"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."  Leonardo da Vinci

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!"  Pericles (430 B.C.)

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."  Calvin Coolidge

"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

"An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will."  Thomas Jefferson

"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. Let the National Government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State Government with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties; and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm and affairs by himself, that all will be done for the best."  Thomas Jefferson

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government, lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."  Patrick Henry

"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if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.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

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."  Plato

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and the government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."  Thomas Jefferson

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.... But then I repeat myself."  Mark Twain

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely 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 own conscience."  C.S. Lewis

"There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress."  Mark Twain

"Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared; but only men of character are trusted"  Alfred Adler

"Committees are, by nature, timid. They are based on the premise of safety in numbers; content to survive inconspicuously, rather than take risks and move independently ahead. Without independence, without the freedom for new ideas to be tried, to fail, and to ultimately succeed, the world will not move ahead, but live in fear of its own potential."  Dr. Ferdinand Porsche

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."  Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."  R. J. Wiedemann LtCol. USMC Ret.

"There is no security on this earth, ...only opportunity."  General Douglas MacArthur

"In time of war the only value that can be affixed to any unit is the tactical value of that unit in winning the war. Even the lives of those men assigned to it become nothing more than tools to be used in the accomplishment of that mission. War has neither the time nor heart to concern itself with the individual and the dignity of man. Men must be subordinated to the effort that comes with fighting a war, and as a consequence must die that objectives might be taken. For a commander the agony of war is not in its dangers, deprivations, or the fear of defeat but in the knowledge that with each new day men's lives must be spent to pay the cost of that day's objectives."  General Omar N. Bradley

"the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated. . . . Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil."  Pope John Paul II, 1991

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."  Winston Churchill

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."  Dr. Adrian Rogers

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."  James Madison

"As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives 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

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."  Theodore Roosevelt

"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, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."  Ronald Reagan

"I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive."  Thomas Jefferson

"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..." "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform."  Norman Thomas, 1944

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."  Margaret Thatcher

"Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel...."  Mark Twain

"Educate a man in mind and not in morals, and you educate a menace to society."  Theodore Roosevelt

"The great end of education is, to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers, rather than fill it with the accumulations of others."  Tyron Edwards

"Civil Service has itself become such a spoils system that a fed-to-the-teeth-with-bureaucracy public threatens to support a return to the old one. Once in a civil service job, one needs only to live to rise. It's near impossible to be fired for incompetence, indifference, woeful attendance, insubordination, or even being caught red-handed in the cookie jar... When Congress passed the civil service act slightly more than 100 years ago after a disappointed job-seeker assassinated President Garfield, it surely didn't have in mind that its baby would turn into such an uncivil monster."  Malcolm Forbes

"Be more concerned with your character...than your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are."  John Wooden

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight -- nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety --is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."  John Stewart Mill

"The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness."  R.A. Heinlein

"The only distinction between freedom and slavery consists in this: In the former state a man is governed by the laws to which he has given his consent, either in person or by his representative; in the latter, he is governed by the will of another. In the one case, his life and property are his own; in the other, they depend upon the pleasure of his master. It is easy to discern which of these two states is preferable. No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave."  Alexander Hamilton (December 1774)

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics."  John Adams

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."  Cicero, ~55 BC

"Error of Opinion may be tolerated where Reason is left free to combat it."  Thomas Jefferson

"The government is like a baby's alimentary canal: a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other."  Ronald Reagan

"I believe that to have a friend, a man must be one. That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world. That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself."  The Lone Ranger Credo

"Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer."  Ludwig von Mises

"In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent...It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered by the most complex set of rules, regulations, procedures and systems ever conceived in an athletic framework."  Gerard Baker

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!"  P.J. O'Rourke

"One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens pay nearly half of everything they earn to government."  Ron Paul

"I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."  Thomas Jefferson

"You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves."  Abraham Lincoln

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."  George Bernard Shaw

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."  Theodore Roosevelt

"It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune; and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it."  Meyer Rothschild

"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries."  Douglas Casey

"Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."  Abraham Lincoln

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."  Thomas Jefferson

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."  Milton Friedman

"Tax reduction thus sets off a process that can bring gains for everyone, gains won by marshalling resources that would otherwise stand idle--workers without jobs and farm and factory capacity without markets. Yet many taxpayers seemed prepared to deny the nation the fruits of tax reduction because they question the financial soundness of reducing taxes when the federal budget is already in deficit. Let me make clear why, in today's economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarged the federal deficit--why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues."  John F. Kennedy

"I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."  Winston Churchill

"If we take futurity into the account, we shall find that in fifty or sixty years America will be in no need of protection from Great Britain. She will then be able to protect herself both at home and abroad. America will have a plenty of men, and a plenty of materials, to provide and equip a formidable navy. She will, indeed, owe a debt of gratitude to the parent State for past services, but the scale will then begin to turn in her favor -- and the obligation for future services will be on the side of Great Britain."  Alexander Hamilton (February 1775)

"Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."  Thomas Jefferson

"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past."  Patrick Henry

"In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other."  Voltaire (1764)

"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's 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 every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."  Thomas Jefferson

"The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."  Theodore Roosevelt

"Government is the only agency that can take a perfectly useful commodity like paper, smear it with some ink, and render it absolutely useless."  Ludwig von Mises

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce."  James Madison in Federalist Paper #45

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."  James Madison

"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 (1986)

"When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."  Edmund Burke

"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."  Theodore Roosevelt

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."  Mark Twain (1866)

"Life itself is a race, marked by a start, and a finish. It is what we learn during the race, and how we apply it, that determines whether our participation has had particular value. If we learn from each success, and each failure, and improve ourselves through this process, then, at the end, we will have fulfilled our potential and performed well."  Dr. Ferdinand Porsche

"I'll tell you what war is all about; you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting."  General Curtis LeMay

"No arsenal, no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."  Ronald Reagan

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... 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."  Thomas Jefferson

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."  Josef Stalin

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."  P.J. O'Rourke

"The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else."  Frederic Bastiat

"Every economic disaster during the last 100 years has its origins in bad government economic policies, from the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which triggered the Great Depression, to the Federal Reserve's excessive printing of money, which brought us the Great Inflation of the 1970s and the recent housing bubble."  Steve Forbes

"Government is best which governs least."  Thomas Jefferson

"...it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds..."  Samuel Adams

"Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."  Thomas Paine

"The idea that political freedom can prosper in the absence of economic freedom and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is a corollary of economic freedom. It is no accident that the age of capitalism became also the age of government by the people."  Ludwig Von Mises

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."  Ayn Rand

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but is something else also, isn't an American at all."  Theodore Roosevelt

"Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance."  George S. Patton

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants"  Thomas Jefferson

"...when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."  Samuel Adams

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except when compared to others which have been tried from time to time."  Winston Churchill

"Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem."  Ronald Reagan

"A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed; but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strongly resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures? But nations excrete them when they become complex."  Marcus Tullis Cicero, circa 37 B.C.

"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights."  H.L. Mencken

"A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education."  Theodore Roosevelt

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."  H.L. Mencken

"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

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."  Steve Jobs

"In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"  George Orwell

"Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth. That every individual life is infinitely precious. That every one of us put on this world has been put here for a reason and has something to offer."  Ronald Reagan

"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."  Ayn Rand

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."  General Douglas MacArthur

"As usual, government's stumbling, bureaucratic 'solutions' exacerbate problems that free people, allowed to pursue their own self-interest, would address on their own. We'd still suffer some tough times -- it's painful when bubbles pop -- but recovery comes sooner when businesses must quickly fix their own mistakes -- or die."  John Stossel

"Life is tough...it's tougher when you're stupid."  John Wayne

"If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!"  Samuel Adams

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."  Thomas Jefferson

"Do not suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice."  John Adams, 1789

"We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."  Theodore Roosevelt

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."  Thomas Jefferson

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away."  Steve Jobs

"History does not entrust the care of freedom to the weak or timid."  Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed."  Benjamin Franklin

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatique of supporting it"  Thomas Paine

"The second place trophy in a gunfight is made of granite"  Robert Teekell

"An economic system which grants to the lazy and the shiftless some 'right' to prosper off the looted fruits of another man's labor, under the guise of enforced 'compassion', will inevitably descend into envy, theft, squalor and starvation."  Vin Suprynowicz

"For society as a whole, nothing comes as a 'right' to which we are 'entitled'. Even bare subsistence has to be produced.... The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it... The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more the providers have to carry the load."  Thomas Sowell

"Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage."  Theodore Roosevelt

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."  Milton Friedman

"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigor from the mind"  Leonardo Da Vinci

"I firmly believe that the army of persons who urge greater and greater centralization of authority and greater and greater dependence upon the Federal Treasury are really more dangerous to our form of government than any external threat that can possibly be arrayed against us."  Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour"  Japanese proverb

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God"  Thomas Jefferson

"If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness."  Theodore Roosevelt

"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. . . . The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth."  Alan Greenspan

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws."  Mayer Amschel Rothschild

"A just war is in the long run far better for a nation's soul than the most prosperous peace obtained by acquiescence in wrong or injustice."  Theodore Roosevelt

"I don't make jokes... I just watch the government and report the facts."  Will Rogers

"My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!"  Harry S. Truman

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive--to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."  Marcus Aurelius