re: Famous Americans Quote Threads

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The road to Hell is paved with good intentions - udtiger

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and advice are the sign posts along the way. - yours truly

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." - - Ask Barbra Streisand who the hell said this. I don't know. I think it was Don Knotts.

"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

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

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

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." [H. L. Mencken]

"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.) Does "Global Warming" come to mind? --- oh, and Hillary says there is a "hidden" child care crisis. Could she have meant to say "imaginary" child care crisis?

INDIVIDUALISM

"The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." (Adolph Hitler, quoted in Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock (Harper Collins, NY))

"It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. .... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture .... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man." (Adolph Hitler, 1933)

There is the great, silent, continuous struggle: the struggle between the State and the Individual; between the State which demands and the individual who attempts to evade such demands. Because the individual, left to himself, unless he be a saint or hero, always refuses to pay taxes, obey laws, or go to war. (Benito Mussolini)

Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position. (Mario Palmieri, "The Philosophy of Fascism" 1936)

"Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all." (Nikita Khrushchev , February 25, 1956 20th Congress of the Communist Party)

"All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all." (Vladimir Lenin, as quoted in "Not by Politics Alone.)

We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." (Hillary Clinton, 1993)

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..." (President Bill Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993, Page 2A)

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." (Ayn Rand)

When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man? (Henry David Thoreau)

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I love this. I’ve not heard this before, thanks for sharing.

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Here is one more of his many quotes.

“Since God created man with certain unalienable rights, and man, in turn, created government to help secure and safeguard those rights, it follows that man is superior to the creature which he created. Man is superior to government and should remain master over it, not the other way around. Even the non-believer can appreciate the logic of this relationship.”
? Ezra Taft Benson

Just in case you are wondering who my favorite author is.


"Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"The Three Branches of Government: Money, Television, and bullshite" ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"During the mid-1980s dairy farmers decided there was too much cheap milk at the supermarket. So the government bought and slaughtered 1.6 million dairy cows. How come the government never does anything like this with lawyers?" ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"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." ~ 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 poor of the world cannot be made rich by the redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape." ~ P. J. O'Rourke


"There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern ears they still sound reasonable. They still sound reasonable, in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the federal government of the United States." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal" ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow ... It is impossible to be alive and safe." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"Let's reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools - and use it on the teachers." ~ P. J. O'Rourke
"The purpose of the Senate is to keep 100 middle aged knuckleheads out of the private sector where they can do real harm." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"With Epcot Center, the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn't think possible in today's world. They have created a land of make-believe that's worse than regular life." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"Then there's politics. Just imagine politics with its dumbbell element subtracted. There would be no Republican candidates. There would be no Democratic voters. The whole system would collapse." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

"The main reason to be opposed to political control of smoking is to keep power -even the smallest and silliest kind of power - out of the hands of ... members of a dangerous class -the class that knows what's good for us better than we do." ~ P. J. O'Rourke

In time of war, send me all the Alabamians you can get, but in
time of peace, for Lord’s sake, send them to somebody else! Gen. E.H.Plummer

“And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

-Maxine Waters

"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t."

"Better to fight for something than live for nothing."

George S. Patton

Three times a day the BBC would broadcast the news in French and then give personal announcements. On that night, intermingled with the personal messages were two "the dice are on the table" and "its hot in Suez".

The former was a signal to tear up rail lines and the latter to destroy all telephone and telegraph lines. It was a message for the French Resistance.............

Broadcast on June 5th, 1944.