to preserve a free society. ”

Samuel Gompers

The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit. — Samuel Gompers     [Founder of A Fof L (American Federation of Labor)]

Quotes from Al Gore:

“We are on an irreversible course toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change.”

“If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.”

“A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.”

 

Senator Phil Gramm

“There’s one form of bigotry that is still acceptable in America — that’s the bigotry against the successful.”

Paul Greenberg

With a little verbal manipulation, any crime can be rationalized, even promoted. Verbicide precedes homicide.

Alexander Hamilton

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws – the first growing out of the last.”

 

Argus Hamilton

~~“The Library of Congress displayed Bob Hope’s donated joke collection on his birthday in the nation’s capital. It includes ten thousand monologues from radio and television. Over the years, only the voters have sent more jokes to Washington.”

F.A. Hayek

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. If all the means of production were vested in a single hand, whether it be nominally that of “society” as a whole or that of a dictator, whoever exercises this control has complete power over us.—

The “private sector” of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and…the “public sector” is, in fact, the coercive sector.

“…there is a passion built into a very large number of men to rule over others. In established democracies this takes the form of candidates for office determined to outbid their rivals in promising handouts or other favors to pressure groups in their districts at the expense of some unnamed minority.” –Henry Hazlitt (“Is Politics Insoluble?” – P.117)

Robert Heinlein

“Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”

Patrick Henry

For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Charlton Heston

“Political correctness is just tyranny with manners.”

Thomas Hodgskin

“Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers.” –Thomas Hodgskin 1823

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“[T]he secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.”

Herbert Hoover

“Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.”

Bob Hope

“I love to see politicians pray.  It keeps their hands out where you can see what they’re doing.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

“Once the principle of government – judicial monopoly and power to tax – is incorrectly accepted as just, any notion of restraining government power and safeguarding individual liberty and property is illusory.”

David Horowitz on Rudy Giuliani’s record

“In 1993, the last year that David Dinkins was mayor of New York, there were 212 intentional police shootings of civilians (many of them African-Americans). This compares to only 73 shootings by the Giuliani police force in the past year. In 1991, during Dinkins’ reign, there were 41 fatalities resulting from police shootings. In 1999, under Giuliani there were only 11. Yet at no time during Dinkins’ reign, did the socially conscious demand that the Justice Department step in to end the epidemic of ‘police brutality’ and/or incompetence of the Dinkins administration.  There has been no mention of this hypocrisy in the press. Might this be because Dinkins is a Democrat, a leftist and black?” – Columnist David Horowitz, salon.com, 4/3/00

Robert Houghwout

“It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.” — Robert Houghwout Jackson, Chief Judge at the War-Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg

“Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of the many to whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.” — Friedrich A. Hayek, 1944 [ "The Road to Serfdom," Chapter 10, Planning and Democracy]

Patrick Henry

“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we can not be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference in having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”

Robert Heinlein

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”

Hubert H. Humprey

“The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”

Jacoby, Jeff

There is no fixed limit to the wealth a society can produce, and today’s “1 percent” produce an amazing amount of it. But their wealth takes nothing away from the other 99 percent. We are all free to rise as high as talent, education, and hard work will take us. Wealth is not theft. Productivity is not zero-sum. If economic disparity is a problem, then the way to solve it is by raising those who are stuck near the bottom, not tearing down those who have climbed to the top. – Jeff Jacoby

 

Thomas Jefferson

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history be the answer to this question.”

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

“[A] wise and frugal government…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.”

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.  The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.”

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”

“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated.”

~”Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.”

~~“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”

–I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”

–”Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” –Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Charles Jarvis, 1820

Louisville Alderman Dan Johnson

I don’t care whether it’s fair or not.  We’re going to do it anyway. –Louisville Alderman Dan Johnson, regarding a taxpayer-funded arena, as quoted by Ron Gambrell 1/5/02

President Lyndon B. Johnson

“We are going to try to take all of the money that we think is unnecessarily being spent and take it from the ‘haves’ and give it to the ‘have nots’ that need it so much.”

- President Lyndon B. Johnson (in a speech on January 15, 1964)

“Attempting to solve social and moral problems with legislation is like putting deodorant on when you really need a shower.” – From Keep and Bear Arms

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

“Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.”

We seek a free flow of information…. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Guns:  First Line of Defense

“You cannot be defenseless against evil.  To discard the means for people to defend themselves leads to the kind of holocaust we have seen over and over again.”

- GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes, responding to a question concerning gun control at Lawrence University over the weekend, Appleton (WI) Post-Crescent, 4/2/00

• Don’t forget that. We are tied together in life and in the world.  And you may think you got all you got by yourself. But you know, before you got out here to church this morning, you were dependent on more than half of the world.  You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom, and you reach over for a bar of soap, and that’s handed to you by a Frenchman. You reach over for a sponge, and that’s given to you by a Turk. You reach over for a towel, and that comes to your hand from the hands of a Pacific Islander. And then you go on to the kitchen to get your breakfast. You reach on over to get a little coffee, and that’s poured in your cup by a South American.  Or maybe you decide that you want a little tea this morning, only to discover that that’s poured in your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you want a little cocoa, that’s poured in your cup by a West African.  Then you want a little bread and you reach over to get it, and that’s given to you by the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker.  Before you get through eating breakfast in the morning, you’re dependent on more than half the world.  That’s the way God structured it; that’s the way God structured this world. So let us be concerned about others because we are dependent on others.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin

People with different beliefs can live together in harmony as long as they agree on standards of behavior. That is a central theme in the Constitution of the United States of America. That is also how successful corporations and other organizations operate. Common belief within a group is wonderful and converts it into a crucible of creativity, but it is not essential. What is critical is a common code of conduct.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

“In a war of ideas, it is people who get killed.”

“Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard.”

“Is it a progress if a cannibal is using a knife and fork?”

“On every summit, you are on the brink of an abyss.”

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”

“The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all

is the person who argues with him.”

–I understand both candidates have reached a gentlemen’s agreement for tomorrow night’s debate.  Like if Bush can’t remember a fact or detail, Al Gore will make one up for him.”

~~“As you may have heard, the U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? Think about it — it was written by very smart people, it’s served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we’re not using it anymore.”

~“The Senate voted 97-0 for an anti-spam bill to stop those annoying things you get on your computer. The senators made it very clear that when you start misleading the American people and start taking their money over false promises, that’s our turf buddy.”

“Saddam Hussein has released another tape.  Have you heard this latest tape?  It’s the same thing.  ‘Bush is a demon. Bush is an evil aggressor.  Bush is Satan.’  Let me tell you something, if this guy wants to insult our president and call him evil, he can just join the Democratic Party and run for president like everybody else.”

“Worried about an IRS audit? Avoid what’s called a red flag. That’s something the IRS always looks for. For example, say you have some money left in your bank account after paying taxes. That’s a red flag.”

“Earlier in the week, at the dedication of the new religious youth center in Texas, President Bush said that Congress has stalled his faith-based initiative. Congress said they are not stalling, it’s just hard to come up with some language to get around that annoying U.S. Constitution.”

“All the TV shows are full of Democrats all furious, criticizing President Bush for the State of the Union Address. They said he exaggerated some of the facts. See, that’s something Bill Clinton never did. Clinton never stretched the truth; Clinton never even came close to the truth.”

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-Utah] now wants to outlaw prostitution. Let’s make politicians illegal and keep the hookers. At least they’re upfront about screwing you.”

“What we know about Osama bin Laden is this — he’s worth $300 million, he has five wives and 26 kids … and he hates Americans for their ‘excessive’ lifestyle.”     –David Letterman

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

“It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects — military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden — that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.”

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”

- Abraham Lincoln (1848)