Quotes of the day

Quotes of the day in www.theolddominion.myblogsite.com

4/29/05
Robert E. Lee made the following statement to Governor Stockdale (who had been the Confederate Lt. Governor of Texas) in August 1870.
"Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no, sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand."
Robert E. Lee
5/2/05
It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. George Washington
5/3/05
”See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it doesn’t belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay.”
Frederic BastiatFrench economist and statesman, The Law, 1850:
5/4/05
I'm a Virginian. Virginians are the most conceited people on earth. There is nothing higher to aspire to.

Lady Astor

5/5/05
"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
5/6/05
"The sole object of this war is to restore the union. Should I become convinced it has any other object, or that the Government designs using its soldiers to execute the wishes of the Abolitionists, I pledge youmy honor as a man and a soldier I would resign my commission and carry my sword to the other side." Gen. U.S. Grant
5/9/05
"The Principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form."
President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A.
5/10/05
Democracy is the road to socialism !
Karl Marx
5/11/05
A liberal will sell his soul to the devil to get into heaven.
Jeremy J. Luzier
5/12/05
"The future inhabitants of the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better."
Thomas Jefferson
5/16/05
A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.
Robert E. Lee
5/17/05
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
Thomas Jefferson
5/18/05
A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.
Napoleon Boneparte
5/19/05
The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people.
Bill Clinton
5/20/05
It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
George Washington
5/23/05
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
Lord Acton
5/24/05
"[How] to check these unconstitutional invasions of... rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?"
--Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821. (*) FE 10:192
5/25/05When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.
Niccolo Machiavelli
5/26/05
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?"
Patrick Henry
5/27/05
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience"

Albert Camus
5/29/05
People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them. Frederic Bastiat
5/30/05
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
Calvin Coolidge
5/31/05
Necessity never made a good bargain.
Benjamin Franklin
6/1/05
"This overthrow of the rights of freemen and the establishment of such new relations required a complete revolution in the principle of the government of the United States, the subversion of the state governments, the subjugation of the people, and the destruction of the fraternal Union. The work has been done. Will it stand? Have the eternal principles of the Declaration of Independence been hid from our sight forever? Or will they again come forth, "redeemed, disenthralled, regenerated," and rally the reunited people to shout in thunder-tones for sovereignty of the people and the unalienable rights of man?
"It has been shown in previous pages that the state governments were instituted to be the special guardians of these unalienable rights of man; henceforth, however, they must be sworn defenders of the government of the United States, not of the Constitution and laws enacted in pursuance thereof, but of such interpolations and perversions of them as, in case of necessity, that government should find it convenient to make. Whenever it pleases, it can set them aside; whenever it wills, it can destroy them. Unalienable rights are unknown to this war-begotten theory of the Constitution. The day has come in which mankind beholds this government founding its highest claims to greatness and glory upon deeds done in utter violation of those rights which belonged to its own citizens in every state, North and South. The palladium of the freeman, the bills of rights, the limitations of power, the written constitutions, have all lost their sacred authority, and not a man or a state dare, single-handed, gainsay the will of the agency which, feeling power, has forgotten right. ... When the cause was lost, what cause was it? Not that of the South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the supremacy of law, of the natural rights of man."
From "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" by Jefferson Davis
6/2/05
Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Benjamin Franklin
6/3/05
It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income.
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richar's Almanac 1758
6/5/05
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from the government.
--Thomas Paine 'The Rights of Man' c.1792
6/6/05
"To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right." ~Confucius
6/7/05
When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
Frederic Bastiat
6/8/05
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man. George Washington
6/9/05
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
Henry Ford
6/13/05
If the North triumphs, it is not alone the destruction of our property; it is the prelude to anarchy, infidelity, the ultimate loss of free and responsible government on this continent. It is the triumph of commerce, the banks and factories. We should meet the Federal invader on the outer verge of just and right defense and raise at once the black flag. No quarter to the violator of our homes and firesides!
General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
6/14/05
Never trust a government that doesn't trust its own citizens with guns --Thomas Jefferson—
6/15/05
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that, if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too."-- William Somerset Maugham, 1941
6/16/05
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out...without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. --H. L. Mencken
6/17/05
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.- Percy Bysshe Shelley
6/20/05
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideashe disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
Thomas Jefferson
6/21/05
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
-Alan Greenspan-
6/22/05
But thou know'st this, 'Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss. William ShakespearePericles Prince of Tyre (Pericles at I, ii)
6/23/05
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
6/23/05
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence
John Adams
6/24/05
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt
6/27/05
"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [applause]: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
-- Reply by Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas in the first joint debate, Ottowa, IL; 21 Aug 1858
6/29/05
Well I know you are brave, and I am far weaker.True - but all lies in the lap of the great gods.Weaker I am, but I still might take your lifeWith one hurl of a spear - my weapon can cut too,Long before now its point has found its mark!"
From Homer's Iliad Book 20, lines 492 - 496
6/30/05
If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
7/1/05
Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!
-Joseph Addison-
7/6/05
"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-
7/7/05
"The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper."
-Thomas Jefferson-
7/8/05
"Anyone who hates children and dogs can't be all bad"
Attributed to W.C. Fields
7/11/05
The Fourteenth Amendment has had precisely the effect that its nineteenth-century Republican party supporters intended it to have: it has greatly centralized power in Washington, D.C., and has subjected Americans to the kind of judicial tyranny that Thomas Jefferson warned about when he described federal judges as those who would be constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. It's time for all Americans to reexamine the official history of the Civil War and its aftermath as taught by paid government propagandists in the public schools for the past 135 years.
-Thomas J. DiLorenzo-
7/12/05
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
-Thomas Paine-
7/13/05
Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.
-Benjamin Franklin-
7/14/05
We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before; and it changed for the better; so I trust it will again; If difficulties arise; we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigencies of the times. --George Washington
7/15/05
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Thomas Jefferson
7/18/05
No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.
-John Jay-
7/19/05
"We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles."
-Frederic Bastiat-
7/20/05
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
-David Rockefeller-
7/21/05
There is no such thing as a good tax!
-Winston Churchill-
7/22/05
"The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states."
Charles Dickens, 1862,
7/25/05
"[Our situation] illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established."
-Jefferson Davis-
7/26/05
A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined. but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.
George Washington
7/27/05
"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal"
-Janet Reno-
7/28/05
The Army of Northern Virginia was never defeated. It merely wore itself out whipping the enemy.
-General Jubal Early –
7/29/05
The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty.
-Karl Marx, 1861-
8/1/05
Up, men, and to your posts! Don't forget today that you from Old Virginia! --General George Pickett, Gettysburg, 1863
8/2/05
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
H.L. Mencken
8/3/05
Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing.
-Calvin Coolidge-
8/5/05
"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insideous forces working from within."
-Dougls MacArthur-
8/9/05
Dixie's Not Down yet! She lives and thrives through her history and those who love her history will save it so that others can bring some of it backto life.
Maury Morris, a Virginian-
8/10/05
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
-Mahatma Gandhi-
8/11/05
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-Samuel Longhorn Clemens-
8/12/05
Presidential farewell address "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."- George Washington
8/15/05
"Under it we won our victories and its glory will never fade. It is enshrined in our hearts forever"Varina Howell Davis
8/16/05
"It is the sacred principles enshrined in the UN Charter to which we will henceforth pledge our allegiance."
-George Bush-
8/17/05
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents
-James Madison-
8/18/05
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong
-Stephen Decatur-
8/19/05
"We can't allow science to undo its own good work."
World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 227 from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
8/22/05
"I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people, and save in defense will draw my sword on none."
-Robert E. Lee-
8/24/05
The South, he said, belongs to all Southern people, not just black or white. "This was our homeland," he says. "I'm not here to defend institutional slavery, just our homeland. When I see the Confederate battle flag, it makes my heart start pumping because I know that is the Southern flag. That flag says black folks like me earned a place of honor and dignity in history."
H.K. Edgerton
8/25/05
"Let men not ask what the law requires, but give whatever freedom demands." ---Jefferson Davis—
8/29/05
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what tohave for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759
8/30/05
Congress is like the drunk who promises to sober up tomorrow, without the slightest intention of doing so. The voting public is like the battered wife who somehow keeps believing the promises.
Dr. Ron Paul
8/31/05
"Often the masses are plundered and do not know it"
-Frederic Bastiat-
9/1/05
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
-Thomas Jefferson-
9/2/05
Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man; the idle man and he who has done much meet death alike

-Homer, The Iliad-
9/6/05
"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."
-Samuel Adams-
9/7/05
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."
-Vladimir Lenin-
9/8/05
A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely 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?
-Cicero-
9/9/05
The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage to keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.
-Thomas Paine-
9/12/05
Politicians "are seldom if ever moved by anything rationally describable as public spirit; there is actually no more public spirit among them than among so many burglars or street walkers. Their purpose, first, last and all the time, is to promote their private advantage, and to that end, and that end alone, they exercise all the vast powers that are in their hands."
--H.L. Mencken--
9/13/05
"The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war"
-James Madison-
9/14/05
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
-Edward R. Murrow-
9/15/05
The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He can not only forgive; he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which imparts sufficient strength to let the past be put the past.
-Robert E. Lee-
9/16/05
It was not a normal hurricane -- and the normal disaster relief system was not equal to it. Many of the men and women of the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United States military, the National Guard, Homeland Security, and state and local governments performed skillfully under the worst conditions. Yet the system, at every level of government, was not well-coordinated, and was overwhelmed in the first few days. It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice.
-George Bush-
9/19/05
Those who submit to such consequence without resistance are not worthy the liberties and rights to which they were born, and deserve to be made slaves. Such must be the verdict of mankind."
Pres. Jefferson Davis
9/20/05
"Though I was but little more than a youth during the period of Reconstruction, I had the feeling that mistakes were being made, and that things could not remain in the condition that they were in then very long. I felt that the Reconstruction policy, so far as it related to my race, was in a large measure on a false foundation, was artificial and forced. In many cases it seemed to me that the ignorance of my race was being used as a tool with which to help white men into office, and that there was an element in the North which wanted to punish the Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads of the Southern whites. I felt that the Negro would be the one to suffer for this in the end. Besides, the general political agitation drew the attention of our people away from the more fundamental matters of perfecting themselves in the industries at their doors and in securing property. "
-Booker T. Washington-
9/21/05
"The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property."
-John Locke-
9/22/05
"It was built against the will of the immortal gods, and so it did not last for long"
-Homer-
9/23/05
"Herdsman, I make you out to be no coward and no fool: I can see that for myself. So let me tell you this. I swear by Zeus all highest, by the table set for friends, and by your king's hearthstone to which I've come, Odysseus will return. You'll be on hand to see, if you care to see it, how those who lord it here will be cut down."
Odysseus Book 20, lines 250-7
9/26/05
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.
--Margaret Mitchell Gone with the wind--
9/27/05
"The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the facts in controversy"
--John Jay--
1st Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
10/3/05
"If it is a crime to love the South, its cause and its President, then I am a criminal. I would rather lie down in this prison and die than leave it owing allegiance to a government such as yours."
-Belle Boyd-
10/4/05
"'Do you believe the enemy have sailed away? Or think that any Grecian gifts are free of craft? Is this the way Ulysses acts? Either Achaeans hide, shut in this wood, or else this is an engine built against our walls.... I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.'"
The Aeneid Book 2, lines 60-70
10/6/05
Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."
--Heinrich Himmler--
10/7/05
Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end.
-- Lord Acton --