Robert
Murray
M'Cheyne
(1813-1843)
"Never allow your own sorrow to absorb you, but seek out another to console, and you will
find consolation."
J. C. Macaulay
"The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from
persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally."
Thomas B. Macaulay, (1800-1859) 1st Baron Macaulay, British historian
"Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other
words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and
eat, and drink and wear."
Thomas B. Macaulay, Source: "Southey's Colloquies on Society" par. SC.69
"The most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny."
"It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen." George MacDonald, (1824-1905) Scottish novelist "If, instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give." |
"To trust in the strength of God in our weakness; to say , 'I am weak; so let me be; God is strong'; to seek from Him who is our life, as the natural simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do, and be, and live, even when we are weary , - this is the victory that overcometh the world."
Life on
eternal life, Unspoken Sermons, Second Series
"It has
been well said that nobody ever sank under the burden of the
day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that
the weight is more than anyone can bear. Never load yourselves so, my
friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this is
your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him and
mind the present."
Lord, loosen in me the hold of visible things;
Help me to walk by faith and not by sight;
I would, through thickest veils and coverings,
See into the chambers of the living light.
Lord, in the land of things that swell and seem,
Help me to walk by the other light supreme
Which shows thy facts behind man's vaguely hinting
dream.
"Diary of an Old Soul," Sept. 25th
Go not forth to call
Dame Sorrow
From the dim fields of Tomorrow;
Let her roam there all unheeded,
She will come when she is needed;
Then, when she draws near thy door,
She will find God there before.
Poetical Works, Vol. 2
"To hold fast upon God with one hand, and open wide the other to your neighbor - that is religion."
in 'Paul Faber, Surgeon'"We are always disbelieving in him because things do not go as we intend and desire them
to go. We forget that God has larger ends, even for us, than we can see, so his plans do
not fit ours."
Weighed And Wanting [1893], Chapter 49
"Perhaps nothing helps so much to believe in the Father, as the active practical help of
the brother. If he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, can ill love God whom he
hath not seen, then he who loves his brother must surely find it the easier to love God!
Arctura found that to visit the widow and the fatherless in their afflictions; to look on
and know them as her kind; to enter into their sorrows, and share the elevating influence
of grief genuine and simple, the same in every human soul, was to draw near to God. She
met him in his children."
'Donal Grant', chapter LII
"(St Paul) knew nothing of the so-called Christian systems that change the glory of the
perfect God into the likeness of the low intellects and dull consciences of men - a worse
corruption than the representing of him in human shape. What kind of soul is it that would
not choose the Apollo of light, the high walking Hyperion, to the notion of the dull,
self-cherishing monarch, the law-dispensing magistrate, or the cruel martinet, generated
in the pagan arrogance of Rome, and accepted by the world in the church as the portrait of
its God! Jesus Christ is the only likeness of the living Father."
Unspoken Sermons
"A mere truism, is it? Yes it is, and more is the pity; for what is a truism, as most men
count truisms? What is it but a truth that ought to have been buried long ago in the lives
of men --- to send up forever corn of true deeds and the wine of loving kindness --- but,
instead of being buried in friendly soil, is allowed to lie about, kicked hither and
thither in the dry and empty garret of their brains, till they are sick of the sight and
sound of it and, to be rid of the thought of it, declare it to be no living truth but a
lifeless truism? Yet in their brain that truism must rattle until they shift to its
rightful quarters in their heart, where it will rattle no longer but take root and be a
strength and loveliness."
in 'Thomas Wingfold, Curate'
J. Gresham Machen, (1923)
"Everywhere there arises before our eyes the spectre of a society where security, if it is attained at all, will be attained at the expense of freedom, where the security that is attained will be security of fed beasts in a stable, and where all the high aspirations of humanity will have been crushed by an all-powerful State."
"I do not see how anyone can contemplate present-day educational conditions without seeing that something is radically wrong. And about one thing that is wrong - indeed by far the most important thing - there can be no doubt. It is found in the widespread ignorance of the Christian religion as that religion is founded upon the Word of God.... I do not believe that there can be any truly comprehensive science that does not take account of the solid facts upon which the Christian religion is based. Hence I sympathize fully with your desire to promote an education that shall be genuinely Christian. And I pray that those who, like you, wherever they may be, cherish such a desire may not be discouraged by the opposition of the world. You represent a cause which cannot ultimately fail."
J. Gresham Machen
" . . . (F)reedom is dependent ultimately upon what is in the hearts of the people. Freedom is not safe if it is written only with ink in the Constitution. It must be written also in the fleshy tables of the heart."
J. Gresham Machen (1934)
"I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity which preaches the gospel on the street corners and at the ends of earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism."
J. Gresham Machen
"In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight."
J. Gresham Machen
"If we give the bureaucrats our children, we may as well give them everything else."
J. Gresham Machen
"I am
opposed to all imperial ambitions, wherever they may be cherished
and with whatever veneer of benevolent assimilation they may be
disguised."
J. Gresham Machen
"It is a
glorification of imperialism....A very immoral purpose
indeed!...Imperialism, to my mind, is satanic, whether it is German or
English. The author glorifies war and ridicules efforts at the
production of mutual respect and confidence among equal nations....[The
book] makes me feel anew the need for Christianity,...what a need for
the gospel!"
J. Gresham Machen, in
response to a popular book defending British
internationalism
"The
country seems to be rushing into the two things to which I am more
strongly opposed than anything else in the world -- a permanent
alliance with Britain,...and a permanent policy of compulsory military
service with all the brutal interference of the state in individual and
family life it entails."
J. Gresham Machen
"In urging
the defeat of measures involving a permanent policy of
compulsory military service, I am not writing in the interests of
"pacifism"....Compulsory military service does not merely bring a
danger of militarism; it is militarism."
J. Gresham
Machen, writing to the New Jersey Representatives in the U.S. Congress
four
days prior to the U.S. declaration of war in 1917.
"(T)he
Treaty of Versailles constituted an attack upon international and
interracial peace....[W]ar will follow upon war in a wearisome
progression."
J. Gresham Machen, reaction
to the treaty that ended WW1
"I find
there (in the Church) exactly the same evils that are rampant in the
world --
centralized education programs, the subservience of the church to the
state, contempt for the rights of minorities, standardization of
everything, suppression of intellectual adventure....I see more clearly
than ever before that unless the gospel is true and there is another
world, our souls are in prison. The gospel of Christ is a blessed
relief from that sinful state of affairs commonly known as hundred
per-cent Americanism."
J. Gresham Machen
"There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt."
"...(G)overnment
consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects
that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do [it] harm."
Niccolo Machiavelli
"As the observance of divine institutions is the cause of the greatness of republics, so the disregard of them produces their ruin; for where the fear of God is wanting, there the country will come to ruin, unless it be sustained the fear of the prince, which temporarily supply the want of religion."
Niccolo Machiavelli
"...(T)he great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance, as though they were realities and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are."
Niccolo Machiavelli
"It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles."
Niccolo Machiavelli
"Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised."
|
ought to be mistrusted." Get the bumper sticker from LibertyStickers! |
"Every
word of the
Constitution ultimately decides a question between power
and
liberty."
"War
is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement."
"The
advancement and diffusion of knowledge is
the only guardian of true liberty."
| "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." |
"A standing
military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe
companions to liberty. The means of defense
against foreign danger have
been always the instruments of tyranny at
home. Among the Romans it was
a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.
Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of
defending, have enslaved the people."
"The
strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast;
ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all
in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace."
| "The executive has
no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is
not cause for declaring war." |
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided
for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad."
"The management of
foreign relations appears to be the most
susceptible of abuse, of all the trusts committed to a Government,
because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts
& at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the
body of the people are less capable of judging and are more under the
influence of prejudices, on that branch of their affairs, than of any
other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home
is to be charged to provision against danger real or pretended from
abroad."
Letter to Thomas
Jefferson [May 13,
1798]
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by
the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense
would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of
proofs was not contemplated by its creators."
"The
constitution supposes, what the History
of all Governments
demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested
in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly
with studied care
vested the question of war in the Legislature."
in a letter
to Thomas Jefferson
"Of all the enemies
to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to
be dreaded, because it
comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of
armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and
taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the
domination of the few. No nation could preserve
its freedom in the
midst of continual warfare."
"In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man."
"What a perversion of the normal order of things! ... to make power the primary and central object of the social system, and Liberty but its satellite."
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death."
"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation."
"Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."
Speech in the Virginia
Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788
(My thanks to FReeper
susangirl for the Madison quote above)
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...."
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
The Federalist, No. 51.
"The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets. ... A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species. ... Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own."
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."
"The preservation of a free government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority and are Tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves."
"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
"Liberty and order will never be completely safe until a trespass on the Constitutional provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents an invasion of the dearest rights."
1792
"It
is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great
subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of
persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the
protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot be
separated."
Speech at the
Virginia Convention [December 2, 1829]
"A popular
Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it,
is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge
will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own
Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
letter to W.T. Barry 4 August 1822
"Our character must be more persuasive than our speech."
C.J. Mahaney
"Bush
gave an interview and he said people will vote
for him because 'They've seen me weep, they've seen me laugh, and
they've seen me hug.' These are the same qualifications for a Tickle Me
Elmo."
"CNN, to
mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11, is going to be re-playing
their original coverage of that day. Let's just hope that President
Bush doesn't tune in and go, 'Oh my God, they've done it again!'."
Bill Maher
"The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level."
"We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains
without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the
action of free beings under divine guidance."
Joseph de Maistre
"The Declaration of Independence is the all-time masterpiece of ideological simplification. There in a single sentence of self-evident truth, the Founding Fathers put into clear, easily understandable focus, the broad basis of man's relationship to God, to government, and to his fellow man."
Clarence Manion, 1956
"The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional."
"A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law."
John Marshall
"That the power to tax involves the power to destroy; that the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create; . . . are propositions not to be denied."
John Marshall
"Between
a
balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between
order and chaos."
John
Marshall
Peter Marshall, (1902-1949)
"We are too Christian really to enjoy sinning, and too fond of sinning really to enjoy
Christianity. Most of us know perfectly well what we ought to do; our trouble is that we
do not want to do it."
Peter Marshall
Rod D. Martin, TOWARD
A CHRISTIAN CULTURE, July 2002
"I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks."
"I've had a lovely evening. Unfortunately this wasn't it."
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
"I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library and read a good book."
Groucho Marx
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
Groucho Marx
"Now there sits a man with an open mind. You can feel the draft from here."
Groucho Marx
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."
Groucho Marx
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx
"Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo."
Groucho Marx
"But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point.
In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade."
Karl Marx, (1818-1883) Father of Communism, Author of the 'Communist Manifesto'
"The masses have little time to think. And how incredible is the willingness of modern
man to believe."
Karl Marx
"We know that violent measures against religion are nonsense; but this is an opinion: as socialism grows, religion will disappear. Its disappearance must be done by social development, in which education must play a part."
Chicago Tribune Interview with Karl Marx
"The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain."
Karl Marx
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
Karl Marx
"Democracy
is the road to socialism."
Karl Marx
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."
Abraham Maslow, (1908-1970) American Psychologist
"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be
ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be."
Abraham Maslow
"We came
equals into
this world, and equals shall we go out of it. All men are by nature
born equally free and independent. To protect the weaker from the
injuries and insults of the stronger were societies first formed; ...
Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact
therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and
safety of the community. Every power, every authority vested in
particular men is, or ought to be, ultimately directed to this sole
end; and whenever any power or authority whatever extends further, or
is of longer duration than is in its nature necessary for these
purposes, it may be called government, but it is in fact oppression."
George Mason,
Anti-Federalist Founding Father
"When we consider the
nature of these (Federal) courts, we must conclude that their effect
and
operation will be utterly to destroy the State governments; for they
will
be the judges how far their laws will operate .... The principle itself
goes to the destruction of the legislation of the States, whether or
not
it was intended .... I think it will destroy the State governments ....
Ther are many gentlemen in the United States who think it right that we
should have one great, national, consolidated government, and that it
was
better to bring it about slowly and imperceptibly rather than all at
once
.... To those who think that one national consolidated government is
best
for America, this extensive judicial authority will be agreeable."
George Mason
"As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities."
George Mason, Debates in the Federal Convention, Wednesday, August 22, 1787, Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol. 5, p. 458
"To disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave them."
George Mason
"When
the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an
end of liberty."
George
Mason
"(Christy) Mathewson
pitched against Cincinnati
yesterday. Another way of putting it is that Cincinnati lost a game of
baseball. The first statement means the same as the second."
"If a nation or an individual values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too."
W. Somerset Maugham
"You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences."
W. Somerset Maugham
"When I was young I pretended to know everything. One of the most useful discoveries I
ever made was how easy it is to say: 'I don't know.'"
W. Somerset Maugham
"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . .and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated . . . by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. . .
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing... Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
You don't want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. . . .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father. . . could never have imagined."
"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."
Eugene McCarthy, (1916-2005)
"The function of liberal Republicans is to shoot the wounded after battle."
Eugene McCarthy
"America's
contribution to world civilization must be more than a continuous
performance demonstration that we can police the planet."
Eugene McCarthy
"It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember."
Eugene McCarthy
"God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place."
J. D. McCoughey
"The longer the title, the less important the job."
George McGovern
"You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of
saying you have a real bad sense of timing."
George McGovern
"Every society honours its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."
Mignon McLaughlin
"In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals
everything, and two minus one equals nothing. "
Mignon McLaughlin
"What passes as standard American history is really Yankee history written by New Englanders or their puppets to glorify Yankee heroes and ideals."
Dr. Grady McWhiney, Professor of History, Texas Christian University
"Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within.
Rust destroys iron, moths destroy clothes, the worm eats away the wood; but greatest of
all evils is envy, impious habitant of corrupt souls, which ever was, is, and shall be a
consuming disease."
Menander of Athens, (342-292 BC)
"Man must be prepared for every event of life, for there is nothing that is durable."
Menander of Athens
"A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency over the body. ... All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects are evil." John Stuart Mill, 'On Liberty', (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist |
"Ask yourself if you are happy, and you cease to be."
"Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves,
than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."
On Liberty, 1859
"There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal
experience has brought it home."
"A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands -- even for beneficial purposes -- will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished."
"The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism."
"It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and
that we know not how much of what is admirable has been super-added by the tradition of
his followers. Who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing
the sayings of Jesus or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels?
Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and
idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers,
in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as
they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source."
Three Essays on Religion
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either
physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant."
"For a long time I've given anyone who gives me the "religion causes so many wars and
suffering" line a three word answer: Hitler, Stalin, Mao."
James Miller
"Faith faces everything that makes the world uncomfortable -- pain, fear, loneliness,
shame, death -- and acts with a compassion by which these things are transformed, even
exalted."
Samuel H. Miller
"I have too much compassion to be a conservative and too much sense to be a liberal."
Stephen Millich (1941 - )
"It is a noble purpose of government to provide jobs for those of us who are otherwise
unemployable."
Stephen Millich
"Things aren't like they used to be; but then again, they never were."
Stephen Millich
"You can change your Levis but not your genes."
Stephen Millich
"Democracy is the most equitable form of government because, in it, greed and corruption
are most widely spread."
Stephen Millich
"The only constant in life is change."
Stephen Millich
"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting
discoveries."
A. A. Milne
John Milton,
(1608-1674) Poet
"It is not miserable to be blind; it is
miserable to be incapable of enduring blindness."
John Milton
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants."
John Milton, Source: The
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
"The mind is its own place,
and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven."
John Milton
"Well knows
he who
uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as
well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is
compar'd in Scripture to a
streaming fountain; if her water flow not in a perpetual progression,
they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition."
"A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit,
embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.... For
books
are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in
them; they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction
of
that living intellect that bred them."
John Milton, Source: Areopagitica, 1644
| "War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest" |
Ludwig
von
Mises,
(1881-1973) Economist and social philosopher
"This,
then, is freedom in the external life of man
-- that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows."
Source: his
book, Socialism, par. II.9.26
"Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism." |
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"Society
has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is
peacemaking."
"True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late."
"The
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."
"Modern war is not a war of royal armies. It is a war of the peoples, a total war. It is
a war of states which do not leave to their subjects any private sphere; they consider
the whole population a part of the armed forces. Whoever does not fight must work for the
support and equipment of the army. Army and people are one and the same. The citizens
passionately participate in the war. For it is their state, their God, who fights."
Omnipotent Government [1944]
"Whoever on ethical grounds wants to maintain war permanently for its own sake as a
feature of relations among peoples must clearly realize that this can happen only at the
cost of the general welfare, since the economic development of the world would have to be
turned back at least to the state of the year 1830 to realize this martial ideal even only
to some extent."
Nation, State, and Economy [1919]
"History
has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war,
cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents....... A
lasting order cannot be established by bayonets."
Omnipotent
Government [1944]
"Government
cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer."
"Only one thing can conquer war - that liberal attitude of
mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation, and
which can never wish to bring about a war, because it regards war as
injurious even to the victors."
Theory of Money and Credit [1912]
"The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous
are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The
more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom,
the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration. The
individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own
efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent,
application, and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to
other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political
institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the
boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse. In the opinion of
the public, more inflation and more credit expansion are the only
remedy against the evils which inflation and credit expansion have
brought about."
Human Action [1949]
"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."
"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."
"Government is the only agency which can take a useful commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless."
"It is an established
fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of
life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a
utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from
demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these
vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that
such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of
suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might
not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less
mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism."
"History teaches us that traditions, values and freedom itself are lost incrementally in a thousand careless little steps."
William J. Moloney
"Silence is not only golden, it is seldom misquoted."
Bob Monkhouse
"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin."
President James Monroe,
First Inaugural Address, 1817
"Of the liberty of conscience in matters of
religious faith, of speech and of the press;
of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of
the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear
arms... If these rights are well defined, and secured against
encroachment, it is impossible that government
should ever degenerate into tyranny."
Michel de Montaigne, (1533-1592)
"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known."
Michel de Montaigne
"I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little
more as I grow older."
Michel de Montaigne
"Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom."
Michel de Montaigne
"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it."
Michel de Montaigne
"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to
reason incorrectly."
Michel De Montaigne
John Bassett Moore,
authority on international law who
(among other credentials) occupied the first professorship of
international law at Columbia University
"A kleptomaniac is a person who helps himself because he can't help himself."
Henry Morgan, (1915-1994)
"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere
wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy."
John Pierpont Morgan, (1837-1913)
"America is still a government of the naive, by the naive, and for the naive. He who does
not know, nor relish it, has no inkling of the nature of this country."
Christopher Morley, (1890 - 1957)
"There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way."
Christopher Morley
John Morley, (1838-1923) Source: Critical Miscellanies
"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the
success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and
save it from itself."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to."
"Education, the great mumbo-jumbo and fraud of the age, purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility. For the most part it only serves to enlarge stupidity, inflate conceit, enhance credulity and put those subjected to it at the mercy of brain-washers with printing presses, radio and TV at their disposal."
Malcolm Muggeridge, 1966
"The dogmatism of science has become a new orthodoxy, disseminated by the Media and a State educational system with a thoroughness and subtlety far exceeding anything of the kind achieved by the Inquisition; to the point that to believe today in a miraculous happening like the Virgin Birth is to appear a kind of imbecile...."
Malcolm Muggeridge
"I suppose that every age has its own particular fantasy: ours is science. A seventeenth-century man like Blaise Pascal, who thought himself a mathematician and scientist of genius, found it quite ridiculous that anyone should suppose that rational processes could lead to any ultimate conclusions about life, but easily accepted the authority of the Scriptures. With us, it is the other way `round...."
Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus
Rediscovered [1969]
"Good taste
and humour are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste
#####."
"As God's image-bearer and representative on earth, redeemed man has the power to
determine the history of this earth through his prayers. Man was created and then redeemed
to pray, and by his prayer to have dominion."
Andrew Murray
"We are as helpless to cooperate in our regeneration as we are to co-operate in the work of Calvary."
Iain Murray
"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."
Edward R. Murrow
Benito Mussolini,
(1883-1945) The
Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism (1932)
"Fascism should more
appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."
Benito Mussolini
"Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all
individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their
relation to the State."
Benito Mussolini,
(1883-1945), Source: New York Times, 11 January 1935
"Fascism, the more it
considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite
apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in
the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates
the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and
an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to
its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility
upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are
substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they
have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death... "
Benito Mussolini, Source:
Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism, 1932