Some of My Favorite Quotes

• "Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country."
• "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."
• "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer."
• "There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism."
• "To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth."

- Theodore Roosevelt

• "You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. 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 the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

- Dr. Adrian Pierce Rogers

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

- Margaret Thatcher

• "First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."

- German anti-fascist Martin Niemoller

• "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
• "They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

- Benjamin Franklin

• "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
• "Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
• "We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate."
• "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
• "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."
• "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
• "An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry."
• "Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."
• "Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it."
• "Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."
• "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."
• "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."
• "For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security."
• "Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism."
• "He who knows best knows how little he knows."
• "History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is."
• "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
• "I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."
• "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."
• "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
• "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
• "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
• "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today."
• "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
• "Taste cannot be controlled by law."
• "That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
• "The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."
• "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
• "The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the tracts which favor that theory."
• "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."> <
• "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."
• "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
• "To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
• "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
• "When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."
• "Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct."
• "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government."
• "If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."
• "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."

- Thomas Jefferson

• "A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
• "A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims."
• "Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value – and so long as that beneficiary is anybody than oneself, anything goes."
• "Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth."
• "A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides."
• "But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves."
• "Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice."
• "Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
• "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
• "Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives."
• "Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others."
• "Evil requires the sanction of the victim."
• "Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."
• "Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions."
• "Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values."
• "He was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his."
• "Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud."
• "I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
• "If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root."
• "If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject."
• "If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality."
• "Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)."
• "Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence."
• "It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."
• "Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property."
• "Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another."
• "Money is made possible only by the men who produce."
• "Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed."
• "Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence."
• "Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent."
• "Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow."
• "People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk."
• "Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone."
• "Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."
• "So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?"
• "The Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."
• "The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it."
• "The right to life is the source of all rights--and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."
• "The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt."
• "There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."
• "There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist."
• "Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor."
• "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other."
• "We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."
• "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
• "Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think."
• "When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are."
• "Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims."
• "The creator stands on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others. The creator thinks, the parasite copies. The creator produces, the parasite loots. The creator's concern is the conquest of nature -- the parasite's concern is the conquest of men. The creator requires independence, he neither serves nor rules. He deals with men by free exchange and voluntary choice. The parasite seeks power, he wants to bind all men together in common action and common slavery. He claims that man is only a tool for the use of others. That he must think as they think, act as they act, and live is selfless, joyless servitude to any need but his own."
• "Look at history. Everything thing we have, every great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind. Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of brainless, soulless robots. Without personal rights, without personal ambition, without will, hope or dignity. It is an ancient conflict. It has another name: the individual against the collective."

- Ayn Rand

• "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
• "All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
• "As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."
• "Big Brother is watching you."
• "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
• "Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."
• "Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility."
• "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
• "Liberal: a power worshipper without power."
• "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
• "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot."
• "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."
• "War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil."
• "Who controls the past controls the future."

- George Orwell

• "A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride."
• "Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn."
• "Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere."
• "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
• "The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
• "We are what we believe we are."
• "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

- C. S. Lewis

• "The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury."
• "Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company."
• "Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession."
• "Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
• "Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth."
• "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
• "Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
• "If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
• "If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War."
• "It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it."
• "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth."
• "Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government."
• "My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein."
• "The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
• "The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves."
• "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
• "Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."
• "Nothing is a greater stranger to my breast, or a sin that my soul more abhors, than that black and detestable one, ingratitude."
• "A people... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything."
• "I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is the best policy."
• "To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones."

- George Washington