"There can be, therefore, no true education without moral culture, and no true moral culture without Christianity. The very power of the teacher in the school-room is either moral or it is a degrading force. But he can show the child no other moral basis for it than the Bible. Hence my argument is as perfect as clear. The teacher must be Christian. But the American Commonwealth has promised to have no religious character. Then it cannot be teacher."
Robert L. Dabney, Discussions: Secular, 4:222f
"It is the teaching of the Bible and of sound Political ethics that the education of children belongs to the sphere of the family and is the duty of the parents. The theory that the children of the Commonwealth are the charge of the Commonwealth is a pagan one, derived from heathen Sparta and Plato's heathen republic, and connected by regular, logical sequence with legalized prostitution and the dissolution of the conjugal tie."
Robert L. Dabney, Discussions,
4:194
"[Conservatism's] history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive
party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always
acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is
today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in
affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity
and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its
turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves
forward to perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances
near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be
salted? Its impotency is not hard to explain. It is worthless because it is the con-
servatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It tends to risk nothing
serious for the sake of truth."
Robert L. Dabney
"A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men."
Roald Dahl
"Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything."
Frank Dane
"A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn't own."
Frank Dane
The Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men.
Daniel 4:17
"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it."
Clarence Darrow,
(1857-1938)
"The law
does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would
seriously interfere with business."
Clarence Darrow
"As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man
rebelled, those wrongs would last forever."
Clarence Darrow
"The lowest standards of ethics of which a right-thinking man can possibly conceive is
taught to the common soldier whose trade is to shoot his fellow men. In youth he may have
learned the command, 'Thou shalt not kill,' but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters
manhood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through his neighbor's
heart - and this, unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred, and without the least regard
to right or wrong, but simply because his ruler gives the word."�
Clarence Darrow
"I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one."
Clarence Darrow
"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?"
Clarence Darrow
"Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never
touch its coat tails."
Clarence Darrow
"History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history."
Clarence Darrow
"The love for all living creatures is the noblest attribute of man."
"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
Charles Darwin
"I could show [that war had] done and [is] doing [much]... for the progress of
civilization... The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish
hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date... an
endless number of lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races
throughout the world."
Charles Darwin, 1871, republished 1896. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to
Sex; The Works of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Company, New York (First edition by AMS
Press, 1972) (Loc cit p343)
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of
man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.
At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes... will no doubt be exterminated. The break
between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man
in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low
as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla. ... It has
often been said ... that man can resist with impunity the greatest diversities of climate
and other changes; but this is true only of the civilized races. Man in his wild condition
seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his nearest allies, the anthropoid
apes, which have never yet survived long, when removed from their native country."
Charles Darwin, 1871, republished 1896. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to
Sex; The Works of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Company, New York (First edition by AMS
Press, 1972) pp 241-242)
"The essential amorality of all atheist doctrines is often hidden from us by an irrelevant
personal argument. We see that many articulate secularists are well-meaning and law-
abiding men; we see them go into righteous indignation over injustice and often devote
their lives to good works. So we conclude that "he can't be wrong whose life is in the
right" - that their philosophies are just as good guides to action as Christianity. What
we don't see is that they are not acting on their philosophies. They are acting, out of
habit or sentiment, on an inherited Christian ethic which they still take for granted
though they have rejected the creed from which it sprang. Their children will inherit
somewhat less of it...."
Joy Davidman, (1915-1960) Smoke on the Mountain [1955] (wife of C.S. Lewis)
"Women tell men things that men are not very likely to find out for themselves."
Robertson Davies, Conversations
"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for
anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from
life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what
treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness."
Robertson Davies
"Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only
the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion."
Robertson Davies
"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age,
as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight."
Robertson Davies
"The proposition is this: that in a time of war the commander of an armed force . . .
has the power . . . to suspend all civil rights and their remedies, and subject citizens
. . . to the rule of his will. . . . If true, republican government is a failure, and
there is an end of liberty regulated by law."
Chief Justice David Davis, ruling for the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan (1866),
declaring commander in chief Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and other
denials of due process during the Civil War unconstitutional.
"Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in."
Evan Davis
President Jefferson Davis, 1st Inaugural Address
"We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we have lately been confederated. All we ask is to be let alone - that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will, we must resist to the direst extremity. The moment that this pretension is abandoned, the sword will drop from our grasp, and we shall be ready to enter into treaties of amnesty and commerce that cannot but be mutually beneficial. So long as this pretension is maintained, with a firm reliance on that Divine Power which covers with its protection the just cause, we must continue to struggle for our inherent right to freedom, independence, and self government."
President Jefferson Davis, 1st Inaugural Address
"A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever."
Jefferson Davis
"Our government is an agency of delegated and strictly limited powers. Its founders did not look to its preservation by force; but the chain they wove to bind these States together was one of love and mutual good offices..."
Jefferson Davis
"Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice, and sustained by a virtuous people."
Jefferson Davis
"Never by haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty."
Jefferson Davis
Christopher
Dawson, (1889-1970)
The
Judgment of the Nations [1942]
William Demarest,
General
Revelation: Historical Views and Contemporary Issues, p.15
"There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination."
"An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run
to blow it out?"
René Descartes, 1596 - 1650
"A quote is just a tattoo on the tongue."
William F. DeVault
"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Nick Diamos
"Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it."
"Any reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and that until it was convenient to make a pretence that sympathy with him was the cause of the war, it hated the abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dales to Secession being Rebellion, it is distinctly possible by state papers that Washington considered it no such thing - that Massachusetts, now loudest against it, has itself asserted its right to secede, again and again."
Charles Dickens, (1812-1870), on the War of Southern Independence
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
Charles Dickens
"We forge the chains we wear in life."
Charles Dickens
"Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible
pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out
by good means."
Charles Dickens
"Lincoln is portrayed as a champion of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence...(yet), Lincoln destroyed the most important principle of the Declaration ? the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Southerners no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C. in 1860, and Lincoln put an end to that idea by having his armies slaughter 300,000 of them, including one out of every four white males between 20 and 40. Standardizing for todayís population, that would be the equivalent of around 3 million American deaths, or roughly 60 times the number of Americans who died in Vietnam."
Thomas
J. DiLorenzo, The
Mythical Lincoln, February 12, 2002
"Southerners
opposed the aggressive nationalism of the Republican Party regime (not
of all northerners), and by seceding, adopting free trade, and no
longer paying federal taxes (mostly the tariff) they threatened a very
quick destruction of that regime. For that they had to be invaded, killed by the hundreds of thousands,
conquered, occupied, and re-educated over and over again."
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, "Death by
Government"
"The founders understood that democracy would inevitably evolve into a system of legalized plunder unless the plundered were given numerous escape routes and constitutional protections such as the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, election of senators by state legislators, the electoral college, no income taxation, most governmental functions performed at the state and local levels, and myriad other constitutional limitations on the powers of the central government."
Benjamin Disraeli, (1804-1881), Speech in the House of
Commons [June 15, 1874]
"Man is a being born to believe. And if no church comes forward with its title-deeds of
truth to guide him, he will find altars and idols in his own heart and his own
imagination."
Benjamin Disraeli, Speech [25 Nov. 1864]
"To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection, it is plunder."
Benjamin Disraeli
"A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance."
Benjamin Disraeli
"The tone and tendency of liberalism . . . is to attack the institutions of the country
under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under
the pretext of progress."
Benjamin Disraeli, Speech in London, June 24, 1872
"The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes."
Benjamin Disraeli
"A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance."
Benjamin Disraeli
"A precedent embalms a principle."
Benjamin Disraeli
"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action."
Benjamin Disraeli
"As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best
information."
Benjamin Disraeli
"Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones."
Benjamin Disraeli
"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are
not behind the scenes."
Benjamin Disraeli, Source: his novel 'Coningsby, the New Generation', 1844
"Today, Christian conservative activists seem to be playing out the classic definition of insanity which is to keep repeating the same actions expecting to get different results."
Colonel V. Doner, Chalcedon Report, 10/2000
Fyodor
Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
(1821-1881)
"Every member of the society
spies on the rest, and it is his duty to inform against them.
All are slaves and equal in their slavery... The great thing about it
is equality... Slaves are bound to be equal."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Source: The
Possessed
"If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every
living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up."
Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821-81 Russian novelist The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80) bk. 2, ch. 6
William O. Douglas, (1898-1980), U.
S. Supreme Court Justice
"Those
in power need checks and restraints lest they
come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and
their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the
nation."
William O. Douglas
"As
nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly
unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of
change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims
of the darkness."
William O. Douglas
"Ideas are
indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons
man has ever forged."
William O. Douglas, Source: An Almanac of Liberty, 1954
| "...[T]he Declaration
of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's
destiny....
The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles.
Stand
by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places,
against
all foes, and at whatever cost." Frederick Douglass, (1818-1895), escaped slave, Abolitionist, author "The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous." |
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist."
"I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class."
"Those
who profess to favor freedom and yet
depreciate agitation, are people who
want
crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain
without thunder and lightning; they want the
ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may
be a moral one, or
it may be a physical one, or it may be
both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without a demand; it never has and
it never will."
"You are not judged by the height
you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed."
< End of
Frederick
Douglass quotes >
"This (Dubya Bush) administration's grand schemes always end up as the opposite.
Officials say they're promoting national security when they're hurting it; they say
they're squelching terrorists when they're breeding them; they say they're bringing
stability to Iraq when the country's imploding."
Maureen Dowd
"When nothing is sure, everything is possible."
Margaret Drabble, (1939- ) English Novelist
"You cannot add to the peace and good will of the world if you fail to create an
atmosphere of harmony and love right where you live and work."
Thomas Dreier
"How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? it must be education
that does it."
Alexandre Dumas, (1802 - 1870)
Finley Peter
Dunne,
1867-1936, American journalist and humorist, in Mr.
Dooley's Opinions [1900]
"A
fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew
the facts of the case."
Finley Peter Dunne
"Ye can
lead a man up to the university, but ye can't make him think."
Finley Peter Dunne
"Trust
everybody - but cut the cards."
Finley Peter Dunne
"Comfort
the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable."
Finley Peter Dunne
"Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure."
"If man
asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his
neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and
thinks laws in his own case superfluous."
Will Durant
"Sixty
years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a
progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
Will Durant
"Science
tell us how to heal and how to kill. It reduces the death rate in
retail and then kills us wholesale in war."
Will Durant
"It may be
true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool
enough of them to rule a large country."
Will Durant
"Every vice
was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred
becomes respectable in time of war."
Will
Durant
"Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way."
Will Durant
"Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes."
Will Durant
"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."
