Thoughts for March 2014

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  1.  "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." - Robert Collier

  2.  "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science." - Carl Sagan

  3.  "The sooner you have an opportunity to lower the interest, for God's sake, do it... if you can be without war, let not your ambition draw you into it... Flatterers, Courtiers or Ministers, are easy to be got, but a true Friend is difficult to be found... Let your steadiness retrieve the glory of the throne." - Frederick, Prince of Wales, advice to his son, the future George III, 1789

  4.  "Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro." = "Liberty is not well sold for all the gold in the world." - Aesop's Fables III, 14, as quoted by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in "Don Quixote of La Mancha".

  5.  "Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them." - George Eliot

  6.  "Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." - James Bovard (1994)

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

  8.  "Just because you do not take an interest in politics does not mean politics will not take an interest in you." - Pericles (430 B.C.)

  9.  "A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson

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

11:  "There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal." - Friedrich Hayek

12:  "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)

13:  "Most men, when they think they are thinking, are merely rearranging their prejudices." - Knute Rockne

14:  "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right." - Thomas Paine, "Common Sense"

15:  "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one." - Thomas Paine, "Common Sense"

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

17:  "Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshiped." - Calvin Coolidge

18:  "Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid." – Dr. Carl Sagan

19:  "If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." - Mark Twain

20:  "Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage." - H.L. Mencken

21:  "Distrust & caution are the parents of security." - Benjamin Franklin, "Poor Richard's Almanack," 1733

22:  "Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. ... The first is a patron, the last a punisher." - Thomas Paine, "Common Sense"

23.  "There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies and that is fighting without them." - Winston Churchill

24.  "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, "The American Crisis", 1776

25.  "No bird soars too high, if he soars on his own wings." - William Blake

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

27.  "In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." - John Adams

28.  "If we're ever going to get anything done in this country, we have to not hate everybody who doesn't agree with us all the time." - Bill Maher (21 Mar 2014

29.  "When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." - Dresden James

30.  "He that lies down with Dogs, shall rise up with fleas." - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733

31.  "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves." - Dresden Jame