Quotes
Any research done on how to efficiently use computers has been long lost in the mad rush to upgrade systems to do things that aren't needed by people who don't understand what they are really supposed to do with them.-- Graham Reed, in a.s.r.
Microsoft is a cross between The Borg and the Ferengi. Unfortunately they use Borg to do their marketing and Ferengi to do their programming.
-- Simon Slavin
I never really understood how there could be things that would drive you insane just because you knew them until I ran into Windows.
-- Peter da Silva
People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are pretty much standing on Darwin's mat, pounding on the door, screaming, "Take me, take me!"
-- Carl Jacobs
Windows gives you a nice view of clouds so you can't see any potentially useful boot time messages.
-- Bill Hay
I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the same manner that fish follow migrating caribou.
-- Paul Tomblin
Never meddle in the affairs of NT. It is slow to boot and quick to crash.
-- Stephen Harris
The ability to watch M*A*S*H on demand justified purchasing a VCR for myself. That show taught me a lot of useful things; for example, if one's skills are sufficiently in demand, one can wear a bathrobe to work, and generally have one's eccentricities tolerated.
-- Gus
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
-- Isaac Asimov
life suddenly made much more sense, the day i fully grokked that people are stupid.
-- Frank Sweetser
Ah, young webmaster...
java leads to shockwave.
Shockwave leads to realaudio.
And realaudio leads to suffering.
Peter da Silva
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
-- Ferenc Mantfeld
While preceding your entrance with a grenade is a good tactic in Quake, it can lead to problems if attempted at work.
-- C Hacking
Asked whether Microsoft could threaten Linux, Torvalds said: "What can they do? What is the Microsoft threat? They certainly can't program aroundus. The only other thing they can do is marketing, and sure, let them try."
-- From the .sig file of Gus Hartmann
NT is the only OS that has caused me to beat a piece of hardware to death with my bare hands.
-- Derry Hamilton
NT is a one-legged cow, but even a one legged cow is fast when it's got 160+ rockets strapped to it.
-- Nick Manka
But that's not that impressive if all you can make it do is go around in circles.
-- Darrell Fuhriman
It's nice to be loved, but there's a lot to be said for CRINGING RESPECT
-- Anonymous button bin
I work for an investment bank. I have dealt with code written by stock exchanges. I have seen how the computer systems that store your money are run. If I ever make a fortune, I will store it in gold bullion under my bed.
-- Matthew Crosby
My group's mission statement - "You want *what* ? By *WHEN* ?"
-- Simon Burr
Security and MicroSoft :
"Bringing the world to your desktop - and your desktop to the world" "The name doesn't go on until the insecurity goes in"
-- Peter Gutmann
When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, for free'
-- Linus Torvalds
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who its friends are. And sometimes even best friends have fights.
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
"Here's a horrible thought: You know how dumb the average person is? Well, half the human race is even dumber than that..."
Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
-- Niels Bohr
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war.
-- Nobel Prize winner, Glenn T. Seaborg
using Outlook is like hanging a sign on your back that reads "PLEASE MESS WITH MY COMPUTER."
-- Scott Rosenberg
They say never to buy a "0" release of software.
Windows 2000 has 3 of 'em.
"I sense much NT in you. NT leads to Blue Screen, Blue Screen leads to downtime, downtime leads to suffering. NT is the path to the Dark Side."
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place."
-- Douglas Adams
"If you have trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.
-- Scott Adams
"Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple of more feet, just to be sure."
-- Eric Allman
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.
-- Attributed to Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)
"Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office."
-- David Broder
"It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year."
-- Truman Capote
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
-- Albert Einstein
"The way to find what the mainstream will do tomorrow is to associate with the lunatic fringe today."
-- Jean-Louis Gassee
"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."
-- Barry Goldwater
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1960
"Maybe, just once, someone will call me 'sir' without adding, 'you're making a scene.'"
-- Homer J. Simpson
"Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way."
-- Homer J. Simpson
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
-- Donald Knuth
"Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match."
-- Karl Kraus
"...if it's a hobby for me, and a job for you, why are you doing such a shoddy job of it?"
-- Linus Torvalds on Microsoft and software development
"Bill Gates is a monocle and a Persian Cat away from being the villain in a James Bond movie."
-- Dennis Miller
"Windows '98 is so similar to Windows '95 because Apple hasn't invented anything worth copying since 1995."
-- Jakob Nielsen
Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.
-- Norman Vincent Peale
Frankly, your argument wouldn't float were the sea composed of mercury.
-- Biff, in rasfw
Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice.
-- Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual
"As a computing professional, I believe it would be unethical for me to advise, recommend, or support the use (save possibly for personal amusement) of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product."
-- David H. Wolfskill, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
"In any business, the customer is always right, except when he calls technical support."
-- rone@netcom.com, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit.
-- In the August 1993 issue, page 9, of PS magazine, the Army's magazine of preventive maintenance
"No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system."
-- Bill Gates
"Sleep is for wimps. Happy, healthy, well-rested wimps, but wimps nonetheless"
-- Gary "Wolf" Barnes, in alt.sysadmin.recovery
"While the Big "M" folks in Redmond maintain the products are vastly different, critics allege Workstation can be switched into the Server version with a few easy tweaks. An official Microsoft marketer suggests that's like arguing the only difference between men and women is a Y chromosome. We think it's more akin to discovering your date is in drag."
-- Unknown, on the differences between Microsoft NT Workstation 4.0 and Server 4.0
'Socialism is when man exploits man, Capitalism is the reverse'
-- Polish Proverb
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
vi is like camping - something everyone should know how to do, just in case you need it - but hardly appropriate for everyday living.
Windows 95: Proof that you can be 10 years late and still get most of the credit.
Windows 95: 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
How can you respect a machine controlled by a mouse?
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
-- Douglas Adams in "Mostly Harmless"
The person with the Science degree asks "Why does it work?"
The person with the Engineering degree asks "How does it work?"
The person with the Arts degree asks "Do you want fries with that?"
This customer comes into the computer store. "I'm looking for a mystery Adventure Game with lots of graphics. You know, something realy challenging". "Well," replied the clerk, "have you tried Windows 98 ?"
"Wow, we don't know what he does, but when he doesn't do it, things stop working. Quick, find him more to do."
-- Rich Lafferty in a.s.r on being a sysadmin
"...very few phenomena can pull someone out of Deep Hack Mode, with two noted exceptions: being struck by lightning, or worse, your *computer* being struck by lightning."
-- Matt Welsh
We use Linux for all our mission-critical applications. Having the source code means that we are not held hostage by anyone's support department.
-- Russell Nelson, President of Crynwr Software
Linux: The OS people choose without $200,000,000 of persuasion.
-- Mike Coleman.
>Linux is not user-friendly.
It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
-- Seen somewhere on the net.
Q: Why shouldn't I simply delete the stuff I never use, it's just taking up space?
A: This question is in the category of Famous Last Words..
-- From the Frequently Unasked Questions
Q: What's the big deal about rm, I have been deleting stuff for years? And never lost anything.. oops!
A: ...
-- From the Frequently Unasked Questions
"...I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter."
-- From N. Petreley's column, "Down to the Wire", sept. '96 issue of Inforworld
"After all, how do you give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt when you know that if you throw it into a room with truth, you'd risk a matter/anti-matter explosion."
-- From N. Petreley's column, "Down to the Wire", sept. '96 issue of Inforworld
Remember UNIX spelled backwards is XINU
There are two ways to write error free programs, Only the third one works.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
"Considering the number of wheels Microsoft has found reason to invent, one never ceases to be baffled by the minuscule number whose shape even vaguely resembles a circle".
-- unknown, but _very_ sharp
The Internet is totally out of control, impossible to map accurately, and being used far beyond its original intentions. So far, so good.
-- Dr. Dobb's Journal May 1993
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.
-- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356
The Seventh Commandment for Technicians:
Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways.
The First Commandment for Technicians:
Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce on thy buttocks in a most untechnician-like manner.
Perhaps it is unnecessary to be so explicit about it, but there are a lot of 16-byte addresses. Specifically, there are 2^128 of them, which is approximately 3 x 10^38. If the entire earth, land and water, were covered with computers, IPv6 would allow 7 x 10^23 IP addresses per square meter. Students of chemistry will notice that this number is larger than Avogadro's number. While it was not the intention to give every molecule on the surface of the earth its own IP address, we are not that far off.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of sheer terror.
-- W. K. Hartmann
The obvious mathematical breakthrough [to break modern encryption] would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.
-- Bill Gates, The Road Ahead
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-- Rich Cook
Public media should not contain explicit or implied descriptions of sex acts... Ponography is pornography, regardless of the source.
--Kenneth Starr, 1987
"Do not bend the spoon, instead realize the truth."
"the truth?"
"That the spoon effect will be added later by some sort of SGI workstation."
-- the real Matrix (http://www.luminanet.com/matrix/main.html)
I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS. Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117.
-- Lawrence Foard
Windows is the answer, but only if the question was 'what is the intellectual equivalent of being a galley slave?'
-- Larry Smith, in comp.os.linux.misc
VBScript is designed to be a secure programming environment. It lacks various commands that can be potentially damaging if used in a malicious manner. This added security is critical in enterprise solutions.
-- support.microsoft.com
"Any uncontrolled fusion reaction you can see from 93 million miles away is disconcerting."
-- Derek A. Petrey
"Give a man fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life"
"NT disaster recovery isn't all that difficult. Just follow the simple instructions that come with the Linux CD"
-- Anthony DeBoer on ASR
"No, I'm not going to explain it. If you can't figure it out, you didnt want to know anyways..."
-- Larry Wall
"Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot better than what we have now."
-- Eric Sheppard
"Once you have pulled the pin out of Mr. Grenade, he is no longer your friend."
"The best accelerator available for a Mac is one that causes it to go at 9.8 m/s^2."
-- Scott S. Morrison"
"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)"
--Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"The strongest test of any system is not how well its features conform to anticipated needs but how well it performs when one wants to do something the designer did not forsee."
-- Alan Kay, Xerox PARC
There is a style of design I call "wishful thinking engineering." It starts with something like "pigs can fly if you feed them enough beans" and develops utopian plans such as like having everyone commute to work riding on personal pigs, and along the way ignores minor details such as the consequent rain of the non-gaseous byproducts."
-- Vernon Schryver in n.a.n-a.e
"There's nothing wrong with Microsoft that taking a machine-gun to their entire Marketing and Advertising department wouldn't cure."
This product not intended for use by personnel incapable of understanding the manual."
-- boy brent
"When in doubt, use brute force."
-- Ken Thompson, Bell Labs
"You do have to be mad to work here, but it doesn't help."
-- Gary "Wolf" Barnes in a.s.r
"You need the Computing Power of a P5, 16 MB Ram and 1 GB Harddisk to run Win95. It took the Computing Power of approx 3 Commodore 64 to fly to the moon. Something is wrong here, and it wasn't the Apollo."
-- Deon Ramsey
Using MS Word for a normal, simple document is a bit like killing mosquitoes with a laser cannon.
A laser cannon with broken and warped lenses, a dozen bad connections, vital circuitry in the path of the laser, and a tendency to overheat. This laser cannon only runs on AAA batteries, of which you need four thousand. There is a 50% chance that if this laser cannon fires successfully, it will be in the direction of the operator.
All warfare is based on deception.
-- Sun Tsu
All web browsers suck, but most web authors suck worse.
Hey! It compiles! Ship It!
I must admit that Micro$oft does seem to bear an awful resemblence to the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation. Considering that my attempts at using Word always resulted in something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a document.
-- Rich Kaszeta
If NT is the answer, you don't understand the question.
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, riddle them with bullets.
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be fully explained by stupidity.
OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
Running Windows on a Pentium is like having a brand new Porsche but only be able to drive backwards with the handbrake on. (Unknown source)
The trouble with conspiracy theories are that they assume the government is organized.
You don't know what real time-critical software is until you're responsible for the paychecks of a batallion of heavily armed Marines.
-- somebody in alt.sysadmin.recovery
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately, no one we know belongs.
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Remember, there's no problem so complex it can't be solved by killing everyone even remotely associated with it.
-- ljd, Scorched Earth Party
Anyone who says 'disk is cheap' deserves to be shot.
--Linus Torvalds
The Internet is a powerful example of free speech and the free market in action; it is curious that the net has alarmed the lawmakers of a nation founded on those principles.
-- Denise Caruso
If the NSA has time to read my e-mail, I wish they'd send me a bloody monthly summary!
-- Jef Bryant
When flying, you will generally be the one to kill yourself. When driving, there's a much better chance that someone else will kill you.
-- Kyler Laird, rec.aviation.misc, explaining accident statistics
I told all of my friends how they were losers for running Unix. They should switch to NT. It was the future. That was more or less my constant refrain until one pivotal event changed my life: I actually tried to use NT.
-- Philip Greenspun
Linux is probably one of the most Posix-compliant OS's out there (except in those instances where Linus considers Posix to bebroken)...
-- Anthony W. Youngman, comp.unix.admin
We pointed the error out to the cashier, who was probably barely old enough to be legally employed, and her response, if she speaks for her generation, was ominous, even terrifying: `It does that because... because it's a computer.' An entire generation is growing up believing that the current sorry state of affairs in information technology could ever be accepted as _normal_!
-- Zygo Blaxell, RISKS-20.89
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but usually consumes the bandwidth of more than two thousand.
-- Gym Quirk, news.groups
"If a site has pages that cause your browser to restart, don't go there again."
-- Microsoft, trying to be helpful on the subject of browser stability
You may now return to bashing UNIX and its smug complacent users. We in return will return to our smug complacency -- after all, we don't have any machines to disinfect this weekend.
-- Jim Hill
Any site should be designed so that it's usable as a dead file tree with no server-side smarts. Any sort of active pages or search engines should be an add-on, not essential.
-- Peter da Silva, in a.s.r.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give him a freshly-charged Electric Eel and chances are he won't bother you for anything ever again.
-- Tanuki in asr
In my experience, Visual Basic, Access, and Windows complement each other perfectly - A toy development language, a toy database, and a toy operating system.
-- seen on the net
Take a cup of coffee and add three drops of poison and what have you got? Microsoft J++.
-- Scott McNealy
Consent decree:
A document in which a hapless company consents never to commit in the future whatever heinous violations of Federal law it never admitted to in the first place.
I don't want to learn to manage my anger; I want to FRANCHISE it!
-- Kevin Martin
You can get further with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word.
-- Marcus Cole (Babylon 5, "Ceremonies of Light and Dark")
Subtlety: the art of saying what you want to say and getting out of range before it is understood.
Ignorance is no excuse for not thinking!
I keep reminding myself of that old saying: "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity." Then I remind myself that Microsoft isn't stupid...
-- Charlie Gibbs
Customer Support is like Teaching Kindergarten. All day long, you sit and read to people who can't do it for themselves.
-- Scott perlman@cgicafe.com
"If I want your opinion, I'll read your entrails."
-- Doug Shewfelt
Lamport's Law: A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
"I came out of that meeting so full of enthusiasm that I spent the next two hours updating my resume"
-- Paul Tomblin
Don't get mad. Get covered in blood as you disembowel your enemies with a chainsaw.
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.'
-- Matthew R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
"Didn't bother to check the brand of disks -- with IDE, that's like attempting to differenetiate between a Yugo and a Trabi"
-- Brad Ackerman on A.S.R.
Debating unix flavors in the context of anything Microsoft is like talking about which ice cream flavor tastes least like sawdust with turpentine sauce.
Red meat is not bad for you. Blue-green fuzzy meat is bad for you.
Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare.
Taunt not the sysadmin, for he can become you and make your life interesting.
"Knuth is right: computer programming is not a science, but an art. System administration is an art too, and a black one at that."
-- Adam J. Thornton
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.
-- Doug Gwyn
Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. The competent, of course, make it their *first* resort.
But you've got to hand it to IBM, they know how to design hardware. The servers all had handles to pick them up and throw them out of the window....
-- Juergen Nieveler
I Protest! You've used the words "security" and Microsoft" in the same sentence with no negation.
-- Mike Andrews in nanae.
The only sensible way to estimate the stability of a Windows server is to power it down and try it out as a step ladder.
-- Robert Crawford, in the Monastery
I've always maintained that no software should be released that can't withstand three hours of enthusiastic yet undirected pounding-on by a typical five-year-old.
-- Joe Thompson
You've just described Microsoft's entire development process.
-- Malcolm Ray
"In the beginning there was nothing... which exploded."
-- The shortened Big Bang theory
Interestingly, most Unix utilities have a command line option which will cause the system to rip the user's legs off and beat them to death with the soggy ends. This is often the default behaviour.
-- Bruce Murphy
guru, n: A computer owner who can read the manual.
If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.
-- Samuel Adams
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
-- Lazarus Long
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, preserved their neutrality."
-- Dante
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- G.B. Shaw
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
C isn't that hard: void (*(*f[])())() defines f as an array of unspecified size, of pointers to functions that return pointers to functions that return void.
Magary's Principle: When there is a public outcry to cut deadwood and fat from any government bureaucracy, it is the deadwood and the fat that do the cutting, and the public's services are cut.
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
-- Helen Keller
"Forced counseling and "sensitivity training" are nothing more than buzzwords for political re-education"
--Letter in NY Times, Feb 2, 2000
"Now, I believe there are some things that 7 year olds shouldn't have to be exposed to yet, and the entry in the dropdown menu he was perusing that said "emacs" is one of those things."
-- AdB in SDM
"I'm a Darwinian carnivore. I only eat things that weren't fit enough to prevent their being killed."
-- Mike Sphar in a.s.r
`When the SysAdmin answers the phone politely, say "sorry", hang up and run awaaaaay!'
--Informal advice to users at Karolinska Institutet, 1993-1994
[Y]ou should write for the comprehension of the next programmer who looks at your code, keep it clean and sensible, and *not* play any obscure Jedi mind-tricks.
-- Anthony de Boer
Yes, Java is so bulletproofed that to a C programmer it feels like being in a straightjacket, but it's a really comfy and warm straightjacket, and the world would be a safer place if everyone was straightjacketed most of the time.
-- Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
"It's trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real man to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful"
-- Anonymous
That's how you know you're hooked on something; when it makes you forget to drink beer.
--Paul Mather, commenting on The Sims
"Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a pool." Think about it
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
--Sir Winston Churchill
With a Dremel tool and a cut-off wheel, _everything_ takes a flat-blade screwdriver.
[...] and the French an excuse to use their traditional battle cry.
-- Firebeard
"We Surrender, here, have my daughter."?
-- Paul Tomblin
How many people here have ever wanted to be able to tell a luser '"The customer is always right" is fine when the issue is whether you wanted extra mustard or no mustard, but does not apply when the customer in question just took a bulk magnet to his hard drive'?
-- Cat
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
-- Benjamin Franklin
I swear to god, if people treated their cars they way they treat their computers, half the cars on the road would be covered in bumper stickers advertising porno, and their trunks would be filled with rotting garbage.
-- Christian Wagner
After watching my newly-retired dad spend two weeks learning how to make a new folder, it became obvious that "intuitive" mostly means "what the writer or speaker of intuitive likes".
(Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X the intuitiveness of a Mac interface.)
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
-- Matt Cartmill
It takes 5 NT servers to offer the performance and availability of a single UNIX server.
-- Network Computing, July 15 1998.
Just because the hole is rectangular doesn't mean you can push squares through it.
-- Mike DeMaria, explaining why you don't put a floppy disk in a zip drive.
Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.
Whatever it is, kill it!
-- J Case
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."
-- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
From "The Practice of Programming" by Brian W Kernighan and Rob Pike:
Another effective [debugging] technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed "Never mind. I see what's wrong. Sorry to bother you." This works remarkbly well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor.
"Smith & Wesson, the original point and click interface."
"Making fun of AOL users is like making fun of the kid in the wheel chair."
"The only truly secure computer is one buried in concrete, with the power turned off and the network cable cut."
"If it's not on fire, it's a software problem."
"Pascal /n./ A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it."
"MSN is the alternative to AOL like Herpes is the alternative to Gonorrhea"
-- Slashdot .sig
"Microsoft shouldn't be broken up. It should be shut down."
-- Bruce Schneier, Cryptogram, 15 May 2000.
" There's no reason to treat software any differently from other products. Today Firestone can produce a tire with a single systemic flaw and they're liable, but Microsoft can produce an operating system with multiple systemic flaws discovered per week and not be liable. This makes no sense, and it's the primary reason security is so bad today. "
-- Bruce Schneier, Cryptogram, 16 April 2002.
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had bortherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cukoo clock."
-- Orson Welles as Harry Lime in _The_Third_Man_
"If the auto indurstry were like the computer industry, a car would now cost $50, would get 500 mpg, and at a random time explode killing all passengers."
-- unknown source
Unix makes easy tasks hard and hard tasks possible. Windows makes easy tasks easy and hard tasks $29.95.
Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw.
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!"
-- Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
"Education - compulsory schooling, compulsory learning - is a tyranny and a crime against the human mind and spirit. Let all those escape it who can, any way they can"
-- John Holt
If you sat a monkey down in front of a keyboard, the first thing typed would be a UNIX command.
-- Bill Lye
A sysadmin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing new versions of their own innards.
-- Sysadmin's Lament
Oh God, please make the world linear and Gaussian, just for today.
-- Anonymous
There once was an old man from Esser, Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser. It at last grew so small, He knew nothing at all, And now he's a College Professor.
-- Unknown
It is so easy to miss pretty trivial solutions to problems deemed complicated. The goal of a scientist is to find an interesting problem, and live off it for a while. The goal of an engineer is to evade interesting problems.
-- Vadim Antonov on NANOG
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.
-- Japanese Zen-master Shunryu Suzuki
"If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?"
"I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian."
"I'm out of bed and dressed, What more do you want?"
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
-- Edsgar W. Dijkstra (1930-2002).
"19 Jan 2038 at 3:14:07 AM" The end of the word according to Unix (232 seconds after Jan 1st 1970).
"UNIX: It's not just 'User-Unfriendly', it's 'Proactively User-Hostile'!"
"Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++ ???"
-- Richard A. O'Keefe.
"C++ has it's place in the history of programming language. Just as Caligula has his place in the history of the Roman Empire."
-- Robert Firth
"The great thing about Object Oriented code is that it can make small, simple problems look like large, complex ones."
"In C++ it's harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg."
-- Bjarne Stroustrup.
"If brute force doesn't solve your problems, then you aren't using enough."
"No printing is permitted of this book.
This book cannot be given to someone else.
This book cannot be read aloud."
-- License terms for Adobe ebooks.
"To ruin the net to save Disney is the equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to save monastic scribes."
"The smiley is an attack on writers and readers alike. If it is funny, it doesn't need a smiley. If is not funny, a smiley won't help it. The smiley teaches writers that anything they write will pass as humor as long as it is punctuated properly. It teaches readers that they must ignore their better judgment, and look only at punctuation to determine intent."
-- Jim Showalter
"The only people who have anything to fear from free software (such as GNAT) are those whose products are worth even less."
-- David Emery.
"It is better to die on your feet that to live on your knees."
-- Dolores Ibarruri
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but make the other son-of-a-bitch die for his." --General Patton
"Libertarians are Republicans that like getting high and watching porn. Greens are Democrats that can't get a trade union job or don't work at all."
"Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
-- P. J. O'Rourke
"Government is really good at only one thing, and that is to break your leg, then hand you a crutch and say: 'Look, if it weren't for the government you wouldn't be able to walk'."
-- Harry Browne
"The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be."
-- Lao-tzu (604-531 B.C.)
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter."
-- Winston Churchill.
"I voted for the Democrats because I didn't like the way the Republicans were running the country. Which is turning out to be like shooting yourself in the head to stop your headache."
-- Jack Mayberry.
"I used to say that politics is the second oldest profession, and I have come to know that it bears a gross similarity to the first."
-- Ronald Reagan.
"Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions."
-- Albert Einstein.
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
"You have a right to your opinions. I just don't want to hear them."
"Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted."
"If people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our backs."
-- William Feather.
"During job interviews, when they ask: 'What is your worst quality?', I always say: 'Flatulence'. That way I get my own office."
-- Dan Thompson
"The CEO's job in a huge company is essentially the same as the Magic 8 Ball: saying yes, no, or maybe, without the benefit of understanding the questions."
-- Scott Adams (of dilbert fame).
"Aiming for the least common denominator sometimes causes division by zero."
"You're so open-minded, your brains fell out."
"A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing what a McDonalds Certified Food Specialist is to fine cuisine."
"Remember when American moms used to tell their kids to finish dinner because children were starving in Africa? Well, thanks a lot, Mom Africans are still starving and American kids are obese."
-- Larry Baum
"People are more opposed to fur than leather because rich ladies are easier to harass than bikers."
-- Bumper sticker.
"Did you know that a cow was MURDERED to make that jacket?" "Yes. I didn't think there were any witnesses, so I guess I'll have to kill you too."
-- Jake Johansen.
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
-- Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi, An Autobiography)
If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
-- Winston Churchill
Every country has the government it deserves.
-- Joseph De Maistre
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
-- Barry Goldwater
Gentlemen,
Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters.
We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as the the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both:
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance:
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
-- Duke of Wellington, to the British Foreign Office, London, 1812
He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing...
-- Thomas Jefferson
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is -- I could be just as proud for half the money.
-- Arthur Godfrey
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.
-- Bertrand Russell
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation.
If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches, they will take sandwiches.
-- Lord Boyd-orr
If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.
-- Robert Frost
It is impossible to defend perfectly against the attack of those who want to die.
It seems a little silly now, but this country was founded as a protest against taxation.
No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Joseph Cabell, 1816
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
-- Kernighan
We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, what a huge waste of corporate productivity. So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, "What do I do? Guess I've got to go to work."
-- Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems [SJM, 03Aug97. Keith Bostic bostic@bostic.com, QOTD]
"Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis."
-- http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp
"The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA."
-- Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume I (p. 191)
Political correctness, like other totalitarian ideologies, demands absolute purity.
-- James Taranto
Calculus is the distinction between a degree and toilet paper.
-- Seen on Slashdot.
Calculus is the distinction between a degree and toilet paper.
-- Seen on Slashdot.
I've been watching security people for years as they've slowly increased the security of everything they can get their hands on until any idiot can wander in.
-- Bruce Tognazzini
I saw `cout' being shifted "Hello world" times to the left and stopped right there.
-- Steve Gonedes
"When PCs run new applications successfully, most people feel relief and almost pathetic gratitude - a standard of reliability tolerated in no other consumer product."
Economist, Sept. 12 1998
If someone else can run arbitary code on your computer without your permission, it's not YOUR computer any more.
-- author unknown
"Screw world peace; visualize using your turn signal!"
"With M$, as far as I'm aware, the stupidity comes bundled with the software."
-- Meg Thornton, in the Monastery
CS is about lofty design goals and algorithmic optimization. Sysadmining is about cleaning up the mess that results.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
-- James D. Nicoll
"If God had intended us to vote, he'd have given us candidates."
"I do have to confess to not caring one whit about 'celebrities.' Near as I can tell, they're just a waste of protein that could be better used to feed starving stray cats."
-- Dr. Richard E. Hawkins
"The object-oriented model makes it easy to build up programs by accretion. What this often means, in practise, is that it provides a structured way to write spaghetti code."
-- Paul Graham
I don't see what C++ has to do with keeping people from shooting themselves in the foot. C++ will happily load the gun, offer you a drink to steady your nerves, and help you aim. -- Peter da Silva
I picked up a Magic 8-Ball the other day and it said 'Outlook not so good.' I said 'Sure, but Microsoft still ships it.'
-- Anonymous
Revenge is an integral part of forgiving and forgetting.
-- The BOFH
Almost any animal is capable of learning a stimulus/response association, given enough repetition.
-- Lionel Lauer
Experimental observation suggests that this isn't true if double-clicking is involved.
-- Malcolm Ray
Either way, it'll remind the clued that there's only one letter difference between 'turkey' and 'turnkey'.
-- Mike Andrews
Crowds want to beat, journalists deserve to be beaten. Where lies the problem?
-- Lars Syrstad
The pluses in my current job include laughing in the face of Nobel laureates who have just lost the only copy of their data. (Hey, I'm still a BOFH).
-- Bob Dowling
Better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. And if he can't be bothered to learn to fish and starves to death, that's a good enough outcome for me.
-- Steve VanDevender
Compared to system administration, being cursed forever is a step up.
-- Paul Tomko
We're the technical experts. We were hired so that management could ignore our recommendations and tell us how to do our jobs.
-- Mike Andrews
I didn't need to sabotage anything. Not being around to say "No that won't work" or "you can't do it that way" is more than enough damage. (Ego problem? It's not a problem.)
-- Graham Reed, on job endings
If lusers got a clue, you'd be out of work. No thanks necessary. :-)
-- [uninvited git]
Duh. If lusers got a clue we could _concentrate_ on our work.
-- Lars Balker Rasmussen
Surely the 98% of DNA we share with monkeys must be enough to stop people from sinking this low.
-- Frossie
I think it's a beautiful day to go to the zoo and feed the ducks. To the lions.
-- Brian Kantor
When C++ is your hammer, everything looks like a thumb.
-- Steven M. Haflich
A *huge* proportion of people cannot make *correct and accurate* generalisations of principles. They have to learn everything as if it's an unrelated piece of crap, BECAUSE THEY ARE STUPID! PEOPLE ARE STUPID!
-- Thorfinn
I find that anthropomorphism really doesn't help me deal with hardware all that much, because it lends a certain attitude of disdain to what would otherwise be a mere malfunction.
-- Carl Jacobs
They're only floundering and helpless when trying to get you to do stuff for them. It's an act. Actually they are scheming little fsckers, and nothing fascinates them as much as some person playing with them by giving them clues and mocking them.
-- Chris Johnson describes lusers
I still think buying a book of that title from Microsoft Press would be like buying a handbook for humanitarians from Pol Pot.
-- Paul Tomblin, about Writing Solid Code
Is it just me, or does anyone else here find it vaguely unsettling that you get your theology from Star Trek?
-- Anthony DeBoer
Yeah, he should get it from B5 like us normal people.
-- Paul Tomblin
The world is *not* a place where equality reigns, or where all people are wonderful creatures. As it happens, we happen to hold a particular worldview that there *is* a techno-elite (yes, that's a trite and overused term), and we are part of it.
-- Thorfinn
In a country where it is considered a normal, sane and fun recreational activity to strap two greased sticks to your feet and throw yourself down the side of a friggin' mountain, nobody has the right to call *my* minor peccidillos "unsafe".
-- Nathan Mehl
I admit that X is the second worst windowing system in the world, but all the others I've used are tied for first.
-- Paul Tomblin
"Includes Adobe PageMaker. Now you can create layouts that look like you paid a professional!" No, now you can create layouts that look like you used a tool that a professional might have used, had you had the sense to pay him.
-- Christopher R. Maden
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction into a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.
-- Calvin discovers Usenet
People who love sausages, respect the law, and work with IT standards shouldn't watch any of them being made.
-- Peter Gutmann
First time I've gotten a programming job that required a drug test. I was worried they were going to say 'you don't have enough LSD in your system to do Unix programming'.
-- Paul Tomblin
Simulated editor war, conducted by seasoned professionals in a controlled environment. Don't try this at home.
-- Christian Bauernfeind
Microsoft has decided to rename 'Windows 98' to 'Windows Diana', because it is superficially atttractive, impossible to live with, consumes masses of resources, then it crashes.
-- related by Zombie in #aix
The little pad of semi-sticky paper is the single largest security breach in the entire computer industry, bar none.
-- some guy named 'gram' in c.s.u
The bottom line is that under 1 percent of this world has what it really takes to make computers do the Right Thing. No matter how used the shaved apes are to buttons, dials and screens, they're still doing voodoo.
-- The Cosmic Tomato
I tried staying in during a fire alarm some years ago. Unfortunately the fire warden wouldn't accept 'A real hacker goes down with his newsfeed' as an excuse.
-- Peter Gutman
We don't need a fountain of youth. We need a fountain of smart.
-- Bill Mattocks's .sig
I've gone through over-stressed to physical exhaustion -- what's next?
-- Simon Burr
Tuesday.
-- Kyle Hearn
It seems that there are two different sorts of people: People who care about the important stuff -- like if a job gets done, and if it gets done well -- and clueless [...] morons who wouldn't know a job well done if it bit them on the ass, and so think that 'professionalism' is a better indicator of the quality of work.
-- Dave Brown
I personally don't mind giving up a portion of my earnings to try to keep said unadaptable people from starving in the street.
-- Mike Sphar
Goodness, no, they should not be allowed to die on the streets. We have alleys for that.
-- Carl Jacobs
... industry giant Microsoft Corporation... a company that has become successful without resorting to software testing...
-- Unknown, rec.humor.funny
Home pages are the pet rock of the 90s. They all have them, they all think they're very cute. But in a few years they're going to look back and be pretty embarrassed.
-- Kim Alm
I would like to shake the hand of the man who first decided that e-mail clients should slice, dice and run arbitrary programs. Then I'd like to stir, blend and puree his hand.
-- J. D. Baldwin
I trust the cut & paste under Win2k's telnet about as far as I can comfortably spit a rat.
-- John Burnham
"Zero Tolerance" in this case meaning "We're too stupid to be able to apply conscious thought on a case-by-case basis".
-- Mike Sphar
When the revolution comes, we'll need a longer wall.
-- Tom De Mulder
The difference is that Unix has had thirty years of technical types demanding basic functionality of it. And the Macintosh has had fifteen years of interface fascist users shaping its progress. Windows has the hairpin turns of the Microsoft marketing machine and that's all.
-- Red Drag Diva
You mean [Exchange] was deliberately written? I thought someone had transcribed the writing on a football-stadium restroom wall, found that it compiled, so shipped it.
-- Tanuki
The only complaint I have against WinDoze is that it doesn't always fail at install time.
-- Mike Andrews
I DON'T CARE IF IT DOESN'T COST EXTRA.
I DON'T WANT A WEB BROWSER IN MY DESKTOP.
I DON'T WANT IT.
-- A BOFH making things very clear
Actually, HTML is very useful. As a flag to say "you don't need to read this email."
-- Paul Tomblin
I decided my disk was getting too full and nobody seemed to be referencing this huge file called /vmunix...
-- Paul Tomblin
C is *supposed* to be dangerous, damnit!
-- Anonymous, on "Safer C"
Some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians and to wonder, therefore, how they got that way.
-- Tom Lehrer, "Tom Lehrer In Concert"
Unix is great. The Unix culture is magnificent. Life in a Unix without the GNU utilities is the kind of hell I'd not wish on my worst enemy.
-- Robert Uhl
Is it so difficult to master your bloody pride and admit that yes, a bunch of hackers turned out a better suite of utilities than your teams of engineers ever could?
-- Robert Uhl
Oh, NT is reliable. You can count on it to keel over under just any circumstance.
-- Rik Steenwinkel
...I've discovered the one thing worse than people who open attachments from people they don't know. People who delete files when instructed by people they don't know.
-- Michael
I'd sooner volunteer to admin every Windows box at $ORKPLACE (and it's a biiiig place) than think for one second that I could understand the thought process of a teenage female.
-- David P. Murphy
Sept 25th: Discovered lots of things about Dynamic HTML. Notably that almost every site attempting to use it is crap.
--Alan Cox's diary
Indeed, if we (as a society) took a bit more of a 'tough love' approach to things, really allowed people to suffer from their own bad choices, and made it damn clear that one can't just assume something is safe because "they couldn't sell it if it wasn't!", we might start seeing 'thinking' coming back into vogue.
-- lizard
Do you have a point, or are you saving it for a special occasion?
-- David P. Murphy
I've never understood why women douse themselves with things that are alleged to smell of roses/tulips/freesias. What exactly are they trying to attract? Bees?
-- Tanuki
I read [.doc files] with "rm". All you lose is the microsoft-specific font selections, the macro viruses and the luser babblings.
-- Gary "Wolf" Barnes
DON'T MAKE THAT FACE WHEN I TELL YOU TO READ THE F*CKING MANUAL! IT'S GOOD FOR YOU I SAY! READ THE F*CKING MANUAL! How do you think I found out how the machine works? DID I SIT AROUND ASKING SOMEBODY FOR A FEW MONTHS??
-- Beable van Polasm
My standard response to statements like "We _must_ implement multi-processor object-oriented Java-based client-server technologies immediately!" was "You know, FORTRAN and slide rules put men on the moon and got them back safely multiple times."
-- Matt Roberds
The average banker could benefit tremendously from a good kick to the head at precisely-timed intervals.
-- Dan Holdsworth
I realized recently that my personal happiness and sanity are worth far more than anything an employer can pay me, and that nothing is worth that twisting feeling you get in your gut every morning as you drag yourself out of bed and to a job you can't stand.
-- MC Langston
"Colin decided then and there that the female mind was a strange and incomprehensible organ -- one which no man should even attempt to understand. There wasn't a woman alive who could go from point A to B without stopping at C, D, X and 12 along the way."
-- Julia Quinn
The biggest problem with democracy is that it is, in effect, the rule by the whim of the moment.
-- Keith Glass
Sometimes, when a luser makes an unreasonable demand, the best thing to do is let them have exactly what they ask for.
-- Joe Zeff
If anyone tells me to work smarter, not harder, I will kick him or her, hard, in a random body part. I will then kick him or her a second time, "smarter, not harder," which is to say that on the second strike, I'll use the same force, but target more carefully.
-- Catherine
If you had the chance of making the amount of pain your lusers had to suffer dependent on the number of windows on their screens, you would seize the opportunity, wouldn't you?
-- Abigail
The strength of the antispammer movement is that there is no organization. Nobody can make deals, nobody has the authority to surrender. All people with pretensions of "leadership" do is make it look like a small bunch of people with no life. It's a *big* bunch of people with no life.
-- Paul Vader
I call these twits pseudo-literate. That is, they can read but won't.
-- Joe Zeff
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet?
-- Daniel Jensen
My problems start when the smarter bears and the dumber visitors intersect.
-- Steve Thompson, wildlife biologist at Yosemite National Park
Because of the Blaster and SOBIG worms, Corporate IS won't allow any OS on the corporate net that isn't certified, and the only OSes they will certify are Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the two biggest culprits in those self same worms.
-- Paul Tomblin
Networks are like sewers: my job is to make sure your data goes away when you flush, and to stop the rats climbing into your toilet through the pipes.
-- Tanuki describes network administration
Every fleeting thought you've ever had in your life, no matter how bizarre, is someone's lifelong obsession. And he has a website.
-- Skif's Internet Theorem
I notice that "talent" is a favorite word of people who don't create anything themselves.
-- Kevin Pease
"Cynical" is a term invented by optimists to describe realists.
-- Gregory Benford
Today while watching people complain about the latest Windows worm outbreak, I likened Windows users to people stuck in abusive relationships: they get beat up over and over again, but they won't leave.
-- Steve VanDevender
Remember that commercials are designed to do one thing only: promote a product in such a way that you, the listener, will part with your money to get the product. Never trust a commercial for ANY product. Talk to people who have actually spent money on the product, or be an idiot and believe everything you hear on the radio.
-- Listener Tip on www.krud.com
If computer science was a science, computer "scientists" would study what computer systems do and draw well-reasoned conclusions from it, instead of being rabid clueless wankers who've never even seen a real world system before, let alone used one. These are the kind of people that brought us Pascal, folks.
-- Charles J. Radder
Computer science has about as much to do with computers as astronomy does with telescopes.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
Remember, when it comes to commercial TV, the program is not the product. YOU are the product, and the advertiser is the customer.
-- Mark W. Schumann, in the Monastery
Don't think of it as `gun control', think of it as `victim disarmament'.
If we make enough laws, we can all be criminals.
The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed.
-- Jeff Snyder
As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people.
-- Jeff Snyder
Probably fewer than 2% of handguns and well under 1% of all guns will ever be involved in a violent crime. Thus, the problem of criminal gun violence is concentrated within a very small subset of gun owners, indicating that gun control aimed at the general population faces a serious needle-in-the-haystack problem.
-- Gary Kleck, "Point Blank: Handgun Violence In America"
When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state".
-- Claire Wolfe, "101 Things To Do Until The Revolution"
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
-- James Madison, The Federalist Papers
The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues and tends to foment uprisings.
-- Toyotomi Hideyoshi, dictator of Japan, August 1588
"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms."
-- Constitutional scholar and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, 1840
"The bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being..."
-- J.G.A. Pocock, describing the beliefs of the founders of the U.S.
Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest.
-- From the Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775
"As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives [only] moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion to your walks."
-- Thomas Jefferson, writing to his teenaged nephew
"Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell `Fire!' in a crowded theater."
-- Peter Venetoklis
The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
-- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story of the John Marshall Court
Militias, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves and include all men capable of bearing arms. [...] To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.
-- Senator Richard Henry Lee, 1788, on "militia" in the 2nd Amendment
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book
No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.
-- "Political Disquisitions", a British republican tract of 1774-1775
Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence 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?
-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 9 1788
"To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
-- George Mason, speech of June 14, 1788
"The great object is, that every man be armed. [...] Every one who is able may have a gun."
-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 14 1788
Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.
-- "M.T. Cicero", in a newspaper letter of 1788 touching the "militia" referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms...
-- Samuel Adams, in "Phila. Independent Gazetteer", August 20, 1789
The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the *government*, not to *society*; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage.
-- Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93
[The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.
-- Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93
Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'
-- Mao Tse-tung, 1938, inadvertently endorsing the Second Amendment.
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, "Beyond This Horizon", 1942
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.
-- Adolph Hitler, April 11 1942
The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.
-- A.E. Van Vogt, "The Weapon Shops Of Isher", ASF December 1942
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1960
No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before.
-- Colin Greenwood, in the study "Firearms Control", 1972
Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.
-- Edward Abbey, "Abbey's Road", 1979
In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the "collective" right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.
-- Stephen P. Halbrook, "That Every Man Be Armed", 1984
I don't like the idea that the police department seems bent on keeping a pool of unarmed victims available for the predations of the criminal class.
-- David Mohler, 1989, on being denied a carry permit in NYC
Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don't have a gun, freedom of speech has no power.
-- Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese author, in the LA Times 15 Oct 1992
You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.
-- Rush Limbaugh, in a moment of unaccustomed profundity 17 Aug 1993
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.
-- Albert Gallatin, Oct 7 1789
The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose.
-- James Earl Jones
Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist.
-- Robert Anson Heinlein, 1949
Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws...It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem.
-- Mike Royko, Chicago Tribune
According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured, as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively comply with the felon's demands. Three times as many were injured if they used other means of resistance.
-- G. Kleck, "Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research," Law and Contemporary Problems 49, no. 1. (Winter 1986.): 35-62.
If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying -- that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 -- establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.
-- Senator Orrin Hatch, in a 1982 Senate Report
Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.
-- Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436 p. 491
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.
-- Noah Webster
[President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake."
-- Charlton Heston, FOX News Sunday, 18 May 1997
(Those) who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right (are) courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.
-- Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms."
--Aristotle
The biggest hypocrites on gun control are those who live in upscale developments with armed security guards -- and who want to keep other people from having guns to defend themselves. But what about lower-income people living in high-crime, inner city neighborhoods? Should such people be kept unarmed and helpless, so that limousine liberals can 'make a statement' by adding to the thousands of gun laws already on the books?"
--Thomas Sowell
"Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of guns."
-- U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJ-143454, "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse," August 1995.
Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.
-- L. Neil Smith
A man with a gun is a citizen. A man without a gun is a subject.
"Gun control" is a job-safety program for criminals.
During waves of terror attacks, Israel's national police chief will call on all concealed-handgun permit holders to make sure they carry firearms at all times, and Israelis have many examples where concealed permit holders have saved lives.
-- John R. Lott
"Historical examination of the right to bear arms, from English antecedents to the drafting of the Second Amendment, bears proof that the right to bear arms has consistently been, and should still be, construed as an individual right."
-- U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings, in re U.S. vs Emerson (1999).
"The next time someone tells you that the militia referred to in the Second Amendment has been "superceded" by the National Guard, ask them who it was that prevented United Airlines Flight 93 from reaching its target."
-- Randy E. Barnett
Traveling without a gun is like boating without a lifejacket - you're unlikely to need either one, but when you need it, you need it *now*.
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can."
-- Samuel Adams
"This country, with it's institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it."
-- AbrahamLincoln, April 4, 1861
"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
-- John Stuart Mill
"Peace, in hostile situations, requires that no party be too publicly, or too sincerely, peaceful."
-- Joshua Kleinfeld
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The only effective way to restrain government spending is by limiting government's explicit tax revenue."
-- Milton Friedman
"A 9mm might expand--but a .45 wont shrink"
-- Jim Hass
The great majority of the victims of violent crime are taken by surprise. The one who anticipates the action wins. The one who does not, loses. Learn by the experience of others and don't let yourself be surprised.
-- Jeff Cooper
"Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to hide them."
-- Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld
"What is said when drunk has been thought out beforehand."
-- Flemish proverb
"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake free people get to make only once."
-- Judge Alex Kozinski, 9th Circus Court of Appeals. one of the dissenters in Silveira v. Lockyer.
"If you don't have a gun, you have nothing."
-- Auschwitz survivor Menashe Lorinczi, by way of David Kopel
"When character is lost, rules and punishments cannot take its place."
-- Paul Craig Roberts
"There is a difference between casualties from collateral damage and casualties from deliberate slaughter."
-- Ben Shapiro
"A civil society is weakened when there is one standard of justice for private companies and individuals, and another for well-connected people in government."
-- Richard W. Rahn
"My concern is not what [Attorney General John] Ashcroft and President Bush will do with the new powers granted the government to conduct the war on terrorism. It is what a future attorney general like Hillary Clinton could easily do with those powers. This is not a trivial matter."
-- Paul Weyrich
"...[F]ew things are so deadly as a misguided sense of compassion."
-- Charles Colson
"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."
-- Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.
"War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives the people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face as if you were ashamed of it."
-- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
"You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer."
-- Winston Churchil
"That government is not best which best secures mere life and property -- there is a more valuable thing -- manhood."
-- Mark Twain
"To insist on strength ... is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering."
-- Barry Goldwater
"The hoplophope fears and, yes, hates us because we are not afraid. There is not much room for compromise here. We cannot expect reason to carry weight, but we can meet propaganda with propaganda, and our task is easier because our position is demonstrably the right one. And most people are not complete fools."
-- Jeff Cooper
"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical over 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today."
-- Thomas Sowell
"We get the fundamental confusion that government, since it can correct much abuse, can also create righteousness."
-- Herbert Hoover
"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."
-- The Dali Lama
"Privately owned firearms were ubiquitous in America during the lifetimes of the Founding Fathers and well after that. It was taken as a given that individuals had the right to keep and bear arms. It was only the willful disregard of original intent and the clear statements of the Founders on the subject that allowed Franklin Roosevelt's activist, liberal Supreme Court in 1939 to disavow what had been a uniquely American birthright. Gun-control agitators have based all their arguments on the post-1939 history of federal regulation of firearms -- and assiduously avoided any acknowledgement of what the Founders themselves wrote and intended. Thus, the social engineering of activist judges clearly hostile to the Constitution as written and determined to remake it more to their own liking has come to take precedence over what the Founders attempted to bequeath to subsequent generations of Americans."
-- Washington Times June 5, 2000
"I've heard that many people are hoarding cash and food just in case civilization collapses. My strategy is to hoard guns and ammo so I can take the cash and food from the people who didn't do a good job thinking through the 'collapse of society' concept."
-- Scott Adams
Gun control is not about guns, it is about control
"He who laughs last is the one who shoots first."
-- Alexander Lebed
"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."
-- Douglas MacArthur
"Let us make war on the phrase 'violence doesn't solve anything.' It is a lie, and anyone who utters it cannot be taken morally seriously."
-- Dennis Prager
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
-- Ambrose Redmoon
"Moderation in war is imbecility."
-- Admiral John Fisher
"The Constitution and the Bill of Rights limit the government, not the people. But liberalism limits the people, favors government, grows and expands it."
-- Rush Limbaugh
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
-- C.S. Lewis
"Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated."
-- Calvin Coolidge
"Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. ...We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. We will lead the world in opposing it."
-- President George W. Bush
"If you are not in position to return fire effectively, you are not using cover. You are HIDING."
-- Bob Houzenga
"Every normal man must be tempted, at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats."
-- H.L. Mencken
"The only rich people deserving of malice are rich liberals who express bemusement at the non-rich's desire for a tax cut."
-- Ann Coulter
"The only legitimate purpose of our tax system is to raise revenues needed to run the government. It's not the government's job to determine how you should use your money."
-- Rep. Ron Paul
Banning guns does not ban violence. Law-abiding citizens obey the rules, not terrorists."
-- John R. Lott, Jr
"What a strange world we live in: What our academics, intellectuals, and self-professed ethicists call morality so often turns out to be so abjectly amoral -- and downright deadly as well."
-- Victor Davis Hanson
"There's one form of bigotry that is still acceptable in America -- that's the bigotry against the successful."
-- Sen. Phil Gramm
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."
-- Alexander Fraser Tytler
"Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business ...frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite."
-- Ronald Reagan
"Yet arguing that the words of the Constitution have no fixed meaning is tantamount to arguing that we have no Constitution; a Constitution serves no purpose if the branches of government it is supposed to limit can define their own powers."
-- W. James Antle III
"A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn't own."
-- Frank Dane
I hate violence! I hate it so much I am willing to kill anyone who tries to use it against me.
-- Mike Waidelich
"You must understand, therefore, that there are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. The first is the way natural to men, and the second to beast. But as the first way often proves inadequate one must needs have recourse to the second"
-- Machiavelli
"Fight back! Whenever you are offered violence, fight back! The aggressor does not fear the law, so he must be taught to fear you. Whatever the risk; and at whatever the cost, fight back!"
-- Jeff Cooper, Nov. 1993
"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own 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?"
-- Patrick Henry
"The whole of the Bill of Rights is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals. It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently no majority has a right to deprive them of."
-- Albert Gallatin
A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money.
-- Carter Glass
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
-- Joseph Stalin
"An act of Congress repugnant to the Constitution is not law. When the Constitution and an act of Congress are in conflict, the Constitution must govern the case to which both apply. Congress cannot confer on this court any original jurisdiction. The powers of the legislature are defined and limited, and those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten is the reason the Constitution was written."
-- Marbury vs. Madison
"Well, we know what motivates the hoplophobe. He simply envies the man who can cope where he, the hoplophobe, cannot. A skilled, armed man lives on a plane of security and contentment different from that of others. This is not egalitarian! The man who cannot cut it, envies, fears, and sometimes hates the man who can."
-- Jeff Cooper
Washington, DC -- Where they took a perfectly good swamp and made it into a sewer.
"Tolerance is the virtue of people with no virtues."
-- Unknown
"Altering the Constitution has become the daily business of the Federal Government the document is supposed to guide and limit. Both Congress and the judiciary assume, and exercise, countless powers they aren't entitled to."
--Joseph Sobran
"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Education is neither intelligence nor wisdom. An educated fool can always find a philosophy to justify his folly.
"Do you really think our forefathers really went to all the effort of drafting the Second Amendment so a bunch of people could go hunting?"
-- Allan Keys
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"We may train marksmen, and make soldiers, but only God can make a warrior. In peacetime its very easy to mistake one for the other."
-- John Nichols
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the walls of his cell."
-- C. S. Lewis
"Liberals are arrant bigots. They would deny moral equality to anyone who disagrees with them"
-- Winston Churchill.
"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows that the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?"
-- James Madison, Federalist #62
"Lethargy [is] the forerunner of death to the public liberty."
-- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787
"Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave."
-- Andrew Fletcher (1698)
"It would be a sad thing if the religious and moral convictions upon which the American experiment was founded could now somehow be considered a danger to free society."
-- Pope John Paul II
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
-- George Washington
"Progressives' divide their time between praising 'diversity' and 'tolerance,' and trying to legislate against and regulate behavior they disapprove."
`-- George Will
"The difference between a good law and a bad law is that a bad law creates criminals, while a good law identifies them."
-- R. Alex Whitlock
Profanity is the effort of a feeble mind trying to express itself forcibly."
-- Jeff Cooper
"We have the people, and, in the end we have the guns."
-- Manny Fernandez, member NRA Board Of Directors
If guns cause crime, then logic follows without question that; cameras cause pornography, matches cause arson, automobiles cause accidents, bathing suits cause drowning, computers cause email, baseball bats cause home runs, blenders cause margaritas, elections cause corruption and, of course, grandmothers cause adultery.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."
-- James Madison's June 8, 1789 speech to Congress proposing the Bill of Rights
"Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states, or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?"
-- Walter E. Williams
"When will the media ever live up their mission to educate, instead of indoctrinate?"
-- Brent Bozell
"Teaching children to disregard their consciences is the surest path to lawlessness."
-- Alan Keyes
"The American Civil Liberties Union...is so committed to 'diversity,' abortion rights and gay rights that when one of these causes comes into conflict with free speech, it is free speech that is likely to suffer."
-- John Leo
"When did a lack of money and accomplishment become a mark of virtue?"
--Ann Coulter
"The mere wealth of America is not what engenders love of country. In fact, the least affluent areas are probably the most patriotic."
-- Mona Charen
"Only those in denial reject the proposition of a leftism that dominates the written and visual media alike."
-- Ross Mackenzie
"Poverty doesn't cause crime; people do. To commit acts as heinous as those of September 11th requires a profound depravity and utter lack of conscience."
-- Joel Mowbray
"It is possible today for American students to pass through elementary school and high school, and obtain a university degree without gaining any appreciation for the men who founded their country."
-- Paul Craig Roberts
"The sole purpose of our Constitution is to define the limited role of government in order to guarantee individual rights."
-- Tom DeWeese
"The new laws passed by Congress in the name of fighting terrorism pose a greater danger to the civil liberties of American citizens than to the operations of terrorists. Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die."
-- Charley Reese
"You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, 'There is a price we will not pay.' There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning of the phrase 'Peace through strength'."
-- Ronald Reagan
"A just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war."
-- Sir Francis Bacon
"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."
-- Thomas Sowell
"Government has ceased to mean upholding and reinforcing the traditional rights and morals of the governed; it now means compulsion in the service of social engineering."
-- Joseph Sobran
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
-- Jeff Cooper
I have developed a standard response to questions "Are you carrying a gun?" My standard response: "Gee, I don't know. That's kind of a personal question. Are you wearing underwear?"
"There is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of Western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the US. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of Western countries."
-- George Orwell (in 1945), quoted in a letter to The Spectator
"I believe a self-righteous liberal Democrat with a cause is more dangerous than a Hell's Angel with an attitude."
-- Ted Nugent
"There were too many cell phones on that airplane and not enough pistols."
-- Payton Miller, Executive Editor of Guns & Ammo regarding Flt 93 on 9/11/01
"We've got what it takes to take what you've got."
-- The liberal's credo
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it"
-- Attributed to Thomas Jefferson
"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
-- John Shedd
". . . no free man shall be debarred the use of arms within his own land."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution of 1776
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself . . . they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
-- attributed to George Washington
True joy is the company of properly raised children.
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
-- Second Amendment (Bill of Rights), US Constitution
If God believed in permissiveness he would have given us the "Ten Suggestions."
"The highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is bearing arms."
-- Patton
"To keep and bear arms" means "to own and carry guns."
The gun is to crime as the camera is to pornography.
Everyone has a right to their opinion, but some opinions are garbage.
A sinner can reform, but stupidity is permanent
Liberty and Responsibility go hand in hand.
A liberal is a man who carries a .357 or smaller.
Support Search & Rescue! Get Lost
In a melting pot the scum rises to the top.
If you don't have a gun, do not come to a gun fight.
Control government, not guns.
The only dignified and effective response to extortion is violence.
I would like to take you seriously, but that would be to affront your intelligence.
The timid are not philosophically qualified to comment on the activities of the courageous.
"I hate liberals. They are not nice people with bad ideas. They are bad people with evil ideas."
-- J.F.A. Davidson, The Resister, "vIII#4 p.5
Only a fool confuses preparedness with paranoia.
"The reason there are so many stupid people is because it's illegal to kill them."
-- John Wayne, Sands of Iwo Jima
When everyone is out to get you, paranoia is adaptive
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical."
-- Thomas Jefferson
I am the weapon. The gun is only a tool
"Four boxes: Soap, Ballot, Jury, Ammo. Use in that order"
-- Author unknown.
The pen is mightier than the sword...except in a swordfight.
"In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs."
-- Walter Lippman, in _An Inquiry into the Principles of a Free Society_
"The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"To be killed by a man who is one step below you on the evolutionary ladder would be embarrassing."
-- Bill Jeans
"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-- James Madison
"Just 'cause you're paranoid, doesn't mean nobody's after you."
"Society Is Safer When Criminals Don't Know Who's Armed."
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity."
-- Sigmund Freud
You'll get further with a smile and a gun than with just a smile.
"Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States; as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-- Thomas Jefferson
He who wanders unarmed deserves what he gets.
"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."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims 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 consciences."
-- C.S Lewis
"PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."
-- George Orwell
Smart guns will never compensate for stupid people.
There are few problems that cannot be solved with the proper application of high explosives." from the US Army's demolition school
Definitions
1. A Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.
2. A Republic: The flock gets to vote for which wolves vote on dinner.
3. A Constitutional Republic: Voting on dinner is expressly forbidden, and the sheep are armed.
4. Federal Government: The means by which the sheep will be fooled into voting for a Democracy.
5. Freedom: Two very hungry wolves looking for dinner and finding a very well-informed and well-armed sheep.
Moral: John Browning was an alien sent to improve the status of personal as well as infantry weaponry on this planet. Don't argue with his designs.
"Love is what goes on between a man and a .45 that doesn't jam."
-- Alan Ladd
"I'm a bomb technician. If you see me running, try to keep up."
(Seen on a t-shirt)
Liberalism is a disease
"The Constitution of the United States was designed for a moral and religious people and is inadequate for the government of any other kind."
-- John Adams
"Voting and owning a gun are both constitutional rights, but both require intelligent usage; only a fool uses either without thinking or caring."
-- Sen. H.L. Richardson
Gun control is hitting your target.
"There are no such things as dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men."
-- Robert Heinlein, Methuselah
"Only an armed man can have political rights."
-- Old Swiss tradition
"The law in curbing crime, is about as useful as the United Nations, in curbing aggression."
-- William F. Buckley, Jr.
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
"If you're not cheating, you're not trying."
-- Attributed to Clint Smith, Thunder Ranch
Me, paranoid? Which one of my enemies told you this
"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
-- 9th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
-- 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
"The unfolding national moral decline, unappreciated by most Americans, is our inheritance from the nation's leftists. The most obvious signs of it are family breakdown, illegitimacy, incivility, rampant crime, and lack of integrity in private and public life. A recent example of the decline in integrity standards is the broad public support of a president who has been judged in a court of law as a perjurer, an adulterer and a miscreant. A core element of the nation's moral decline is the attack on individual responsibilities and the establishment of a culture of victimhood."
-- Walter E. Williams
"No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of patriotism...."
-- Andrew Jackson
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Second Amendment rights are sacred because of their connection to higher rights and higher duties, which are the very substance of liberty and justice, and to the God that America has always acknowledged as the source of both. We cannot surrender our guns without surrendering the vision of human dignity under God which is our national soul."
-- Alan Keyes
"Woe to those who call good evil and evil good."
-- Jewish proverb
"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
-- Spinoza
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
-- Mark Twain
"Tis better to be armed and never need to be than to be unarmed and need to be armed."
-- Jeff Cooper
"A man who has never been in battle is never sure whether or not he is a man."
-- Jeff Cooper
"As far as we can look back into history, the downfall of any nation can be traced from the moment that nation became timid about spending its best blood."
-- Frederick Russel Burnham
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any 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. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted--and you create a nation of law-breakers--and then you cash in on the guilt."
-- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"
Anyone who gets in a fair fight...has no tactical skills,
Scott (to Native Americans): "You can't attack the white men now, Chief. It'll break the peace."
Chief (pointing at corpses): "Dead enemies best way to peace."
"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."
-- William Burroughs
"Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledge hammer."
-- Major Holdridge, 1994
A communist is someone who has nothing and wants to share it with you.
"I cannot consent to place in the control of others one who cannot control himself."
-- Robert E. Lee
"Other than supporting the Bill of Rights, does anything constitute treason in this country any more?"
-- Minority Mike
"Beware the fury of a patient man."
-- John Dryden
"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
-- Adolf Hitler
"Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood."
-- Maya Angelou
"I would surely rather strike a blow than either flee or remain quiet, waiting to be struck."
-- Robert E. Lee, "Guns of the South"
"Don't get killed for lack of shooting back."
-- Anon
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."
-- John Hay, 1872
"Delay in the use of force, and hesitation to accept responsibility for its employment when the situation clearly demands it, will always be interpreted as a weakness. Such indecision will encourage further disorder, and will eventually necessitate measures more severe than those which would have sufficed in the first instance."
-- United States Marine Corps Small Wars Manual, (1940) page 27, paragraph (d)
"More formidable is an army of deer, led by a lion, than an army of lions, led by a deer."
-- Rev. Bob Thieme
"In a free society, government has no more place in education than it has in religion"
-- Samuel Blumfield, Is Public Education Really Necessary?
Blessed are they who, in the face of death, think only about the front sight.
Is your pistol within reach as you read this?
"A Master of Arms is more honorable than a Master of Arts, for good fighting came before writing."
-- Marston, in Paradox XV, A.D. 1617
Those who will not read have nothing over those who cannot read.
In ascending order the qualities of Patriotism are:
1. To work, fight, or die for your own survival.
2. To work, fight, or die for your immediate family.
3. To work, fight, or die for a group, extended family, tribe, or clan.
4. To work, fight, or die for a group too large for all the individuals to know each other.
5. To work, fight, or die for a way of life..
-- Robert A. Heinlein
"If you know how to shoot, and are quite ready to shoot, the chances are that you won't have to shoot."
-- Blackjack Pershing
"Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice!"
-- Bill Jeans
"Better to have a gun and not need it, than to need it and not have it."
-- David Crosby
"Don't worry so much about your self-esteem. Worry more about your character."
-- Laura Schlessinger
"The pistol--learn it well and wear it always."
-- Jeff Cooper
The one who insists that it can not be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
"It is wonderful, in the event of a street fight, how few bullets seem to hit the men they are aimed at."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty."
-- John D. Rockefeller
"A proper pacifist is one who will fight to preserve his own right to be a pacifist."
-- Stewart Edward White
"He who will not risk cannot win."
-- John Paul Jones
"A just war is, in the long run, far better for a man's soul than the most prosperous peace."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
One can not have: Too many books, too many wines, or too much ammunition.
"In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten. He who then continues to attack wins."
-- George Patton
"America is great because her people are good. If the American people cease to be good, America will cease to be great."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
"A strict observance of the law is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen, but not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence of written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying themselves with us... "
-- Thomas Jefferson, September 20, 1810, Human Events
"God deliver me from my friends! I'll take care of my enemies myself."
-- Arthur Wellesley, The Iron Duke
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
In the real world there are only two rules to gun fighting that matter:
1. Have a gun.
2 Win
"Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery. All else is twaddle."
-- Admiral "Jackie" Fisher (father of HMS Dreadnought)
"During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think."
-- Bernard Baruch
"The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
A coward is always in danger.
-- Portuguese proverb
Qui Desidererat Pacem Praeparet Bellum. (If you want peace, prepare for war.)
-- Old Latin saying
"It pays to shoot straight, straight shooters always win."
-- Art Blenski
"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear. Fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety."
-- H.L. Mencken
"When the buffalo are gone, we will hunt mice, for we are hunters and we want our freedom"
-- Sioux Chief, Sitting Bull
"Kill the snake or he will turn and bite you."
-- Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher, 500 B.C.
"Hit quickly, hit hard and keep on hitting. Give the enemy no opportunity to consolidate his forces and hit back at you."
-- Gen. Holland Smith, USMC
"The experienced soldier, once in motion, is never bewildered."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
Rapidity is the essence of war. Take advantage of your enemy's unreadiness.
-- Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
The first rule of street survival -- have a gun.
If you look like food, you will be eaten.
"If you are a second late in judging a man's intentions, you will be on your way to Boot Hill."
-- W.B. "Bat" Masterson
"There is nothing wrong with winning. There is a great deal wrong with losing. Those who bear arms should bear that in mind."
-- Jeff Cooper, "The Combat Mind-Set"
"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag who allows the protesters to burn the flag." -- Father Denis Edward O.Brien, U.S. Marine Corps
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."
-- Dean Inge
"Speed is fine, but accuracy is final."
-- Wyatt Earp
"The Second Amendment is the RESET button of the United States Constitution."
-- Doug McKay
To be Politically Correct is to be Morally Bankrupt, and totally lacking in courage.
[Regarding "gun control."] "There is no more outrageous insult or bigger example of stupidity than a government that is such a gross failure at preventing criminal, armed attacks on the population that it would take the position."
-- Charlie Reese
"Some people's idea of free speech is that they are free to say anything they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage."
-- Winston Churchill
"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live."
-- Pope John Paul II
"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."
-- Daniel Webster
"Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave."
-- Andrew Fletcher, 1698
"The person caught with his hand in the cookie jar is the person most likely to insist he wasn't looking for cookies."
-- GOA's Guide to Grassroots Lobbying.
"He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country."
-- Samuel Adams
"The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right -- subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility."
-- L. Neil Smith, the infamous Libertarian Science Fiction author
[referring to the Second Amendment] "This may be considered the true palladium of liberty... The right of self-defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Whenever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."
-- George Tucker, Judge of the Virginia General Court, Blackstone's Commentaries p.300, 1803
Intellectual - A person educated beyond his/her intelligence.
"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt.
"Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons."
-- John Ruskin
"You can't hold a man down without staying down with him."
-- Booker T. Washington
"At the heart of socialism lies the fallacy that human problems can be solved by social reorganization."
-- Solzhenitsyn
Thou shalt control thyself. (The REAL first commandment.)
The most doleful injuries a man can inflect upon his son are three:
To raise him without discipline.
To raise him without the joy of reading.
To raise him without firearms.
"It's alright to take your time in a fight, as long as you hit first."
-- Halstad's Old West Almanac
"Life is hopelessly complex for people who have no principles."
-- Joseph Sobram
If you don't like yourself, you can't like anyone else.
"If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Tell us not what the mugger did to you, but rather what you did to the mugger.
"Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem."
-- John Galsworthy
Preoccupation with equality is the disease of the incompetent.
It's not what you know that counts. It's what you can think of in time.
"An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
-- Winston Churchill
You don't hurt 'em if you don't hit 'em.
"He is most free from danger who, even when safe, is on his guard."
-- Publius Cyrus
A country without God doesn't have a prayer.
Out of sight, out of range
"A well disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores."
-- Bill Buckley
"Journalists say a thing that they know is untrue in the hope that if they keep saying it long enough it will be true."
-- Arnold Bennett
"If ye choose to be sheep, ye shall be mutton."
-- Frank Warren
Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Freedom isn't free -- but it's worth the price.
The following are mutually exclusive: Peace and freedom; Liberty and equality; fairness and simplicity.
Education is no substitute for literacy.
"Governments have always found it easier to impose 'the will of the people' upon the people if the people are unarmed."
-- Prof. Mark D. McLean
"When words lose their meaning, people loose their liberty."
-- Kung-Fu-Tse (Confucius)
"Tis true that the pen is mightier than the sword, but far more have people died for want of a sword than will die for lack of a pen."
-- Curtis Mohr
Only man has the will to direct an instrument, and only man, not an instrument, has the potential for evil.
"[I go armed that] I should have some chance of shooting the assassin before he could shoot me, if he were near me."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"If men are not ruled by God, they will be ruled by tyrants."
-- William Penn
"If you don't understand weapons, you can't understand fighting. If you don't understand fighting, you can't understand war. If you don't understand war, you can't understand history. If you don't understand history, you might as well have your head in a sack."
-- Jeff Cooper
Integrity is being good even if no one is watching.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use the pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
-- Winston Churchill.
"A golf course is a sad misuse of a perfectly good rifle range."
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
"The power to tax is the power to destroy."
-- Benjamin Franklin
Post Shooting Trauma -- your reaction to society's reaction to your having shot someone.
A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the 'phone.
A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the 'phone.
If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
Free Men do not ask permission to bear arms.
If you don't know your Rights you don't have any.
The United States Constitution Guns only have two enemies: rust and Liberals.
Know guns, know peace and safety. No guns, no peace nor safety.
You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
Blaming a gun for crime is like blaming a fork for Rosie O'Donnell for being FAT!
-- Dan Nowakowski
Assault is a type of behavior, not a type of hardware.
-- Alan Korwin
Criminals love gun control -- it makes their jobs safer.
If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.
Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
You only have the Rights you are willing to fight for.
Enforce the "gun control laws" we have, don't make more.
When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.
"...a government of the people, by the people, for the people...."
Those who live by the sword have a fighting chance.
-- Peter Aguirre
My Gun? I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
-- Stephen Wenger's sig
Bill of Rights. Void where prohibited by law.
-- Mark Moritz via the Libertarian Party
The day they want my guns they'll have to bring theirs.
-- Charles E Roberts
How can you praise freedom, and condemn that which gains and preserves it?
-- Duke Schechter
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
-- Thomas Paine via Lace Pants
Shooting. The only sport endorsed by the Founding Fathers.
-- Patrick J. Parsley
My wife and my gun: 'til death do us part.
-- Lawrence Smith
"When they come for your guns, give them the ammo first!"
-- "Boston T. Party"
If you are free to be a liberal -- thank a man with a gun!
-- Bob Cawman
Without my gun, the King of England could just come into my house and start quartering soldiers!
-- Nate Neterval
The D.C. gun ban works - just ask James Brady.
-- Mike Sullivan
Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun!
-- Jared Hathaway
Keep guns out of the hands of criminals, buy them for yourself.
-- Dean Karvan
Guns are smart enough. We need smarter politicians.
-- Terry Wintroub
Bolt actions speak louder than words.
-- Matthew W. Gail
Gun control....it's not a new idea......Just a bad one!!!!!
-- "Blaze," AmBack Member
My Grandmother wouldn't even speak the word Democrat if there were children in the room, she'd say Bastards instead.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
A Liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
-- Robert Frost
All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Governmnet did not create the States; the States created the Federal Governmnet.
-- Pres. Ronald Reagan
We're the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich
-- Ronald Reagan
You're either with us, or you're with the Enemy
-- President G.W. Bush
Republicans believe every day is the 4th of July, Democrats believe every day is April 15.
-- Ronald Reagan
We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it.
-- Marge Simpson
As Far as I'm concerned, war always means failure.
-- Jacques Chirac, President of France
As far as France is concerned, you're right.
-- Rush Limbaugh
I would rather have a German division in front of men than a French one behind me.
-- Gen. George S. Patton
Political Correctness means always having to say you're sorry.
Bigot, n:
A Conservative winning an argument with a Liberal.
Liberalism, n:
The fear that someone, somewhere, can help themselves.
Waco, How Liberals seperate church and state.
"The Americans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives."
-- Winston Churchill
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
-- Winston Churchill
"One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"
-- Winston Churchill
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
-- Winston Churchill
"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law."
-- Winston Churchill
"If you're going through hell, keep going."
-- Winston Churchill
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
-- Winston Churchill
"There is no such thing as a good tax."
-- Winston Churchill
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
-- Winston Churchill
"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."
-- Winston Churchill
"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."
-- Winston Churchill
"What kind of a people do they (Japan) think we are? Is it possible they do not realise that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?"
-- Winston Churchill
"Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: "We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls."
-- Winston Churchill
"We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old."
-- Winston Churchill
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour." -- Winston Churchill % "Here the country had finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism and they don't want to fight it. They would have, except it would put them on the same side as the United States."
-- Ann Coulter
"Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."
-- Ann Coulter
"What liberals mean by "goose-stepping" or "ethnic cleansing" is generally something along the lines of "eliminating taxpayer funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. But they can't say that, or people would realize they're crazy. So instead they accuse Republicans of speaking in 'code words.'"
-- Ann Coultetr
"'Moderate Republican' is simply how the blabocracy flatters Republicans who vote with the Democrats. If it weren't so conspicuous, the New York Times would start referring to "nice Republicans" and 'mean Republicans.'"
-- Ann Coulter
"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society."
-- Ann Coulter
"If liberals expressed half as much self-righteous indignation about crime as they do about the random case of police brutality, one might be inclined to take them seriously. Criminals they like. It's the police they hate."
-- Ann Coulter
"Indeed, the media elites covering national politics would be indistinguishable from the Democratic Party except the Democratic Party isn't liberal enough. A higher percentage of the Washington press corps voted for Clinton in 1992 than did his demographic category: 'Registered Democrats.'"
-- Ann Coulter
"Liberals don't believe there is such a thing as "fact" or "truth." Everything is a struggle for power between rival doctrines."
-- Ann Coulter
"'Stupid' means one thing: "threatening to the interests of the Democratic Party." The more Conservative the Republican, the more vicious and hysterical the attacks on his intelligence will be."
-- Ann Coulter
"Most preposterously, the New York Times reported -- as if it were news -- "With his grades and college boards, Mr. Bush might not have been admitted [to Yale] if he had applied just a few years later." "Might not have been admitted"? What on earth does that mean? Bush also "might not have been admitted" if he had dropped out of high school and become a Gangsta Rapper. It so galls Northeastern liberals that Republican George Bush went to an Ivy League school, they can't resist publicly fantasizing about an alternative universe in which Yale rejects him."
-- Ann Coulter
"The imaginary threat of the "religious right" is important because it allows liberals to complain about their victimization by religious zealots. It is not sufficient compensation to be applauded wildly on Politically Incorrect and other late-night TV shows, profiled in fawning articles in the New York Times, photographed for People magazine, showered with awards, Pulitizer Prizes, and other sundry tributes. Liberals insist that they also be admired for their bravery in standing up to Christians."
-- Ann Coulter
"Liberals hate religion because politics is a religion substitute for liberals and they can't stand the competition."
-- Ann Coulter
"Much of the left's hate speech bears greater similarity to a psychological disorder than to standard political discourse. The hatred is blinding, producing logical contradictions that would be impossible to sustain were it not for the central element faith plays in the left's new religion. The basic tenet of their faith is this: Maybe they were wrong on facts and policies, but they are good and conservatives are evil. You almost want to give it to them. It's all they have left."
-- Ann Coulter
"(L)iberals don't think a majority of Americans support abortion -- otherwise they would welcome the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which would do nothing more than put abortion to a vote. As their theatrics on Roe demonstrate, the last thing they want is a vote. Once Americans were allowed to vote on abortion. Then Roe came along and overturned the democratically enacted laws of forty-eight states."
-- Ann Coulter
"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 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 is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"You can't get good chinese takeout in China and cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism. "
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop"
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"[T]he Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"Politics should be limited in scope to ware, protection of property, and the occasional precautionary beheading of a member of the ruling class."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"In comparative terms, there's no poverty in America by a long shot. Heritage Foundation political scientist Robert Rector has worked up figures showing that when the official U.S. measure of poverty was developed in 1963, a poor American family had an income twenty-nine times greater than the average per capita income in the rest of the world. An individual American could make more money than 93 percent of the other people on the planet and still be considered poor."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"Some earnest souls have gone so far as to aver that impeachment has distracted President Clinton from ... raising taxes, destroying health care, appointing 1960s bakeheads to high political office, soliciting felonious campaign contributions, hanging friends out to dry for Arkansas real estate frauds, giving missile secrets to the Chinese, taking credit for the benefits of a free market about which he knows little and cares less, using U.S. military forces as fig leaves for domestic scandals and au pairs for the U.N., leading foreign policy back into the flea circus of Jimmy Carterism, having phone sex, groping patronage seekers, and snapping the elastic on the underpants of psychologically disturbed school-age White House interns entrusted with the task of delivering high-level government pizza."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors--psychology, sociology, women's studies--to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
"The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
Liberals know gun control laws will not stop criminals, but it will erode the sense of independence and self reliance of regular people until they feel that they can do nothing that does not meet government approval.
-- Justin Darr, Why Liberals Love Gun Control
Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.
-- Jacques Barzun
Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.
-- Doris Lessing
The notion of political correctness declares certain topics, certain expressions, even certain gestures, off-limits. What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship.
-- George Bush, Sr
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
"The two pillars of 'political correctness' are:
a) willful ignorance
b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth"
-- George MacDonald
"Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'."
--John Sladek
To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form.
-- Roy Innis
Tell the American people never to lose their guns. As long as they keep their guns in their hands, what's happened here will never happen there.
-- A dying Chinese Citizen shot at Beijing, Red China
Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the people's liberty's teeth.
-- George Washington
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, 'Well, what do you need?'
-- Steven Wright
Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless.
-- Vladimir Ilich Lenin
Popular revolt against a ruthless, experienced modern dictatorship which enjoys a monopoly over weapons, and communications,... is simply not a possibility in the modern age.
-- George Keenan
No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand.
-- J. Michael Straczynski
The tone and tendency of liberalism ... is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Liberals are constitutionally unable to understand that every tax represents a transfer of power and freedom from the people to the government.
-- Linda Bowles
The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.
-- Norman Thomas
History is not going to be kind to liberals. With their mindless programs, they've managed to do to Black Americans what slavery, Reconstruction, and rank racism found impossible: destroy their family and work ethic.
-- Walter Williams
Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
-- Clive Alexander Barnes
A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.
-- Elbert Hubbard
Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
-- Bertrand Russell
Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays.
-- Bertrand Russell
You know there is a problem with the education system when you realize that out of the 3 Rs, only one begins with an R.
-- Dennis Miller
"Control your emotion or it will control you."
-- Chinese adage
"To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"The use of one's bare hands to defend against attack or to launch an attack has always been a desperation move, a method of last resort, by any people at any time and anywhere on this squalid little planet. It has only been rather recently in mankind's history that the habitual carrying of weapons has become something less than the universal norm."
-- Peyton Quinn
"If someone attacks me on the street, I don.t wanna just make him cry and give him a runny nose -- I wanna wound the bastard!"
-- anonymous female (when asked why she carries a knife instead of pepperspray)
"Do not hesitate to use your weapon when you and your loved ones face mortal danger."
-- Eugene Sockut
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
-- Ani DiFranco
"For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible."
-- Machiavelli
"A gun will not crawl out of a drawer to attack you; it will not change you into a hero or a villain; it will not drive you mad with power; and it will not make you capable of anything except expelling a lead projectile by means of expanding gases. Therefore, do not fear the handgun, and do not expect it to save you from your own weaknesses. It is only a tool."
-- Fred Rexer, Jr.
"They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war . as though the absence of war was the same as peace."
-- Dorothy Thompson
"While the Swiss believes in peace, and desires it above all else, his good sense tells him this is best assured by preparedness at all times."
-- Colonel George Bell
"Among the elementary measures the American government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are the following: the schools, colleges, and universities will be coordinated and grouped under a National Department of Education and its state and local branches. The studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of bourgeois ideology."
-- William Z. Foster, National Chairman of the United States Communist Party, in his book "Toward a Soviet America".
"Man is attracted to weapons (not just guns, as they are a relatively recent invention), because the mere possession of them is the ultimate expression of individual power, personal responsibility, and the freedom to choose one's future."
-- Gabe Suarez, 1998
"That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools."
-- Thucydides
"The purpose of government is to employ government employees."
-- Jerry Pournelle
"It's ideology, not poverty, that causes political violence."
-- Don Feder
"The mere wealth of America is not what engenders love of country. In fact, the least affluent areas are probably the most patriotic."
-- Mona Charen
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
-- Mark Twain
"According to the media elite's rulebook, when liberals rant it's called free speech; when conservatives rant it's called incitement to terrorism."
-- Bernard Goldberg
"If politicians don't respect the law, why should citizens respect politicians?"
-- Debra Saunders
"Big government and big campaign money go hand-in-hand."
-- Rep. Ron Paul
"Family life is the normal context in which we can learn that a life filled with thinking about others instead of ourselves is the sure road to the most fulfilling joys and satisfactions."
-- Alan Keyes
"A Great Power should always keep its powder dry for the supreme fight. We are in one now. And no amount of casualties will deter us."
-- Charles Krauthammer
"Before our very eyes, history is being transformed into politically correct fantasy."
-- Paul Craig Roberts
"What our country deserves from everyone who enjoys its fruits and freedoms is a little more gratitude and a lot less greed."
-- Michelle Malkin
"I have long since abandoned the notion that higher education is essential to either success or happiness. Hothouses of learning do not always grow anything edible. "
-- Robert Moses
"Imagine a world without attorneys approving targets."
-- The warriors wish
"Injustice is rife when people have no conscience. In our time, only politically correct official 'victim groups' are deserving of concern, and the compassion they receive is orchestrated for the purpose of advancing political agendas."
-- Paul Craig Roberts
"Of all our artifacts, personal weapons are the best examples of return on money expended. Let no one who buys a car, or a horse, or a sound system, or a house ever complain about the cost of a guns".
-- Jeff Cooper
"The 'lesson of appeasement' is not that appeasement is futile. Appeasement is not futile, it is dangerous.... Appeasement doesn't merely fail to prevent catastrophe, it provokes catastrophe."
-- David Gelernter
"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."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Open borders for terrorists means a police state for citizens."
-- Paul Craig Roberts
"I believe that for the past twenty years there has been a creeping socialism spreading in the United States."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953)
"The Founders were not democrats and socialists..., but conservatives who had a healthy distrust of political passions and who devised a complex system designed to frustrate the schemes of social redeemers and others convinced of their own invincible virtue."
-- David Horowitz
"Willingness is a state of mind. READINESS is a statement of fact!"
"Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage."
-- Winston Churchill
"Yes, we did produce a near perfect republic, but will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"A Republic must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty...."
-- John Witherspoon
Peace through excessive firepower.
It never troubles the wolf, how many the sheep may be.
It's not the tool, it's the intent!
"If you have to write your ethics rules down, you've already lost"
-- Tom Clancy, The Bear and The Dragon
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
-- Mark Twain
"In the end, more than they wanted freedom they wanted a comfortable life. And, in their quest for it all (security, comfort and freedom) they lost it all. When the freedom they wished for became the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."
-- Edward Gibbons discussing the decline and fall of the ancient city of Athens.
Prohibition breeds and exponentially increases government and criminal violence.
"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property...Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them."
-- Thomas Paine
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but with tyrants, I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."
-- William Lloyd Garrison
"Everything that emancipates the spirit without giving us control over ourselves is harmful."
-- Goethe
"If you don't write it down, it never happened."
-- Tom Clancy, Executive Decision
The ability to cope with the unforeseen is the measure of a man.
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
"If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"I am growing very weary of being shown the light by people who can't do what I do, but know I'm not doing it right."
-- Dick Johnson, author
"I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
"Millions are fascinated by the plan to transform the whole world into a bureau, to make everybody a bureaucrat, and to wipe out any private initiative. The paradise of the future is visualized as an all-embracing bureaucratic apparatus. . . . Streams of blood have been shed for the realization of this ideal."
-- Ludwig Edler von Mises
"If one does not fail at times, one has not challenged himself sufficiently."
-- Ferdinand Porsche
Always use enough gun.
"One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."
-- Mark Twain
"Evil is a moral problem, not a medical or psychological one."
-- Charles Krauthammer
"Certain moral principles can't and will never be decided by polls."
-- Alan Keyes
"The greatest threat to the planet is not too many people, but too much statism."
-- Stephen Moore
"Never walk away from your axe and sword. You can't feel a battle in your bones or foresee a fight."
-- Attributed to The Sayings of the Vikings
"Who controls the present controls the past. Who controls the past controls the future."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four
"Those who profess to favor freedom yet depreciate agitation are men who want the crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. ... Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. ... The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose."
-- Fredrick Douglas
Veteran's Day--A day when we remember those of us who were, or are still, a sword against the darkness.
"No government has ever been beneficent when the attitude of the government was that it was taking care of the people. The only freedom consists in the people taking care of the government."
-- Woodrow Wilson
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat"
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target. This precept we must emphasize as well as we are able. If you think that we are kidding or we just need you to bark at, A leg shot isn't funny on the operating table.
Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.
`Firepower' usually means an increased number of misses per minute. Fifty misses is not firepower. One hit is firepower.
Neither a bowler nor a slapper be, for wasted motion is thine enemy.
"Being right too soon is socially unacceptable."
-- Robert Heinlein
"The foolish and dead alone never change their opinions."
-- James Lowell
"No great man ever thought of himself so."
-- William Hazlitt
"Don't go into bear or buffalo country without a powerful rifle."
-- Jeff Cooper
Epitaph - "He finally ran completely out of patience."
"All legislation is impertinent and ridiculous unless the public peace can be preserved and the liberty and property of individuals safe from outrage and invasion."
-- Lord Melbourn, 1830
"The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse."
-- Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power
The physical world determines what we can do. The state determines what we may do. God determines what we ought to do.
"When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly, and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all."
-- Justice William O. Douglas
"A man's character may be determined by what he chooses to do when there is no possibility of his being punished for it."
-- Lord MacCauley
"Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action."
-- Goethe
The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw
"Only interested people are interesting."
-- Jeff Cooper
"No man escapes when freedom fails, the best men rot in filthy jails, and those that cried appease, appease, are hanged by those they tried to please."
-- Author unknown.
"He who goes about unarmed in Paradise probably hasn't figured out how he got there so prematurely."
-- D.V.C. Flubber
"The critical factor for the small unit on the battlefield is its power to generate violence."
-- Maj. Chris Keeble, The Parachute Regiment
"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do."
-- Gen. George Patton
Any time you think you're a leader, put away your ability to punish and see if anyone is still following you.
"In no other profession are the penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so irrevocable as in the military."
-- General of the Army Douglas MacArthur
"The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable."
-- Grant, Memoirs, 1885
"Which government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves."
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"The cry of racism has become an excuse for not looking at reality and real problems."
-- Former leftist David Horowitz.
"Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
When they call roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"The disappearance of any overarching religious vision in our time accounts more than anything else for the present indifference to virtue: indeed, for our attempt to localize virtue in acquisition; in getting and spending and wearing out and throwing away, then restarting the process."
-- William Murchison
The following principles were found written next to I Kings 22 in the Bible of former Georgia State Senator Edwin Gochenour (1953-1999). "It is better to be united in truth than to be united in error. It is better to tell the truth that hurts then heals than to tell a lie that heals then kills. It is better to be hated for telling the truth than to be loved for telling a lie. It is better to stand alone with the truth than to be wrong with the multitudes. It is better to ultimately win with the truth than to temporarily succeed with a lie."
"Virtue is not always amiable."
-- John Adams
"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other."
-- Voltaire
They tell us we are weak -- unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot? We are not weak if we make a proper use of the means which the Gods of nature has placed in our power. Millions of people armed in the holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possesses, are invincible. Besides, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, is not to the strong alone, it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Many cry 'peace, peace' -- but there is no peace! . The war is actually begun! Why stand we here idle? 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!
-- Patrick Henry, Addressing the Virginia House of Burgesses, March 23, 1775
Without independent study, one can easily become indoctrinated rather than educated.
"Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth."
-- Daniel Webster
"I am confident and sad that, when future historians write about the decline and fall of the United States, the failure of the press to inform the people will be counted as a principle cause."
-- Charley Reese
Never volunteer. Trust no one. Expect sabotage.
"...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
-- James Madison, in "Essay # 10" of the Federalist Papers.
"It has been said that mankind is always one generation from barbarism. If we fail to transmit our heritage, our understanding, our concept of right and wrong, our faith in God and country, then the outcome will be barbarism. This is how, metaphorically speaking, we have crucified God. This is how we have murdered our country, betraying the legacy of Washington and the Founding Fathers. Apostasy and treason have appeared in our midst."
-- J.R. Nyquist
"No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends."
-- Alter Lippmann
"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."
-- Frederick Douglass
"All that the South has ever desired was that the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth."
-- Robert E. Lee
"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!"
-- Samuel Adams in a letter to John Pitts, January 21, 1776
"...wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves."
-- Conficious
"Under the administration of Rhodes, there were the fewest laws, the widest freedom, the least crime, and the truest justice I have ever seen in any part of the world."
-- Frederick Russell Burnham
"Naturally, when one is intensely interested in a certain cause, the tendency is to associate particularly with those who take the same view."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God's approval."
-- Thomas S. Monson (Ensign, November 1986, page 41)
"Man, in public trust, will much oftener act in such a manner as to render him unworthy of being any longer trusted, than in such a manner as to make him obnoxious to legal punishment."
-- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #70
"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from man because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty - so dear to man, so dear to the enlightened legislator - and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventative but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree."
-- Cesare Beccaria, 1764 AD
"The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt against the reality!"
-- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
"Those who are merciful to the cruel are destined to be cruel to the merciful."
-- The Talmud
Fear is a four-letter word. Everyone feels it, but only the lowly acknowledge it, and only the coward lets it influence his conduct.
"Free men are not equal and equal men are not free." -- Tom Anderson
"When men are free to choose, men will choose freedom."
-- Harlon Carter
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage."
-- Thucydides
"Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith."
-- de Tocqueville
A penny saved, is a penny that goes to the government.
"Character" may be defined as obedience to one's sense of ought.
"Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between The Almighty and them. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told."
-- Abraham Lincoln
Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds you down or polishes you up depends on what you are made of.
"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot not keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing what they could and should do for themselves."
-- Abraham Lincoln
If you can't solve the problem with five rounds of buckshot, chances are the problem will solve you.
"Are these morons getting dumber or just louder?"
-- Diamond Joe Quimby
Every time you make something idiot proof, someone else makes a better idiot.
The experienced soldier, once in motion, is never bewildered.
-- Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
"No one is completely worthless... they can always serve as a bad example!"
-- author unknown
"If you can't solve your problem with 7 rounds from a 45, you don't need more ammo. You need close air support!"
-- an un-named USMC LTC
"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."
-- Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England.
A cobra is still a cobra whether or not you call him "Mister Cobra."
"You may prefer to fill the air with lead, but I prefer one bullet to the head."
-- Anonymous
"I have never wished anyone dead, but I have read many an obituary with great joy "
-- Winston Churchill
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate 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 waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
-- Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857.
"Those unaware are unaware of being unaware"
-- Merrill Jenkins
"Do not be afraid of your enemies - in the worst case they can kill you; Do not be afraid of your friends - in the worst case they can betray you; Be afraid of the indifferent ones: it is from their silent blessings that all the evil is happening in the world!"
-- Bruno Yasensky, a Russian writer. As quoted by Bob Djurdjevic, May 25, 1999
I work hard because millions on welfare depend on me.
The Second Amendment does not give anyone a right to use a firearm criminally -- unlike the First Amendment that gives journalists the right to lie and misrepresent facts to make their point.
A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.
There is no 'overkill'. There is only 'open fire' and 'I need to reload'
The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done".
The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence... sort of like the Post Office with tanks.
-- Emo Philips
Violence and brutality are as much a part of humanity as intelligence and socialization. It is the universal drive of civilization to contain these instincts, to redirect them into more productive channels, to convince people to live within a set of rules. But no matter how civilized, no society has eliminated them, nor will one. The society that forgets this is the society that falls to the barbarian hordes. The society that accepts this, and nurtures the warrior spirit away from barbarism and into the defense of the right is the society that rises to glory.
-- "Control Group" Screen Name on thehightroad.org
Always place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
-- Lazarus Long
"Understand that the enemy is not the enemy in his own eyes, this may offer you an oppurtunity to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate, and quickly."
-- Robert Anson Heinlein
If the State can't or won't protect you, and you are forbidden to defend yourself, you will, eventually and with absolute certainty, become a victim.
-- Kim du Toit
The average American gun owner isn't some foaming militia-obsessed whackjob: he's your neighbor.
-- Kim du Toit
People who support gun control are either evil or morons. That's the beginning and the end of it, and I will have no truck with them.
-- Kim du Toit
A man who cannot defend himself is an invalid.
A man who will not defend himself is a coward.
A man who may not defend himself is a slave.
Only an armed man is truly at liberty.
The Right to Bear Arms is the only reliable way to prevent genocide in the modern world.
-- Joe Katzman
Guns and blood purchased our freedom. Gun control will ensure our enslavement.
"If a man is not inclined to risk his life for his country he should look elsewhere till he finds a country he will risk his life for."
-- Admiral Raymond Spruance
"What is wrong with America, in the eyes of the intelligentsia? The same things that are right with America in the eyes of others. If one word rings out, and echoes around the world, when America is mentioned, that word is Freedom. But what does freedom mean? It means that hundreds of millions of ordinary human beings live their lives as they see fit, regardless of what their betters think. That is fine, unless you see yourself as one of their betters, as so many intellectuals do."
-- Thomas Sowell
Politicians [ed - or liberals for that matter] never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money.
-- Joseph Sobran
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Oppressors can tyrannize only when they can achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populous."
-- James Madison
"It has long. been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from it's expression, that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of our federal judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scarecrow), working by gravity by night and day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless footstep like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the states, and the government of all be consolidated into one."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches."
-- Thomas Jefferson to W. H. Torrance, 1815. ME 14:303
"But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.' True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force."
-- Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:451
"But, you may ask, if the two departments [i.e., federal and state] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best."
-- Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:47
"The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
-- Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
"In denying the right [the Supreme Court usurps] of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than [others] do, if I understand rightly [this] quotation from the Federalist of an opinion that 'the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow . . . The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212
"This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:114
"My construction of the Constitution is . . . that each department is truly independent of the others and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially where it is to act ultimately and without appeal."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:214
You can't make Socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent."
-- John Dewey, reformer of the American public school system
America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused, preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.
-- George W. Bush (1946 - ), speech, November 19, 1999
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
-- Ronald Reagan
The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-- Ronald Reagan
Political Correctness is facism pretending to be manners.
Political Correctness: n: 1. mandatory dishonesty and obfuscation of factual information when the truth is offensive to leftists, terrorists and other enemines of America 2. A priori censorship of genuine ideological diversity in public, political and educational areas.
See also THOUGHTCRIME
-- http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/
There is one language which transcends borders, language barriers, and even time and space. It is understandable to both the most intelligent and most backward of individuals. In English, we call it "violence".
Unbiased eduation and massive ordinance are all that necessary for the maintenance of freedom.
I'm not a part of the problem, rather I'm out there causing entirely new ones, yet to be encountered or fathomed.
In a truly civil society peopled primarily by enlightened, sober individuals, the carriage of arms might be deemed gratuitous, but it is nonetheless harmless.
In a society that measures up to anything less than that, the option to carry arms is a necessity.
-- geek With A .45
The psychology of Projection: If you want to run people's lives for them, then you will probably assume that any armed person wants to do the same to you. Scratch a victim-disarmament supporter, and you will always discover a fear-ridden control-freak.
Vegetables are not food; vegetables are what food eats. Fruit are vegetables that fool you by tasting good. Fish are fast-moving vegetables. Mushrooms are what grows on vegetables when food is done with them.
-- Meat Eater's Credo
Cheit's Lament:
If you help a friend in need, he is sure to remember you-- the next time he's in need.
All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can -- and must -- be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly -- and no doubt will keep on trying.
-- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
-- Frédéric Bastiat - in THE LAW.
When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
-- Frédéric Bastiat - in THE LAW.
"Life, faculties, production.in other words, individuality, liberty, property.this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."
-- Frédéric Bastiat - in THE LAW.
"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."
-- Frédéric Bastiat - in THE LAW.
"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
-- Frédéric Bastiat - in GOVERNMENT.
"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
-- Frédéric Bastiat - in THE LAW.
It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion.whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government.at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.
-- Frédéric Bastiat - in THE LAW.
"Try to imagine a regulation of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property. If you cannot reconcile these contradictions, then you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice."
-- Frédéric Bastiat - in THE LAW.
Some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.
-- George Orwell
....How do you get peace, love and understanding? First of all you have to find all the bad people. Then, you kill them..
-- Ted Nugent
And to those who say the Second Amendment doesn't mean what we say it means: Let's settle that right now. The purpose of every line of the Bill of Rights was to protect people from the state. Our founders refused to ratify a Constitution that didn't protect individual liberties. They were just a bunch of old dead white guys, but they invented this country, and they meant what they said. The Second Amendment isn't about the National Guard or the poliece or any other Government entity. It is about law-abiding, private U.S. citizens. Period.
-- Charlton Heston
What we certainly do not need is more gun contgrol. Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of rights does not grant rights ot the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundimental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.
-- Jeffery R. Snyder.
I had a copy of the Soviet Constitution and I read it with great interest. And I saw all kinds of terms in there that sound just exactly like our own: 'Freedom of assembly' and 'freedom of speech' and so forth. Of course, they don't allow them to have those things, but they're in there in the constitution. But I began to wonder about the other constitutions -- everyone has one -- and our own, and why so much emphasis on ours. And then I found out, and the answer was very simple -- that's why you don't notice it at first. But it is so great that it tells the entire difference. All those other constitutions are documents that say, 'We, the government, allow the people the following rights,' and our Constitution says 'We the People, allow the government the following privileges and rights.' We give our permission to government to do the things that it does. And that's the whole story of the difference -- why we're unique in the world and why no matter what our troubles may be, we're going to overcome.
-- Ronald Reagan
Political Correctness: A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end!
It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.
-- Thomas Sowell
A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. 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.
-- Samuel Adams
