Aphorisms

Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important
They don’t mean to do harm
But the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.
T. S. Eliot
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
Alexis de Tocqueville”
“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, Socialist Party presidential candidate 1940, '44 & '48
It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
--Ayn Rand
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
   - Ronald Reagan

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

Man is not free unless government is limited.
     - many, but often attributed to Ronald Reagan
We the people tell the government what to do; It doesn't tell us.
     - many, but often attributed to Ronald Reagan

I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away. Thomas Jefferson to Uriah Forrest, 1787. Papers, 12:477


"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is 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 precarious 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

Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you wish for peace, prepare for war)
Anonymous

If you want something done, assign one person to the task. If you don't care if something gets done, assign two people to the job. If you absolutely do not want something to be done, assign it to a commitee.
Anonymous

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