Declaration 2009

Famous Quotes

Here are a few of our favorite quotes sorted by author...

Adams, John: Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Adams, Samuel: While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.
Adams, Samuel: The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.
Aristotle: Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.
Aristotle: The fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
Aristotle: Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
Babington, Thomas: The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.
Boortz, Neal: The problem with the idea of a liberal talk radio network is that they believe there is a conservative talk radio network. They think there is some conspiracy by conservatives to dominate the airwaves, when in all reality it comes down to serving the market and giving people what they want.
Burke, Edmund: And having looked to the government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
Burke, Edmund: People never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Clarke, James Freeman: A politician thinks of the next election -- a statesman, of the next generation.
Coolidge, Calvin: Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.
Coolidge, Calvin: There is only one form of political strategy in which I have any confidence, and that is to try to do the right thing -- and sometimes be able to succeed.
Coolidge, Calvin: A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny.
Coolidge, Calvin: We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts.... Self-government means self-reliance.
Coolidge, Calvin: We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. -Calvin Coolidge
Coulter, Ann: This is the essence of the modern Democrat Party, polished to perfection by Bill Clinton: They are willing to insult the intelligence of 49 percent of the people if they think they can fool 51 percent of the people.
Coupal, Jon: Clearly many of these spin doctors missed instruction when they were kids on the importance of telling the truth. To them, a lie is only bad if it is not believable.
de Tocqueville, Alexis: Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Dos Passos, John: The world's becoming a museum of socialist failures.
Einstein, Albert: The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
Euripides: Who so neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.
Friedman, Milton: Though the tide toward Fabian socialism and New Deal liberalism has crested, there is as yet no clear evidence whether the tide that succeeds it will be toward greater freedom and limited government in the spirit of Smith and Jefferson or toward an omnipotent monolithic government in the spirit of Marx and Mao. That vital matter has not yet been determined---either for the intellectual climate of opinion or for actual policy. --- Free to Choose, Friedman, M. and Friedman, R. D., Harvest/HBJ Books, New York, NY (1990), p. 284.
Friedman, Milton: Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. --- Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman, M., The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL (1962, 1982), p. 15.
Fund, John: For all the competing poll numbers, there is one irrefutable fact which should sober up Democrats leaving Boston. Since Republicans and Democrats began facing off in 1856, there have been 26 presidential elections. With the exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, no Democrat has won more than 50.1% of the vote in American history. Democrats can and do win national elections, but there is scant evidence they have a natural majority in a two-person race.
Galilei, Galileo: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Goethe: Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.
Goldwater, Barry: If the Conservative is less anxious than his Liberal brethren to increase Social Security 'benefits,' it is because he is more anxious than his Liberal brethren that people be free throughout their lives to spend their earnings when and as they see fit.
Goldwater, Barry: To insist on strength...is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering.
Goldwater, Barry: A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
Goldwater, Barry: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and ... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. --- Speech accepting nomination as the Republican presidential candidate at the 1964 Republican Convention.
Goldwater, Barry: I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
Hamilton, Alexander: Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.
Haynes, Ray: Republican legislators don't oppose burdensome regulations and higher taxes because they are Republicans---they are Republicans because they oppose burdensome regulations and higher taxes!
Hazlitt, Henry: Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine---the special pleading of selfish interests. --- Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt, H., McFadden Publications, Inc., New York, NY (1963), p. 11.
Henry, Patrick: Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Heston, Charlton: We have to get back to the values and perceptions of those wise old dead white guys who invented this country.
Hoffer, Eric: Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Hoffer, Eric: Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America. --- First Things, Last Things, Hoffer, E., Harper and Row, First Edition (1971), p. 71.
Horowitz, David: Better to live with some injustices than, by seeking perfect justice, create a world with none. --- The Politics of Bad Faith, Horowitz, D., The Free Press, New York, NY (1998), p. 149.
Jacoby, Jeff: Homosexual marriage is not a civil rights issue. But that hasn't stopped the advocates of same-sex marriage from draping themselves in the glory of the civil rights movement -- and smearing the defenders of traditional marriage as the moral equal of segregationists.
Jefferson, Thomas: But of all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.
Jefferson, Thomas: To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
Jefferson, Thomas: He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition.
Jefferson, Thomas: Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities... With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.
Jefferson, Thomas: A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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. --- First Inaugural Address, 1801.
Johnson, Samuel: The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Kirkpatrick, Jeane: The elements of our strength are many. They include our democratic government, our economic system, our great natural resources. But, the basic source of our strength is spiritual. We believe in the dignity of man.
Limbaugh, Rush: Obama isn�t going to change anything. Obama�s just going to do what liberals have done for eons: eliminate as much freedom and liberty as possible.
Madison. James: How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?
Marshall, John: An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.
May, Clifford D.: Hard work is what it takes to build a democratic society. Other forms of government are easier.
Mill, John Stuart: If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
Mill, John Stuart: 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.
Norquist, Grover: Today, at the national level, 212 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, 42 Republican senators and one Republican president have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge against any tax increase. No Republican in Congress has voted for a tax hike since 1990. And, in the past three years, a Republican House, Senate and president have cut taxes three times... The future of the Republican Party belongs to those who vote for lower taxes. Republican tax hikers are a dying breed.
North, Oliver: Ronald Reagan was easily the greatest president of my lifetime -- and he will be regarded as one of the greatest leaders this country has ever had...a man of extraordinary vision, great compassion and resolute leadership. He brought down the Evil Empire and made the world safer for my children and theirs.
O'Rourke, P. J.: Collectivism doesn't work because, first, it's based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person's "fair share" of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. --- The Enemies List, compiled by P. J. O'Rourke with contributions by the readers of The American Spectator, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, NY (1996), p. 154.
Paine, Thomas: He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Paul, Ron: One thing is certain: conservatives who worked and voted for less government in the Reagan years and welcomed the takeover of the U.S. Congress and the presidency in the 1990s and early 2000s were deceived. Soon they will realize that the goal of limited government has been dashed and that their views no longer matter.
Paul, Ron: True prosperity can only come from a healthy economy and sound money. That can only be achieved in a free society.
Rand, Ayn: When you consider the global devastation perpetrated by socialism, the sea of blood and the millions of victims, remember that they were sacrificed, not for "the good of mankind" nor for any "noble ideal," but for the festering vanity of some sacred brute or some pretentious mediocrity who craved a mantle of unearned "greatness." --- The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand, A., The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., New York, NY (1964), p. 91.
Rand, Ayn:There�s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, 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.
Rand, Ayn: Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups---workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers---exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society---the symbol of America. --- Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Rand, A., The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., New York, NY (1966), p. 55.
Rantel, Al: Conservatives are afraid you don't know what we believe, and liberals are afraid you do know what they believe.
Reagan, Ronald: We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.
Reagan, Ronald: The current tax code is a daily mugging.
Reagan, Ronald: I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.
Reagan, Ronald: And now today we find ourselves involved in another struggle... It is the oldest struggle of human kind, as old as man himself. This is a simple struggle between those of us who believe that man has the dignity and sacred right and the ability to choose and shape his own destiny and those who do not so believe. This irreconcilable conflict is between those who believe in the sanctity of individual freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state.
Reagan, Ronald: Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.
Reagan, Ronald: Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead we changed a world.
Reagan, Ronald: Freedom is indivisible -- there is no 's' on the end of it. You can erode freedom, diminish it, but you cannot divide it and choose to keep 'some freedoms' while giving up others.
Reagan, Ronald: In some dim beginning, man created the institution of government as a convenience for himself. And, ever since that time, government has been doing its best to become an inconvenience.
Reagan, Ronald: The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
Reagan, Ronald: How do you tell a Communist? Well, it�s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It�s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Reagan, Ronald: It was leadership here at home that gave us strong American influence abroad, and the collapse of imperial Communism. Great nations have responsibilities to lead, and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile, because they might just wind up lowering our flag.
Reagan, Ronald: This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this [1964] election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. --- Speech entitled "A Time for Choosing"
Roosevelt, Theodore: The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.
Roosevelt, Theodore: Weasel words from mollycoddles will never do when the day demands prophetic clarity from greathearts. Manly men must emerge for this hour of trial.
Roosevelt, Theodore: A compromise which results in a half-step toward evil is all wrong.
Roosevelt, Theodore: The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
Schlafly, Phyllis: It is hard to overestimate the importance of Barry Goldwater to the conservative movement. If there hadn't been a Barry Goldwater, there wouldn't have been a Ronald Reagan.
Schurz, Carl: From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own.
Sowell, Thomas: The left takes its vision seriously -- more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.
Sowell, Thomas: Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom.
Sowell, Thomas: Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.--- ``The Survival of the Left,'' T. Sowell, Forbes Magazine, September 8, 1997.
Story, Joseph: 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.
Swift, Jonathan: When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
Thatcher, Margaret: Ronald Reagan had a higher claim than any other leader to have won the Cold War for liberty and he did it without a shot being fired. To have achieved so much against such odds and with such humor and humanity made Ronald Reagan a truly great American hero.
Thomas, Cal: Freedom of choice for abortion, but no freedom of choice for children already born as to where they might best be educated -- this is a triumph of politics over common sense and a denial of the right of a child to the best possible education.
Thucydides: Party associations, it should be understood, are not based on law nor do they seek the common welfare; they are lawless and seek only self-interest.
Tytler, Alexander Fraser: A democracy can not exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury...with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacence to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage.
Ullman, Samuel: Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Viguerie, Richard: If the government doesn't set the price of milk, no government official will ever be bribed to raise it.
Viguerie, Richard: Foreign aid is taking from poor people in rich countries and giving to rich people in poor countries.
Washington, George: There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.
Williams, Walter: An act that is inherently evil does not become moral simply because there's a majority consensus.
Williams, Walter: Most of what Congress is constitutionally authorized to spend for is listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and includes: coining money, establish Post Offices, to support Armies and a few other activities. Today�s federal budget is over $3 trillion dollars. I challenge anyone to find specific constitutional authority for at least $2 trillion of it. That includes Social Security, Medicare, farm and business handouts, education, prescription drugs and a host of other federal expenditures. Americans who have become accustomed to living at the expense of another American would not want Congress to obey the Constitution, especially if it left out their favorite handout.