Q-S
Quote Archives
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Q-S
Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.
“The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.”
“It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.”
“Freedom and economic advance go hand in hand; they are two sides of the same coin. The mainspring of human progress is found not in controlling and harnessing human energy but in setting it free. The most valuable resource is not oil or precious metals or even territory; it’s the infinite richness of human potential. The creative genius and diligence unleashed when people are free and working to improve their lot and that of their families is the greatest force for good on this planet.”
“I would just warn you that if you get in bed with the government, you’ll get more than a good night’s sleep.” — Ronald Reagan (1978) in response to a question about gay marriage
“The taxpayer – that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.”
“If we do not stand up to be counted, we will have to line up to be numbered.”
Generosity is a reflection of what one does with his or her own resources and not what he or she advocates the government to do with everyone’s money. Ronald Reagan, 1984
It is time to realize that profit, property and freedom are inseparable. You cannot have any one of them without the others. Ronald Reagan, 1974
Lawrence Reed
“Many Europeans see us as heartless and uncaring because we don’t expect Uncle Sam to coddle us from cradle to grave. But because we still largely take care of ourselves and of those around us, we don’t drop dead by the tens of thousands when the temperature goes up.”
Leonard E. Read
“There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism.”
George Reisman
The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.
Peter Roff
“There are some who derive profit, power or prominence by exploiting America’s racial divisions. They keep hate, rather than hope, alive for many of the very same people whose interests they profess to have in mind.”
Will Rogers
“Lord, the money we do spend on government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.”
“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”
Wilma Rudolph
The triumph can’t be had without the struggle.
Richard Rumbold
“I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another, for none comes into the world with a saddle upon his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.”–Richard Rumbold (1679)
Felix E. Schelling
“True education makes for inequality, the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world.” –Felix E. Schelling (1858-1945), U.S. Educator
Hans Sennholz
It is as if we have two souls in our breasts: one that seeks to live by Judeo-Christian principles, and one that loves to steal and plunder, especially by majority vote.
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
We are taught that the change from monarchy to democracy is progress; that is, a change from servitude to liberty. Yet no monarchy in Western history ever taxed its subjects as heavily as every modern democracy taxes its citizens…. Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.
Politicians often act as if you can create costs without creating consequences. Force insurance companies to cover more things and then act surprised when the premiums go up. Mandate more benefits for employers to provide for their employees and then act surprised when they don’t hire as many workers. It is great political theater but lousy economic policy.
The problem with splitting the difference between opposing sides, as many negotiators are prone to do– whether these negotiators are marriage counselors, labor arbitrators or the United Nations– is that this gives an advantage to the side with the most unreasonable demands, and therefore promotes more unreasonable demands in the future.
The Constitution was not only a challenge to the despotic governments of its time, it has been a continuing challenge– to this day– to all those who think that ordinary people should be ruled by their betters, whether an elite of blood, or of books or of whatever else gives people a puffed-up sense of importance. While the kings of old have faded into the mists of history, the principle of the divine rights of kings to impose whatever they wish on the masses lives on today in the rampaging presumptions of those who consider themselves anointed to impose their notions on others.
~”An independent judiciary does not mean judges independent of the Constitution from which they derive their power or independent of the laws that they are sworn to uphold.”
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
“Someone quoted in the New York Times recently referred to the Bush tax cut as one in which ‘most of the benefits would be showered on the richest taxpayers.’ Keeping money that you yourself earned is called having benefits ‘showered’ on you. … Big spenders and big taxers never want to face the fact that wealth is not created by government, but by the people the government taxes.”
~~”The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
“Guns are completely inappropriate for the kind of sheep-like people the anointed envision or the orderly, prepackaged world in which they are to live. When you are in mortal danger, you are supposed to dial 911, so that the police can arrive on the scene some time later, identify your body and file reports in triplicate.”
~~People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge.
~~What is scary about our times is how easy it is to get Americans to give up our most basic rights if you just use some pretty words. You can violate the “equal protection of the laws” provided by the 14th Amendment if you use the word “diversity” and you can violate the free speech protections of the First Amendment if you call it “campaign finance reform.”
The sad irony is that it is the self-righteous activists who are exploiting Third World people — politically — and the much demonized employers who hire them who are providing the poor with much-needed income.
What is politically defined as economic “planning” is the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by government officials.
“The constant whining and complaining of today’s snivel rites “leaders” may be a passing annoyance to some whites but the real — and tragic — victims are those in the younger generation among blacks who buy the idea that the deck is so stacked against them that there is no point doing their best in school or on the job. They will be paying a huge price for that attitude for the rest of their lives.”
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain. No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: “But what would you replace it with?” When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?
“The only people whose taxes can be cut are people who are paying taxes… That ensures that any serious tax cut will qualify as “tax cuts for the rich” — as defined by liberals. How they get away with this phony stuff is one of the mysteries of our time.”
“As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom.”
“A philosopher once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of one’s own ignorance. That is the knowledge that too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach our young people. ”
“The history of slavery across the centuries and in many countries around the world is a painful history to read– not only in terms of how slaves have been treated, but because of what that says about the whole human species– because slaves and enslavers alike have been of every race, religion and nationality. If the history of slavery ought to teach us anything, it is that human beings cannot be trusted with unbridled power over other human beings– no matter what color or creed any of them are.”
Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy– quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody’s rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can’t tell the water where to go.
Herbert Spencer
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”
Joseph Story, Supreme Court Justice
“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.”
John Stossel
[G]overnments can’t plan economies without planning people’s lives. – John Stossel
Vin Suprynowicz
“By 1940 the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites. Eighty percent for blacks. Notice for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were still literate. Six decades later, at the end of the 20th century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled, despite the fact that we spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago.”
Mother Teresa
[I]f we accept that the mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? … This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.
