GREAT QUOTES

Every one of us has read or heard words spoken that precisely coincide with our thoughts and principles. All too frequently we forget those beautifully spoken words and go on with our lives never to repeat them or address any actions that could flow from their concepts.

Here are some quotes that I have come across recently in my readings, viewing and interaction with friends.

On a cable channel a retired military contributor referring to our new President said, “The President has made more promises than a sixteen year old boy in the back seat of a car on a Saturday night.”

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

Mark Twain was quoted as saying, “If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.”

Twain also said, “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.”

Winston Churchill spoke these words, “I 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.”

Unofficially attributed to President Abraham Lincoln, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that counts. It’s the life in your years.”

Many years ago George Bernard Shaw said, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

Bill Clinton’s classmate at Georgetown University said, “Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”

Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850) said, “Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

In 1764 Voltaire said, “In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of citizens to give to the other.”

Pericles (430 B.C.) is quoted as saying, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

I especially like these words of Ronald Reagan’s, “The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”

Artist Edward Langley (1928-1995) said, “What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.”

The great Thomas Jefferson said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”

The often quoted Benjamin Franklin said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Here are two wonderful quotes from Thomas Jefferson: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” and “When government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny.”

Author Robert Heinlein said, “Anyone who clings to the historically untrue--and thoroughly immoral--doctrine that ‘violence never solves anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

From Samuel Adams, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Don’t you find it very interesting that many of these statements and utterances spoken hundreds of years ago are just as applicable today as they were then? I wonder just where our current political and comedic discourse would fall on a political rancor bell-curve chart. Maybe we will get a chance to read historians writings when we are in the hereafter. It will sure be very interesting, insightful and one hell of a lot more accurate than our current perspective.

COMMANDER GRANGER