Vault

VAULT Quotes

The right to buy weapons is the right to be free. — A.E. Van Vogt

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. — Adam Smith

If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission. — Admiral Grace Hopper

The most dangerous phrase in the language is, “We’ve always done it this way.” — Admiral Grace Hopper

A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. — Admiral Grace Hopper

You don’t manage people, you manage things. You lead people. — Admiral Grace Hopper

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions. — Admiral Grace Hopper

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so. — Adolph Hitler

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. — Aeschylus

The question George Bush, along with Clinton, Gingrich, Gore and all the other boomer politicians who have admitted to a walk on the wild side but saw the error of their ways and support the drug laws now more than ever should be required to answer is simple. “At what point in your drug-using career would it have been a good thing for you to get arrested and go to prison? — Alan Bock

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting. — Alan Dean Foster

(Those) who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right (are) courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like. — Alan Dershowitz

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

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. — Albert Einstein

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. — Albert Einstein

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty. — Albert Einstein

The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals… It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of. — Albert Gallatin

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. — Alexander Hamilton

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again. — Alexander Pope

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. — Alexander Tytler

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. — Alexandre Dumas

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. — Alexis de Tocqueville

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them. — Alfred North Whitehead

Freedom is the societal condition that exists when every individual has full (i.e. 100%) control over his own property. — Andrew Galambos

The greatest fallacy in the entire history of the human species is the idea that it is necessary to employ coercion to eliminate disorder. — Andrew Galambos

Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want. — Anna Lappe

Making a programmer use Visual Basic is like making a computer graphics designer use MSPaint — Anonymous

Work like it all depends on us;
Pray like it all depends on God. — Anonymous

Perfection [in design] is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms. — Aristotle

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. — Arthur C. Clarke

Einstein’s space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh’s sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist’s discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer’s frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet. — Arthur Koestler

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The essence of success is that it is never necessary to think of a new idea oneself. It is far better to wait until somebody else does it, and then to copy him in every detail, except his mistakes — Aubrey Menen

Wear the old coat and buy the new book. — Austin Phelps

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. — Ayn Rand

The government was set to protect man from criminals and the Constitution was written to protect man from government. — Ayn Rand

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. — Ayn Rand

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals – that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government – that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government. — Ayn Rand

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. — Ayn Rand

If an interface is to be humane, it must respect habituation. — Aza Raskin

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. — Barry Goldwater

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwanted financial burden. … And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and in that cause I am doing the very best I can. — Barry Goldwater

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. — Barry Goldwater

In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine. — Benjamin Graham

You are neither right nor wrong because people agree with you. — Benjamin Graham

The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions. — Benjamin Graham

I quickly convinced myself that the true key to happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions. — Benjamin Graham

Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos. — Bertrand Russell

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think–rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. — Bill Beattie

For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match. — Bill Bryson

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. — Bill Cosby

I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone. — Bjarne Stroustrup

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. — Bob Dylan

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove you don’t need it. — Bob Hope

The “end” is the vision for which we change things. The “means” are the catalyst by which things change us. — Bob Rockers

There is pain, in this world, that once experienced leaves a permanent scar in our heart. We are changed for as long as we live. And though we walk through life, and laugh, and love; something of ourselves has been removed.

I believe, being Catholic, that when we talk about the peace of God; we are talking about that moment when God returns our hearts to the way they were before that pain. To those who have experienced such suffering, that alone would be salvation. — Bob Rockers

Why do people who claim to love freedom constantly work to expand the government; the very institution whose sole purpose it to limit liberty? — Bob Rockers

Guns don’t kill people. Liz kills people! — Bob Rockers

How much success has been withheld from the creative by mountains of red tape. — Bob Rockers

Every man is my equal, my master, my slave. If mankind remembers some the greater it is only by the results of their actions; and not by grandeur of their intentions. — Bob Rockers

God may judge by the content of ones heart; but history judges by the product of ones actions. — Bob Rockers

It is the bane and the glory of intelligent men that we intractably find ourselves drawn to strong, intelligent women. — Bob Rockers

Anyone who believes that government is good (as opposed to a necessary evil) is at best delusional, and at worst dangerous. — Bob Rockers

There is a difference between intent and aim. One requires focus, the other doesn’t even require attention. — Bob Rockers

The first evidence of a dying company is that is creates more policies than it does ideas. Forms ultimately kill more creativity than competition does. — Bobby Rockers

Nothing revolutionary has ever been created by committee because it lacks the clarity of vision that a single, focused, intentional mind has. — Bobby Rockers

Luck is the residue of design. — Branch Rickey

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. — Brian W. Kernighan

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. — Buddha

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — C. S. Lewis

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. — C. S. Lewis

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. — C. S. Lewis

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ — C. S. Lewis

There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. — C.A.R. Hoare

People who relieve others of their money with guns are called robbers. It does not alter the immorality of the act when the income transfer is carried out by government. — Cal Thomas

It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. — Casey Percell

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. — Cesare Beccaria

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. — Charles Beard

Without free speech no search for truth is possible… no discovery of truth is useful…. Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race. — Charles Bradlaugh

Pointers are like jumps, leading wildly from one part of the data structure to another. Their introduction into high-level languages has been a step backwards from which we may never recover. — Charles Hoare

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers. — Charles W. Eliot

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero. — Charlie Munger

there are all kinds of wonderful new inventions that give you nothing as owners except the opportunity to spend a lot more money in a business that’s still going to be lousy. The money still won’t come to you. All of the advantages from great improvements are going to flow through to the customers. — Charlie Munger

Price is what you pay, value is what you get. — Charlie Munger

[President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fund raising coffees in the White House, for Pete’s sake. — Charlton Heston

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. — Chinese Proverb

The saving man becomes the free man. — Chinese Proverb

Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday’s code. — Christopher Thompson

In a world that has lost a sense of sin, one sin remains: Thou shalt not make people feel guilty (except, of course, about making people feel guilty). In other words, the only sin today is to call something a sin. — Christopher West

Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education. — Chuang-Tzu

When only cops have guns, it’s called a ‘police state’. — Claire Wolfe

No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before. — Colin Greenwood

Python’s a drop-in replacement for BASIC in the sense that Optimus Prime is a drop-in replacement for a truck. — Cory Dodt

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. — Daniel Webster

The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can’t tolerate a libertarian community. — David Boaz

If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs. — David Daye

Greedy capitalists get money by trade, Good liberals steal it. — David Friedman

I don’t like the idea that the police department seems bent on keeping a pool of unarmed victims available for the predations of the criminal class. — David Mohler

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. — David Ogilvy

Probably all laws are useless; for good men do not want laws at all, and bad men are made no better by them. — Demonax

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master. — Demosthenes

UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity. — Dennis Ritchie

…Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people against whom gun bans are aimed. Almost without exception, murderers are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g., automobile and gun accidents. — Don B. Kates

Power corrupts. But it does more than that. Power attracts the corrupt, then corrupts them further. — Don Matthews

I eagerly await the day when taxpayers can keep all the money they earn, and pro sports teams have to hold bake sales in order to finance stadium construction. — Doug Newman

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. — Douglas Adams

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. — Douglas Adams

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. — Douglas Adams

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. — Douglas Adams

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book. — Dwight Eisenhower

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense. — E.W. Dijkstra

No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words ‘no’ and ‘not’ employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. — Edmund A. Opitz

The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. — Edmund Burke

Let us hope our weapons are never needed –but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government — and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws. — Edward Abbey

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. — Edward Gibbon

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. — Edward V Berard

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. — Eleanor Roosevelt

A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water. — Eleanor Roosevelt

If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon. — Emil Zatopek

Freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth… then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim. — Evangelium Vitae

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom. — F. A. Hayek

We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past. — F. A. Hayek

The more the state “plans” the more difficult planning becomes for the individual. — F. A. Hayek

Paradoxical as it may appear, it is probably true that a successful free society will always in a large measure be a tradition-bound society. — F. A. Hayek

If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties. — Francis Bacon

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. — Francis Bacon

The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority…. it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people. — Frank Cobb

Those (who) seek to establish systems of Government based on the regimentation of all Human Beings by a handful of individual rulers…call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

The threat posed by humans to the natural environment is nothing compared to the threat to humans posed by global environmental policy. — Fred L. Smith

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder. — Frederic Bastiat

When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will. — Frederic Bastiat

Only sick music makes money today. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I counsel you, my friends: Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When one has not had a good father, one must create one. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest. — From the Declaration of the Continental Congress

Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. — G. Gordon Liddy

The sin of injustice is defined in the Bible as the abuse of power – abusing power by taking from others the good things that God intended for them, namely, their life, liberty, dignity, or the fruits of their love or their labor. In other words, when a stronger person abuses his or her power by taking from a weaker person what God alone has given the weaker person -… — Gary Haugen

…we can give all manner of goods and services to the poor, but if we do not restrain the hands of the bullies from taking it away, we will be disappointed in the long-term outcome of our efforts. — Gary Haugen

Violence is just different. Violence is intentional. Violence is scary. And violence causes deep scars. — Gary Haugen

Ultimately we can choose to be safe or brave. We cannot be both. — Gary Haugen

Probably fewer than 2% of handguns and well under 1% of all guns will ever be involved in a violent crime. Thus, the problem of criminal gun violence is concentrated within a very small subset of gun owners, indicating that gun control aimed at the general population faces a serious needle-in-the-haystack problem. — Gary Kleck

According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured, as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively comply with the felon’s demands. Three times as many were injured if they used other means of resistance. — Gary Kleck

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

The best mirror is an old friend. — George Herbert

To disarm the people… was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. — George Mason

Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak. — George Orwell

Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. — George S. Patton

America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused – preferring greatness to power and justice to glory. — George W. Bush

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. — Goethe

The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it. — H. G. Wells

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. — H. L. Mencken

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. — H. L. Mencken

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right. — H. L. Mencken

A Progressive is one who is in favor of more taxes instead of less, more bureaus and jobholders, more paternalism and meddling, more regulation of private affairs and less liberty. In general, he would be inclined to regard the repeal of any tax as outrageous — H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. — H. L. Mencken

If you really want to cure a pressing social problem, take steps outside the realm of government. If you don’t see how you can convince people to help you succeed in a non-governmental endeavor, how can you expect to control politicians who care nothing for your desires? — Harry Browne

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot -because the first leads inevitably to the second. — Harry Browne

Some people say that Libertarians want anarchy. But anarchy is what we have now. Our cities aren’t safe, our schools are centers of violence, the politicians have turned the rule of law into a chaotic web of millions of regulations and mandates. Libertarians want to restore order by removing, wherever possible, the destabilizing influence of government. — Harry Browne

The problem with politics isn’t the money, it’s the power. So long as politicians have the power to grant favors, exemptions, and business protection, people will find some way to subvert them — if not with money now, then with promises to take care of them later. The only way we will clean up campaign financing is by taking power away from the politicians — reducing the federal government to just the functions specified in the Constitution. — Harry Browne

In my experience, people who are truly compassionate rarely use the word ‘compassion’ Those who do talk compassion generally intend to be compassionate with your money, not their own. It’s wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that ‘compassion.’ — Harry Browne

Conservatives say the government can’t end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can’t make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other. — Harry Browne

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it. — Harry Browne

It is because there are evil, incompetent people in the world that we must never give government the power to enforce morality, economic equality, or any other social goal. The coercive power of government is always a beacon to those who want to dominate others — summoning the worst dregs of society to Washington to use that power to impose their will upon others. — Harry Browne

It takes one’s breath away to watch feminist women at work. At the same time that they denounce traditional stereotypes they conform to them. If at the back of your sexist mind you think that women are emotional, you listen agape as professor Nancy Hopkins of MIT comes out with the threat that she will be sick if she has to hear too much of what she doesn’t agree with. If you think women are suggestible, you hear it said that the mere suggestion of an innate inequality in women will keep them from stirring themselves to excel. While denouncing the feminine mystique, feminists behave as if they were devoted to it. They are women who assert their independence but still depend on men to keep women secure and comfortable while admiring their independence. Even in the gender-neutral society, men are expected by feminists to open doors for women. If men do not, they are intimidating women. — Harvey Mansfield

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. — Hebrews 11:1

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor
do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is
no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a
daring adventure or nothing — Helen Keller

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make. — Henry A. Kissinger

Some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people succeed because they are determined to. — Henry Ford

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. — Henry George

The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it. — Henry Hazlitt

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects — his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity. — Henry Hazlitt

The right of self-defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. — Henry St. George Tucker

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has. — Henry Ward Beecher

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

All socialism involves slavery. — Herbert Spencer

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible. — Hubert H. Humphrey

This country is a one-party country. Half of it is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn’t make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians. — Hugh Downs

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them. — Isaac Asimov

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to a man is eternal vigilance. — J. P. Curran

All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost. — J. R. R. Tolkien

The bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being… — J.G.A. Pocock

Any man who is a bear on the future of this country will go broke. — J.P.Morgan

I hope that when I die, people say about me, ‘Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.’ — Jack Handy

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. — Jacob Hornberger

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. — James Bovard

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose. — James Earl Jones

Debt is always repaid, either by the borrower or by the lender. — James Grant

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. — James Madison

I believe that there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment than by violent and sudden usurpations. — James Madison

It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but what of the forms is least imperfect. — James Madison

It is very certain that [the commerce clause] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government. — James Madison

When important issues affecting the life of an individual are decided by somebody else, it makes no difference to the individual whether that somebody else is a king, a dictator or society at large. — James Taggart

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why. — James Thurber

The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed. — Jeff Snyder

As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. — Jeff Snyder

Volatility is a symptom that people have no idea of the underlying value — Jeremy Grantham

The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the *government*, not to *society*; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage. — Joel Barlow

[The disarming of citizens] …has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression. — Joel Barlow

…Have a coding convention where wrong code, at least, looked wrong. You instantly gain the incremental benefit that every time a programmer’s eyes pass over a line of code, that particular bug is checked for and prevented. — Joel Spolsky

All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky. — Joel Spolsky

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. — John Adams

If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick BATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms]. — John Dingell

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost. — John Quincy Adams

A man with a gun is a citizen. A man without a gun is a subject. — John R. Lott

“Gun control” is a job-safety program for criminals. — John R. Lott

During waves of terror attacks, Israel’s national police chief will call on all concealed-handgun permit holders to make sure they carry firearms at all times, and Israelis have many examples where concealed permit holders have saved lives. — John R. Lott

No one knows what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against grassroots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure of firearms within it. — John Salter

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mill

PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals. — Jon Ribbens

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. — Jonathan Swift

It would be a healthy exercise for every politician to look in the mirror every morning and remind himself that he holds office only because, in a two-man race against another mediocrity, a modest majority of those half-informed people who imagined that their votes mattered reckoned that he was the lesser evil. And they weren’t too sure about that. — Joseph Sobran

One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms. — Joseph Story

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. — Joseph Story

We must learn not to disassociate the airy flower from the earthy root, for the flower that is cut off from its root fades, and its seeds are barren, whereas the root, secure in mother earth, can produce flower after flower and bring their fruit to maturity. — Kabbalah

Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle – the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative. — Karl Popper

Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. — Keith Bostic

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound. — L. Neil Smith

To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease. — Lao-tzu

If socialism ever earns a final epitaph, it will be this: ‘Here lies a contrivance engineered by know-it-alls and busybodies who broke eggs with abandon but never, ever created an omelet. — Lawrence Reed

Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly ‘reforming’ their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact that they’re always busy ‘reforming’ is an implicit admission that they didn’t get it right the first 50 times. — Lawrence Reed

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. — Lord Acton

There are many things the government can’t do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people. It cannot convert the people. — Lord Acton

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. — Lord Acton

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system, that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory, and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. — Louis Brandeis

…quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est. — Lucius Annaeus

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. — Ludwig von Mises

Marx and Engels openly declared that the progressive income tax and the death tax are ‘economically untenable’ and that they advocated them only because ‘they necessitate further inroads’ upon the capitalist system and are ‘unavoidable’ as a means of bringing about socialism. — Ludwig von Mises

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster. — Ludwig von Mises

Economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics. — Ludwig von Mises

When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don’t own a gun.
Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet. — Lyle Myhr

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one harms the person or property of another. — Lysander Spooner

Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenseless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how , and how far, he can, or will perform them. — Lysander Spooner

Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen. — M.T. Cicero

I do not regard capital to be enemy of labor. — Mahatma Ghandi

No charter of freedom will be worth looking at which does not ensure the same measure of freedom for the minorities as for the majority. — Mahatma Ghandi

I look upon an increase of the power of the State with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress. We know of so many cases where men have adopted trusteeship, but none where the State has really lived for the poor. — Mahatma Ghandi

The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. — Mahatma Ghandi

Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ — Mao Tse-tung

No one will improve your lot if you yourself do not. — Marcus Aurelius

Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. — Marcus Cicero

More laws, less justice — Marcus Cicero

[The BLINK tag in HTML] was a joke, okay? If we thought it would actually be used, we wouldn’t have written it! — Mark Andreessen

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. — Mark Twain

The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. — Mark Twain

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t. — Mark Twain

I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way. — Mark Twain

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. — Mark van Doren

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. — Martin Golding

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. — Martin Luther King Jr.

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be…The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Based on my own personal experience – both as an investor in recent years and an expert witness in years past – rarely do more than three or four variables really count. Everything else is noise. — Marty Whitman

What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down. — Mary Pickford

Past studies by and large confirm the prediction that higher minimum wages reduce employment opportunities and raise unemployment, particularly among teenagers, minorities and other low-skilled workers. — Masanori Hashimoto

Everything is simple if you have the right tool. — Mike Rockers

Liberty is not license. — Mike Rockers

Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws…It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem. — Mike Royko

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit. — Milton Friedman

Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property. — Milton Friedman

Governments never learn. Only people learn. — Milton Friedman

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. — Milton Friedman

Most economic fallacies derive – from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. — Milton Friedman

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. — Milton Friedman

What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system. — Milton Friedman

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition. — Milton Friedman

The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both. — Milton Friedman

There’s a widespread belief and common conception that somehow or other business and economics are the same, that those people who are in favor of a free market are also in favor of everything that big business does. And those of us who have defended a free market have, over a long period of time, become accustomed to being called apologists for big business. But nothing could be farther from the truth. There’s a real distinction between being in favor of free markets and being in favor of whatever business does. — Milton Friedman

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. — Milton Friedman

I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. — Milton Friedman

If the government is to try and ban private consumption of alcohol and tobacco, it must surely ban such activities as hang-gliding, skiing, rock-climbing and so on. Where should it stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey? Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives. — Milton Friedman

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. — Milton Friedman

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion–the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals–the technique of the marketplace. — Milton Friedman

The record of history is absolutely crystal clear. There is no alternative way of improving the lot of ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system. — Milton Friedman

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it. — Milton Friedman

Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them. — Miranda vs. Arizona

Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. — Mohandas Gandhi

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. — Montesquieu

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. — Mother Teresa

Many people are concerned with children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is the greatest destroyer of peace today- abortion which brings people to such blindness. — Mother Teresa

Any country that accepts abortion is the poorest of the poor. — Mother Teresa

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion. — Mother Teresa

And if we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? — Mother Teresa

I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. — Mother Teresa

Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action. — Napoleon Hill

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. — Nathaniel S Borenstein

Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will. — Nelson Mandela

Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the conclusion that, men loving according to their own will and fearing according to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself on that which is in his own control and not in that of others… — Niccolo Machiavelli

Politicians are the same all over: they promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. — Nikita Khrushchev

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops. — Noah Webster

I think Microsoft named .Net so it wouldn’t show up in a Unix directory listing. — Oktal

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free. — P.J. O’Rourke

There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as “caring” and “sensitive” because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head. — P.J. O’Rourke

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. — P.J. O’Rourke

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. — P.J. O’Rourke

We’re told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We’re told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it’s hard to reach the drive through window at McDonald’s from a speeding train. And we’re told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine? — P.J. O’Rourke

When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics. — P.J. O’Rourke

This country was founded by religious nuts with guns. — P.J. O’Rourke

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the *real* object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? — Patrick Henry

The great object is, that every man be armed. [...] Every one who is able may have a gun. — Patrick Henry

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? — Patrick Henry

The era of resisting big government is never over. — Paul Gigot

The bigger problem is that the people pretending to work interrupt the people who are actually working. With so much time on their hands, they have to take up the slack with meetings. Meetings count for work, just like programming, but they’re so much easier. — Paul Graham

Open source (and blogging) has a Darwinian approach to enforcing quality. The audience can communicate with each other and the bad stuff gets ignored. — Paul Graham

Business can learn about open source in the same way that the gene pool learns about new conditions: the dumb ones will die. — Paul Graham

The reasons companies have fixed hours is that they can’t measure productivity. The idea is that if you can’t make people work, you can at least prevent them from having fun. If they’re not having fun, they must be working! If you could measure what people really did, you wouldn’t care when people worked. — Paul Graham

Someone who proposes to run Windows on servers ought to be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google and Yahoo don’t know. — Paul Graham

They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here? — Paul Harvey

The best way to predict the future is to create it. — Peter Drucker

Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. — Peter Venetoklis

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. …something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is. — Phaedrus Reborn

If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is almost never. — Philip Fisher

The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. — Philip Fisher

This is a violation of democracy’s first rule: never delegate authority upward. It’s a rule violated by liberals more than anyone else, since liberals are most uncomfortable with the demands of communal existence. Cooperation is so irksome to individualistic natures that they spend half of their political lives giving power to centralized governments and the other half fearing for their personal liberties, without ever considering the contradiction. — Philip Slater

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. — PJ O’Rourke

You are so young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as judge of the highest matters. — Plato

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. — Plutarch

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. — Political Disquisitions

How often we wish that God would show himself stronger, that he would strike decisively, defeating evil and creating a better world. All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way; they justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We suffer on account of God’s patience. And yet, we need his patience.

The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of human beings. — Pope Benedict XVI

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending, In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them who act as neighbors to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need. — Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus

Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker — Proverbs 14:31

Corruptissima republica plurimae leges — Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order-of-magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability. — Randall E. Stross

Nowdays it is sometimes held, though wrongly, that freedom is an end in itself, that each human being is free when he makes use of freedom as he wishes, and that this must be our aim in the lives of individuals and societies. In reality, freedom is a great gift only when we know how to use it consciously for everything that is our true good. — Redemptor Hominis

The strongest indication of a weak team is the realization that if you were to quit and start your own business, you wouldn’t try to poach any of your colleagues. — Regan Wald

Strong teams have almost impossibly high hiring standards. Strong teams will always leave a desk empty rather than settling for less than the best. — Regan Wald

Examples of development hygiene include source code versioning, maintenance of an accurate bug or issue database, significant use of automated testing, continuous integration, and specifications that are kept current (whether incredibly detailed or high-level overviews). — Regan Wald

A chicken is an individual who has significant authority over your project, but does not make a personal commitment to the success of the project. — Regan Wald

And every time I’ve delivered software on schedule milestone after milestone, my influence and standing with stakeholders has grown. And every time I’ve missed a date, I’ve suffered, regardless of whether the late software was demonstrably better than what was originally planned for the missed date. — Regan Wald

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues. — Rene Descartes

He who dares to teach must never cease to learn. — Richard Henry Dann

Militias, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves and include all men capable of bearing arms. [...] To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. — Richard Henry Lee

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning. — Rick Cook

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. — Robert A. Heinlein

Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist. — Robert Anson Heinlein

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost

Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed. — Robert H. Schuller

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. — Robert Heinlein

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities — Robert Nozick

Human pain does not let go of its grip at one point in time. Rather, it works its way out of our consciousness over time. There is a season of sadness. A season of anger. A season of tranquility. A season of hope. — Robert Veninga

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads. — Ron Paul

I want to use all my strength, to resist the notion that I can run your lives, or run the economy, or run the world. I want to use that strength to repeal and reject that notion, and stand up and defend the principles of liberty. — Ron Paul

Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers. — Ron Paul

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. — Ronald Reagan

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. — Ronald Reagan

…peace is the highest aspiration of the American People. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it, we will never surrender for it, now or ever. — Ronald Reagan

Some people go their entire lives never knowing if they have made a difference. Marines don’t have that problem. — Ronald Reagan

Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose. — Ronald Reagan

Blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. — Ronald Reagan

The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program. — Ronald Reagan

Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini’s success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say “But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.” — 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

I notice that everybody who is Pro-Abortion already has been born. — Ronald Reagan

No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. — Ronald Reagan

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. — Ronald Reagan

Man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. — Ronald Reagan

To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you’re putting a money test on getting a gun. It’s racism in its worst form. — Roy Innis

No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be. Not all the books on all the shelves – but what the teachers are themselves. — Rudyard Kipling

The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow. — Rupert Murdoch

You know why there’s a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one. — Rush Limbaugh

The higher entry standards imposed by licensing laws reduce the supply of professional services….The poor are the net losers, because the availability of low-cost service has been reduced. In essence, the poor subsidize the information research costs of the rich. — S. David Young

Historical examination of the right to bear arms, from English antecedents to the drafting of the Second Amendment, bears proof that the right to bear arms has consistently been, and should still be, construed as an individual right. — Sam Cummings

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy. — Sam Levenson

That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms… — Samuel Adams

If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying — that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 — establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime. — Senator Orrin Hatch

If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never stand for or against. Struggle between “for” and “against” is the minds worst disease. — Sent-ts’an

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. — Sidney Hook

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. — Sigmund Freud

The price of greatness is responsibility. — Sir Winston Churchill

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. — Socrates

But in reality Justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others,-he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles within him, which maybe compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals-when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or, private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves and cooperates with the harmonious condition, just and good action and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action and the opinion which presides over it ignorance. — Socrates

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. — Soren Kierkegaard

If somebody kills somebody, it’s a crime, but if somebody kills somebody of a different race, it’s a hate crime. And we think that that is a savage hypocrisy, because all crimes are hate crimes. If a man beats another man because that man was sleeping with his wife, is that not a hate crime? If a person vandalizes a government building, is it not because of his hate for the government? The motivation for a crime shouldn’t affect the sentencing. It is time to stop splitting people into groups. All hate crime laws do is support the idea that blacks are different from whites, that homosexuals are different, that we aren’t the same. But instead we should all be treated the same, with the same laws and the same punishments for the same crimes. — South Park kids

What the fool does in the end, the wise man does in the beginning. — Spanish Maxim

Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words. — St. Francis of Assisi

Preach the Gospel at all times, use words only when necessary. — St. Francis of Assisi

In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the ‘collective’ right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of ‘the people’ to keep and bear arms… The phrase ‘the people’ meant the same thing in the Second Amendment as it did in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments – that is, each and every free person. — Stephen Holbrook

In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the “collective” right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis. — Stephen P. Halbrook

Religious groups will be making a deal with the devil if they accept the 30 pieces of silver from the federal government. Accepting federal funds will put religious groups at the mercy of government bureaucrats, make them more dependent on government handouts, and politicize what should be very personal religious decisions. Jesus Christ wasn’t a government bureaucrat — and the religious groups that have been inspired by his ministry shouldn’t become government bureaucrats, either. And the same is true for Jews, Muslims, and every other religious faith that may be tempted by this proposal. — Steve Dasbach

I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. — Steve Jobs

The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay. — Steve Jobs

The principle of the separation of church and state is today widely misinterpreted to mean the exclusion of religion from public life. The Founders, to the contrary, thought a fastidious neutrality on the part of the state between denominations and faiths would strengthen the influence of faith in our culture. — Steven Hayward

Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. — Suzanne Necker

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. — Tacitus

Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong. — Theodore Roosevelt

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt

Good design adds value faster than it adds cost. — Thomas C. Gale

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. — Thomas Edison

As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives [only] moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion to your walks. — Thomas Jefferson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. — Thomas Jefferson

When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny. — Thomas Jefferson

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. — Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. — Thomas Jefferson

I have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. — Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. — Thomas Jefferson

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. — Thomas Jefferson

Ridicule is he only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them. — Thomas Jefferson

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. — Thomas Jefferson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. — Thomas Jefferson

Our business is to have great credit and to use it little. — Thomas Jefferson

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; moderation in principle is always a vice. — Thomas Paine

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression. — Thomas Paine

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. — Thomas Reed

The biggest hypocrites on gun control are those who live in upscale developments with armed security guards — and who want to keep other people from having guns to defend themselves. But what about lower-income people living in high-crime, inner city neighborhoods? Should such people be kept unarmed and helpless, so that limousine liberals can ‘make a statement’ by adding to the thousands of gun laws already on the books? — Thomas Sowell

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. — Thomas Sowell

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what has worked with what sounded good. In area after area- crime, education, housing, race relations- the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them. — Thomas Sowell

Liberals love to say things like, ‘We’re just asking everyone to pay their fair share.’ But government is not about asking. It is about telling. The difference is fundamental. It is the difference between making love and being raped, between working for a living and being a slave. The Internal Revenue service is not asking anybody to do anything. It confiscates your assets and puts you behind bars if you don’t pay. — Thomas Sowell

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. — Thomas Szasz

Apple is in a position they’ve been in a lot of times before. They’re like Moses showing the way to the promised land, but they don’t actually go there. — Tim O’Reilly

Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous damage, but you cannot ensure success. — Tom DeMarco

The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues and tends to foment uprisings. — Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than non owners of guns. — U.S. Department of Justice

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. — Voltaire

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

Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers. — Voltaire

I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful. — Warren Buffett

Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results. — Warren Buffett

The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything–you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you’re a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, ‘Swing, you bum! — Warren Buffett

Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years. — Warren Buffett

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought. — Warren Buffett

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. — Warren Buffett

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. — Warren Buffett

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. — Warren Buffett

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction. — Warren Buffett

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars. — Warren Buffett

Our favorite holding period is forever. — Warren Buffett

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. — Warren Buffett

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. — Warren Buffett

Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. — Warren Buffett

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre. — Warren Buffett

We’ve used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we’re running a federal deficit that’s 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It’s more stimulative than any policy we’ve followed since World War II. — Warren Buffett

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing. — Warren Buffett

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong. — Warren Buffett

.. a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen… — Warren v. District of Columbia

The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field – and keep on doing it. — Wilfred Peterson

What I reject in socialism is a philosophy which … places too little emphasis on man, his nature, and his personality and … makes light of the danger that all this may lead to the sacrifice of freedom in the plain and tragic sense exemplified by the totalitarian state. My picture of man is fashioned by the spiritual heritage of classical and Christian tradition. I see in man the likeness of God; I am profoundly convinced that it is an appalling sin to reduce man to a means … and that each man’s soul is something unique; irreplaceable, priceless, in comparison with which all other things are as naught — Wilhelm Roepke

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. — Will Rogers

Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others. — William Allen White

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. — William Arthur Ward

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. — William Arthur Ward

In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: Littering, noise, and chewing gum. Teachers last year were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: Rape, assault, and suicide. — William Bennett

I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create. — William Blake

…we are living in a sick society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them. — William Comer

If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you. — William E. Simon

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. — William Pitt

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. — William S. Burroughs

Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. — William Saroyan

Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. — William Shakespeare

If even one new drug of the stature of penicillin or digitalis has been unjustifiably banished to a company’s back shelf because of exceedingly stringent regulatory requirements, that event will have harmed more people than all the toxicity that has occurred in the history of modern drug development. — William Wardell

That best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. — William Wordsworth

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. — Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. — Winston Churchill

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

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. — Winston Churchill

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. — Woody Allen

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re not. — Yoggi Berra

Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don’t have a gun, freedom of speech has no power. — Yoshimi Ishikawa

What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination. — Zig Ziglar

You must be logged in to post a comment.