Saturday, July 5, 2014

Thoughts for August 2014


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  1.  "Our growth depends not on how many experiences we devour, but on how many we digest." ~ Ralph W. Sockman

  2.  "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." ~ Milton Friedman

  3.  "Fundamental differences in basic values can seldom if ever be resolved at the ballot box; ultimately they can only be decided, though not resolved, by conflict. The religious and civil wars of history are a bloody testament to this judgment." ~ Milton Friedman

  4.  "Any fool can carry on, but only the wise man knows how to shorten sail." ~ Joseph Conrad

  5.  "Many of them [the Western liberals] have betrayed us liberals in the Middle East and other Muslim countries, and sided with the Islamists against us." ~ Faisal Al Mutar, Writer, activist

  6.  "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty." ~ James Madison

  7.  "Everything that is possible to be believed is an image of the truth." ~ William Blake

  8.  "The power to tax is the power to destroy." ~ John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland

  9.  "Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…" ~ C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

10.  "It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that." ~ Mark Twain

11.  "Reason is an action of the mind; knowledge is a possession of the mind; but faith is an attitude of the person. It means you are prepared to stake yourself on something being so." ~ Michael Ramsey, 100th Archbishop of Canterbury

12.  "You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

13.  "An America that is militarily and economically strong is not enough. The world must see an America that is morally strong with a creed and a vision. This is what has led us to dare and achieve. For us, values count." ~ Ronald Reagan, 12 Dec 1983

14.  "Our society was built on embracing the rights of everyone to be free. It is incongruous with our values to blindly coddle a medieval mindset that relegates women to second class citizens and believes that a man or a family’s honor is more valuable than the life of a daughter or wife." ~ Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy

15.  "The generic difference between a devout Muslim and an Islamist is the simple fact that a devout Muslim would abstain from alcohol and pork, whereas an Islamist would force others to abstain from alcohol and pork." ~ Burak Bekdil, Veteran Turkish columnist writing currently for the daily Hürriyet

16.  "Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, `Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything - God and our friends and ourselves included - as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred." - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

17.  "There is always room in your life for thinking bigger, pushing limits and imagining the impossible." ~ Tony Robbins

18.  "Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice." - William Shakespeare

19.  "A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops." ~ Henry Adams

20.  "Deliberation is the function of many; action is the function of one." - Charles de Gaulle

21.  "I’d rather have a German division in front of me than a French division behind me." ~ Gen. George Patton

22.  "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." ~ Robert J. Hanlon

23.  "Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence." ~ Robert Heinlein

24.  "The real difference between men is energy. A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination, can accomplish almost anything; and in this lies the distinction between great men and little men." ~ Thomas Fuller

25.  "It [government] provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living? Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties." - Alexis de Tocqueville

26.  "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all." - Winston Churchill

27.  "If you have never been to the moon, you can’t issue policy about the moon." ~ Gene Simmons

28.  "Under every stone lurks a politician." ~ Aristophanes

29.  "A friend is, as it were, a second self." ~ Cicero

30.  "What can be better than to get out a book on Saturday afternoon and thrust all mundane considerations away till next week?" ~ C. S. Lewis

31.  "It [government] covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s wills, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd." - Alexis de Tocqueville


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