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| Jeffrey R. Snyder | | Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers. | |
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| Jeffrey R. Snyder | | Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. | |
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| Jeffrey R. 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... The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people. | |
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| Jeffrey R. Snyder | | To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state’s totalitarian reach. | |
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| Jeffrey R. 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. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding 'more' while never defining 'enough.' The predictable result is that they always get more, and it's never enough. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | At the end of a century that has seen the evils of communism, Nazism and other modern tyrannies, the impulse to centralize power remains amazingly persistent. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money—only for wanting to keep your own money. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that the pickpocket doesn't get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to himself. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | Tyranny seldom announces itself. ...In fact, a tyranny may exist without an individual tyrant. A whole government, even a democratically elected one, may be tyrannical. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We’ll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | By a very conservative estimate, a hundred million people have died at the hands of their own governments in this century. Given that record, how bad could anarchy be? | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | All in all, the framers would probably agree that it's better to impeach too often than too seldom. If presidents can't be virtuous, they should at least be nervous. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | Not surprisingly, the federal judiciary nearly always rules in favor of the federal government. Judicial review, contrary to the assurances of its advocates, has hardly restrained Congress at all. Instead it has progressively stripped the states of their traditional powers, while allowing federal power to grow unchecked. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | In the current political vocabulary, ‘need’ means wanting to get someone else’s money. ‘Greed,’ which used to mean what “need” now means, has come to mean wanting to keep your own. ‘Compassion’ means the politician’s willingness to arrange the transfer. | |
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| Joseph Sobran | | If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal.
If you want government to intervene overseas, you're conservative.
If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate.
If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist. | |
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| Socrates | | False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. | |
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| Socrates | | Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul? | |
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| Socrates | | Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions,
but those who kindly reprove thy faults. | |
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| Socrates | | I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world. | |
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| Socrates | | The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways: I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only knows. | |
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| Frederick Soddy | | The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into their debt irredeemably, by a trick. This money comes into existence every time the banks 'lend' and disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so 'dangerous' as it destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump. There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An honest money system is the only alternative. | |
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| Frederick Soddy | | The most sinister and anti-social feature about bank-deposit money is that it has no existence. The banks owe the public for a total amount of money which does not exist. In buying and selling, implemented by cheque transactions, there is a mere change in the party to whom the money is owed by the banks. As the one depositor's account is debited, the other is credited and the banks can go on owing for it all the time. The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into their debt irredeemably, by a trick. This money comes into existence every time the banks 'lend' and disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so 'dangerous' as it destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump. There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An honest money system is the only alternative. | |
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| King Solomon | | These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. | |
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| Solon | | For often evil men are rich, and good men poor;
But we will not exchange with them
Our virtue for their wealth since one abides always,
While riches change their owners every day. | |
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| Solon | | If through your vices you afflicted are,
Lay not the blame of your distress on God;
You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards,
So now you groan 'neath slavery's heavy rod. | |
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| Solon | | A half truth is the worst of all lies, because it can be defended in partiality. | |
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| Solon | | We can have justice whenever those who have not been injured by injustice are as outraged by it as those who have been. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power - he's FREE again. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | There also exists another alliance -- at first glance a strange one, a surprising one -- but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. ... We observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust ... and prevent those ... because of short-sightedness and still others out of self-interest, from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road. Because they are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat. ... I call upon you: ordinary working men of America ... do not let yourselves become weak. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | Hastiness and superficiality
are the psychic diseases
of the twentieth century,
and more than anywhere else
this disease is reflected in the press. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | At what exact point, then should one resist the communists? ... How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: what would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if during periods of mass arrests people had simply not sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. ... The Organs [police] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers ... and notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print", it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another. | |
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| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | | We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward. | |
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| Sophocles | | Wisdom outweighs any wealth. | |
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| Sophocles | | Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud. | |
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| Sophocles | | Without labor nothing prospers. | |
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| George Soros | | Although I have made a fortune in the financial markets, I now fear that the untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat. | |
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| South African Saying | | He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return. | |
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| Southern California Oracle | | Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. | |
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| Robert Southey | | Easier were it To hurl the rooted mountain from its base, Than force the yoke of slavery upon men Determin'd to be free. | |
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| Dr. Thomas Sowell | | Just as any moron can destroy a priceless Ming vase, so the shallow and ill-educated people who run our schools can undermine and destroy from within a great civilization that took centuries of dedicated effort to create and maintain. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | The economic disasters of socialism and communism come from assuming a blanket superiority of those who want to run a whole economy. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | It doesn't matter what rights you have under the Constitution of the United States, if the government can punish you for exercising those rights. And it doesn't matter what limits the Constitution puts on government officials' power, if they can exceed those limits without any adverse consequences. In other words, the Constitution cannot protect you, if you don't protect the Constitution with your votes against anyone who violates it. Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped. As long as millions of Americans vote on the basis of who gives them free stuff, look for their freedom -- and all our freedom -- to be eroded away, bit by bit. Our children and grandchildren may yet come to see the Constitution as just some quaint words from the past that people once took seriously. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim -- or arrogation -- of power to stifle the autonomy of others. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians -- risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has -- is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | The talkers and writers resent being left on the sidelines by the doers. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices -- paid by others. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Freedom... refer[s] to a social relationship among people -- namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice. | |