"When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out." - Pastor Martin Niemöller
Insightful quotes from our own community. -------------------------------------------
"For those of us who have been to iraq, politics and foreign policy becomes blood and your buddies to the left and to the right of you." - Psychosis39
"Extremism on any front is normally for those seeking leadership and find it in the misguided. - blackrams
"We have plenty of number crunchers already. We don't have very many to educate people about philosophy and history and how it applies to their future." - pokeyfiero
"I blame myself as much as anything. I've always thought that I was too insignificant to make a difference, so I didn't get involved. I'm starting to think that it's time to get involved..." - F-I-E-R-O
"Shame on them, and shame on us for allowing them to do what they did." NEPTUNE
"I blame us for letting the government get too big and involved in the first place." - Derek_85GT:
"I am more than happy to pay a small amount out of every check to keep mobs of desperate people from robbing everyone" - Pyrthian
"I know the answer, but, like both of y'all - I cant prove it - so I wont bother you with it." - Pyrthian
"I think being happy is a skill. I've used sex & drugs to master that skill" - Pyrthian
Your life. It's no one elses, and therefore cannot be dictated on the whim of someones personal belief on how they should live it, as long as it does not hurt another." - Boondawg
"The fabric of human exsistance is not tightly woven, and pulling on one thread cannot unravel it. Rather, it is a tangled, jumbled mess, and the more you pull at it and try to straiten it out, the tighter the tangle becomes" - Boondawg
"The more I learn, the more I appreciate the depth and breadth of my ignorance. We are all fools, the wisest of us are aware of it, the rest..." - Lurker
"The freedom of other people to live their lives according to conscience is exponentially more important than my personal convictions." - fogglethorpe
"When the constitution was written there was no distinction between guns that would be used for hunting or those that would be used for killing people, there was no difference. The constitution was not written to protect hunting rifles or target practice revolvers from being taken from us. It was written to make sure we could always defend ourselves, mainly against evil people or governments." - Cadillac Jack:
--------------------------------------- Other noteworthy quotes.....
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny” - Thomas Jefferson
"Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different." - Robert Heinlein.
"I am a soldier so that my son may be a farmer so that his son may be a philosopher." - George Washington
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. - Henry David Thoreau
"The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing." --John Berger
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it." --General Douglas MacArthur
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it away." --Thomas Jefferson
"To believe is to accept another's truth, to know is your own creation" - Unknown Internet Poster
"Life's journey is not to arrive safely at the grave, in a well preserved body, but to slide in sideways, totally worn out, Shouting...Holy **** ...What a Ride!" - Unknown
"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom." -The great Milton Friedman
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will." - Frederick Douglass
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. P. J. O'Rourke
“In my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of my leadership in Washington, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself.” -Harry Taylor
We 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
"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." -- Douglas Casey
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. -- James Bovard (1994)
Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. - Benjamin Franklin
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. -- Will Rogers
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. -- Voltaire
It's not fair to say that Congress spends money like a drunk sailor. At least the sailor is spending his own money! - President Ronald Reagan
When everyone thinks alike, few are doing much thinking -Nashua Cavalier
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." –Aesop
The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office." –Will Rogers
There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. --P.J. O'Rourke
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. -- P.J. O'Rourke
There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something. --Thomas Edison
Talk is cheap -- except when Congress does it. -- Cullen Hightower
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. -- Herbert Hoover
What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. -- Edward Langley
If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us is capable of governing someone else?" -- Ronald Reagan
Under bad governments, this equality is only apparent and illusory: it serves only to keep the pauper in his poverty and the rich man in the position he has usurped. In fact, laws are always of use to those who possess and harmful to those who have nothing: from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all have something and none too much. - Jean Jacques Rousseau
Some of my own ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "The enemy of the people is their own ignorance and one day they will wake up to find themselves prisoner of their own designs.." - 84Bill
"To live as one wishes is utopia... To have the opportunity to vote for someone who will defend that right is utopian." - 84Bill
"ACTIONS are a more accurate representation of not only a candidates political "compass" but are also a measure of how well calibrated their compass is at LEADING the country in the right direction."
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09:10 PM
fogglethorpe Member
Posts: 4828 From: Valley of the Sun Registered: Jul 2001
"The rank and file are not philosophers, they are not educated to think for themselves, but simply to accept, unquestioned, whatever comes." -Susan B. Anthony
"Most of my constituents I know follow the rule the Culberson family follows....to stock up on lots of food, water and ammo as good Texans. We're very self reliant..." US Rep. John Culberson, R-TX in a live interview on Fox in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike
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09:17 PM
Sep 19th, 2008
D B Cooper Member
Posts: 3141 From: East Detroit, MI Registered: Jul 2005
“Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.†— Alan Greenspan 2004
“financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.†- Warren Buffet describing financial derivitaves, 2003
[This message has been edited by SC Coupe (edited 10-10-2008).]
“What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn’t be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so. We think it would be a mistake to more deeply regulate the contracts" - Alan Greenspan, 2003
"Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound; they are not in danger of going under." - Congressman Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee which overseas Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in July 2008, 2 months before Freddie and Fannie collapsed.
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01:56 PM
Nov 19th, 2008
Toddster Member
Posts: 20871 From: Roswell, Georgia Registered: May 2001
And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, "How could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags." And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. "What if Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?" ~Dr. Seuss
[This message has been edited by fogglethorpe (edited 12-23-2008).]
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01:48 PM
2.5 Member
Posts: 43225 From: Southern MN Registered: May 2007
I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it.
I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.
I've never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves - it's just a question of finding the subject.
It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people's lives.
My old drama coach used to say, 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.
Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.
I tried being reasonable, I didn't like it.
-Clint Eastwood
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02:32 PM
Jan 3rd, 2009
fogglethorpe Member
Posts: 4828 From: Valley of the Sun Registered: Jul 2001
"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." -- Former Rep. Suzanna Gratia Hupp (TX)
"As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves." - President Barack Obama, Jan 20, 2009
"I cannot tell you how much enthusiasm we saw in Pakistan for this new president. There is a moment in time here for this country to re-engage the international community, to make sure that we have international support to stabilize Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq." - Senator Lindsey Graham, Jan 14, 2009
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04:48 PM
Toddster Member
Posts: 20871 From: Roswell, Georgia Registered: May 2001
"Democrats are on the precipice of securing their reputation as the Chamberlains of our time. In fact, today's appeasers are worse than Neville Chamberlain : Chamberlain didn't have himself as an example." -- Ann Coulter
Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life. -Andrew Brown
Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Of late I appear To have reached that stage When people who look old are only my age. ~Richard Armour
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08:38 AM
Feb 13th, 2009
avengador1 Member
Posts: 35467 From: Orlando, Florida Registered: Oct 2001
"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...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 labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
Abraham Lincoln - March 21, 1864
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09:26 AM
Apr 24th, 2009
avengador1 Member
Posts: 35467 From: Orlando, Florida Registered: Oct 2001
'Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.'- Ronald Reagan 'The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' - Ronald Reagan
'Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.' - Ronald Reagan
'I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.' - Ronald Reagan
'The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.' - Ronald Reagan
'Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.' - Ronald Reagan
'The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.' - Ronald Reagan
'It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.' - Ronald Reagan
'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
'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
'No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women..'- Ronald Reagan 'If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.'
- Ronald Reagan
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02:52 PM
2.5 Member
Posts: 43225 From: Southern MN Registered: May 2007
"The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught." - H.L. Mencken
