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Famous Quotes
 

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The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

A classic since 1953 with over 20,000 quotes from over 3,000 authors.


Famous Last Words

Apt Observations, Pleas, Curses, Benedictions, Sour Notes, Bons Mots, and Insights from People on the Brink of Departure


Stretch Your Wings

Famous Black Quotations for the Young


American Quotations

An exhaustive collection of profound quotes from the founding fathers, presidents, statesmen, scientists, constitutions, court decisions


The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations


Last Words of Saints and Sinners

700 Final Quotes from the Famous, the Infamous, and the Inspiring Figures of History


America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations

Contains over 2,100 profound quotations from founding fathers, presidents, constitutions, court decisions and more


The Law

This 1850 classic is an absolute must read for anyone interested in law, justice, truth, or liberty. A most compelling and revolutionary look at The Law.


Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature (17th Edition)


The Stupidest Things Ever Said by Politicians

Rise up, America -- and laugh out loud at the greatest gaffes that no spin doctor could possibly fix!


The 776 Even Stupider Things Ever Said

Another great collection of stupidity


Quotable Quotes

Wit and Wisdom for All Occasions from America's Most Popular Magazine


The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time

You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less.


2,715 One-Line Quotations for Speakers, Writers & Raconteurs

Invaluable sampler of witticisms, epigrams, sayings, bon mots, platitudes and insights chosen for their brevity and pithiness.


Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts Funny Sayings

A stupendous collection of quotes, quips, epigrams, witticisms, and humorous comments for personal enjoyment and ready reference.


Quick Quips and Quotes; 532 Things I Wish I Had Said

Quick Quips and Quotes is the Ultimate Collection of one liners.


Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

The ultimate anthology of anecdotes, now revised with over 700 new entries.


Quotations for Public Speakers

A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology


Liberty - The American Revolution

This compelling series traces the events leading up to the war and America's fight for freedom.


Founding Fathers

The story of how these disparate characters fomented rebellion in the colonies, formed the Continental Congress, fought the Revolutionary War, and wrote the Constitution


Libertarianism: A Primer

David Boaz, director of the Cato Institute, has written a simple introduction to Libertarianism inteneded to appeal to disgruntled Democrats and Republicans everywhere.


The Libertarian Reader

Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman


Thomas Paine: Collected Writings

All the classics: Common Sense / The Crisis / Rights of Man / The Age of Reason / Pamphlets, Articles, and Letters

 
VoltaireDoubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. 
VoltaireWhat is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature. 
VoltaireI detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write. 
VoltaireThe safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death. 
VoltaireThe instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. 
VoltaireWe are all full of weakness and errors, let us mutually pardon each other our follies. It is the first law of nature. 
VoltairePrejudices are what fools use for reason. 
VoltaireThe tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor. 
Otto von BismarckThe death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilisation. 
Otto von BismarckThe less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night. 
Otto von BismarckA little caution outflanks a large cavalry. 
Karl von ClausewitzWar is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means. 
Karl von ClausewitzNo one starts a war -- or rather no one in his senses ought to do so -- without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve in that war and how he intends to conduct it. 
Immanuel Hermann von FichteIf we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it. 
Erik von Kuehnelt-LeddihnFifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime,  suppress minorities and still remain democratic. 
Clemens von MetternichTen million ignorances do not constitute one knowledge. 
Ludwig Von MisesThe essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders. 
Ludwig Von MisesThe essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. 
Ludwig von MisesThe market is not a place, a thing, or a collective entity. It is a process. 
Ludwig von MisesThe 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 MisesEducation rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought. 
Ludwig von MisesOnce it has been perceived that the division of labour is the essence of society, nothing remains of the antithesis between individual and society. The contradiction between individual principle and social principle disappears. 
Ludwig von MisesMany of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable. Nevertheless, with full knowledge of this fact, they advocate a reform, e.g., socialism, because they hope that the rich, whom they envy, will also suffer under it. 
Ludwig von MisesThere are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no third way available. 
Ludwig von MisesTrue, a socialistic society could see that 1000 litres of wine were better than 800 litres. It could decide whether or not 1000 litres of wine were to be preferred to 500 litres of oil. Such a decision would involve no calculation. The will of some man would decide. But the real business of economic administration, the adaptation of means to ends only begins when such a decision is taken. And only economic calculation makes this adaptation possible. Without such assistance, in the bewildering chaos of alternative materials and processes the human mind would be at a complete loss. Whenever we had to decide between different processes or different centres of production, we would be entirely at sea. 
Ludwig von MisesEconomic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. 
Ludwig Von MisesThe main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty. 
Ludwig von MisesThe struggle for freedom ... is not the struggle of the many against the few, but of minorities -- sometimes of a minority of but one man -- against the majority. 
Ludwig von MisesIt is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well-founded, the more they hate him. 
Ludwig von MisesThere is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final or total catastrophe of the currency system involved. 
Ludwig von MisesDepression and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market, but by government interference in the economy. 
Ludwig von MisesModern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace. 
Ludwig von MisesSpiritual movements are revolts of thought against inertia, of the few against the many; of those who because they are strong in spirit are strongest alone against those who can express themselves only in the mass and the mob, and who are significant only because they are numerous. 
Ludwig von MisesThe champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight! 
Ludwig von MisesThe direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain's orders. The captain is the consumer. ...[Consumers] make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. 
Ludwig von MisesThose who call themselves "liberals" today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies which the liberals of the nineteenth century advocated in their liberal programs. The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial -- that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions. 
Ludwig von MisesViolent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state. 
Ludwig von MisesSocialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created. 
Ludwig von MisesGovernment means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty. Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of economic freedom. Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter. 
Ludwig von MisesPolitical ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe... 
Ludwig von MisesThe common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. 
Ludwig Von MisesThe first thing a genius needs is to breath free air. 
Ludwig von MisesThis, then, is freedom in the external life of man -- that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows. 
Ludwig von MisesGovernment cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. 
Ludwig Von MisesAgainst nature and within nature there is no freedom. 
Ludwig Von MisesIt is not conclusive proof of a doctrine’s correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman, and violent mobs to fight it. But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression are in their subconscious convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines. 
Johannes von MullerWe do not know of how much a man is capable if he has the will, and to what point he will raise himself if he feels free. 
Robert von MusilOne does what one is; one becomes what one does. 
William Von RaabThere's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom. 
Johann von SchillerMan is created free, and is free, even though born in chains. [Ger., Der Mensch ist frei geschaffen, ist frei Und wurd' er in Ketten geboren.] 
Johann von SchillerThe voice of the majority is no proof of justice. 
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it absolutely vile! 
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values…and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States – and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death! 
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.We are what we pretend to be. 
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. 
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas. 
Jerry VoorhisThe banks -- commercial banks and the Federal Reserve -- create all the money of this nation and its people pay interest on every dollar of that newly created money. Which means that private banks exercise unconstitutionally, immorally, and ridiculously the power to tax the people. For every newly created dollar dilutes to some extent the value of every other dollar already in circulation. 
Marilyn vos SavantWhat is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom 'to' and freedom 'from'. 
Marilyn vos SavantTo acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. 
Ian WachtmeisterRight now, I'd rather be in Sweden than in the U.S. because we have seen the problems and are moving away from the welfare state. On your side of the Atlantic you are moving right into it, and you risk destroying your country. 
Kristen WaggonerThe government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe, and Colorado officials have paid and will continue to pay a high price when they violate this foundational freedom. For the past 12 years, Colorado has targeted people of faith and forced them to express messages that violate their conscience and that advance the government’s preferred ideology. First Amendment protections are non-negotiable. Billions of people around the world believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and that men and women are biologically distinct. No government has the right to silence individuals for expressing these ideas or to punish those who decline to express different views. Political and cultural winds shift, but the freedom to speak without fear of censorship is a God-given constitutionally guaranteed right, essential for a flourishing society and self-governing people. 
Charles WagnerYes, I am positive that one of the great curatives of our evils, our maladies, social, moral, and intellectual, would be a return to the soil, a rehabilitation of the work of the fields. 
Edward B. WagnerStop wasting jail space on prostitutes, drug users and other victimless criminals. Even if we find it morally acceptable to imprison these people for choices they make regarding their bodies, we must realize that we simply cannot afford to continue clogging the court system and the prison system with these harmless criminals. 
Jesse Charles Wagner IIThere is one 'word' that the message of the Bible is all about... and that is "LOVE"... different bible versions can be interpreted many ways... But, regardless how many times the wording is changed or interpreted... 'LOVE' always is the 'word'  
George WaldA physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms. 
Kenneth D. WaldGiven the ambiguity of religious texts and teachings, the mixed historical record, and the empirical evidence, it would be foolhardy to assert that religious faith necessarily upholds democratic values. 
Alice WalkerThe most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. 
Daniel F. WalkerLook at America now; older middle-income Americans are encouraged to divest themselves of their assets in order to qualify for Medicaid so that taxpayers at large must subsidize the costs of warehousing the artificially impoverished nursing homes -- in the name of “independent living” and “not being a burden to the children.” 
General Sir Walter WalkerI consider it my duty to tell you of the extremely dangerous threats that lie ahead. I know for certain that we are now in a period of the greatest strategic deception, perhaps in all history ...The Cold War is NOT over, only in the state of remission ...The Soviet Union is not truly 'on the verge of collapse'. Western defense, on the other hand, is. 
George WallaceWhy does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining? 
Henry WallaceIn some ways, certain books are more powerful by far than any battle. 
William WallaceI tell you true, liberty is the best of all things; never live beneath the noose of a servile halter. 
W. Allen WallisWhen you pay social security taxes, you are in no way making provision for your own retirement. You are paying the pensions of those who are already retired. Once you understand this, you see that whether you will get the benefits you are counting on when you retire depends on whether Congress will levy enough taxes, borrow enough, or print enough money... 
Malcolm WallopToday government touches everything in America and harms almost everything it touches. Federal, state, and local governments together spend 42 out of every 100 dollars we earn. Those who do the taxing and spending have long since ceased to work for the people as a whole. Rather, they work for themselves and for their clients—the education industry, the welfare culture, public-employee unions, etc.. 
Sir Robert WalpoleThough I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century, and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments. 


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