Other Great Quotes

How is . . . legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law--which may be an isolated case--is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
- Frederic Bastiat, The Law
Legal Plunder
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“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
-Albert Einstein
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READILY and, I trust, feelingly acknowledge the duty incumbent on us all . . . to provide for those who, in the mysterious order of Providence, are subject to want and to disease of body or mind; but I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States . . . .
- President Franklin Pierce
From a veto message in 1854
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"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time."
- George Sutherland, 1862-1942 US Supreme Court
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" Thou shalt not covet" means that it is sinful even to contemplate the seizure of another man's goods -- which is something which Socialists, whether Christian or otherwise, have never managed to explain away."
- John Chamberlain, The Roots of Capitalism [1965]
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"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a brave and scarce man, hated and scorned. When the cause succeeds, however, the timid join him...for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
-Mark Twain
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" A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of
government. It can only exist until the voters discover
that they can vote themselves largess from the public
treasury. From that time on the majority always votes
for the candidates promising the most benefits from the
public treasury, with the results that a democracy
always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed
by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's great civilizations
has been 200 years. These nations have
progressed through this sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith
from spiritual faith to great courage
from courage to liberty
from liberty to abundance
from abundance to selfishness
from selfishness to complacency
from complacency to apathy
from apathy to dependency
from dependency back to bondage."
-- Alexander Fraser Tytler (1742-1813)

(Where are we today? Dependency?)
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" Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy."
-- Winston Churchill, 1948
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The devil knows that if the elders of Israel should ever wake up, they could step forth and help preserve freedom and extend the gospel. Therefore the devil has concentrated, and to a large extent successfully, in neutralizing much of the priesthood. He has reduced them to sleeping giants.
...
And now as the last neutralizer that the devil uses most effectively - it is simply this: "Don't do anything in the fight for freedom until the Church sets up its own specific program to save the Constitution." This brings us right back to the scripture I opened with today - to those slothful servants who will not do anything until they are "compelled in all things." Maybe the Lord will never set up a specific Church program for the purpose of saving the Constitution. Perhaps if he set up one at this time it might split the Church asunder, and perhaps he does not want that to happen yet, for not all the wheat and tares are fully ripe.

The Prophet Joseph Smith declared it will be the elders of Israel who will step forward to help save the Constitution, not the Church. And have we elders been warned? Yes, we have. And besides, if the Church should ever inaugurate a program, who do you think would be in the forefront to get it moving? It would not be those who were sitting on the sidelines prior to that time or those who were appeasing the enemy. It would be those choice spirits who, not waiting to be "commanded in all things," used their own free will, the counsel of the prophets, and the Spirit of the Lord as guidelines and who entered the battle "in a good cause" and brought to pass much righteousness in freedom's cause.

Years ago Elder Joseph F. Merrill of the Council of the Twelve encouraged the members of the Church to join right-to-work leagues and President Heber J. Grant concurred. For our day President David O. McKay has called communism the greatest threat to the Church, and it is certainly the greatest mortal threat this country has ever faced. What are you doing to fight it?

Brethren, if we had done our homework and were faithful, we could step forward at this time and help save this country. The fact that most of us are unprepared to do it is an indictment we will have to bear. The longer we wait, the heavier the chains, the deeper the blood, the more the persecution, and the less we can carry out our God-given mandate and world-wide mission. The war in heaven is raging on earth today. Are you being neutralized in the battle?

Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. . . . (D&C 58:27-28)

- Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, April 1965
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The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
- Alexis de Tocqueville
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It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights – the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery – hay and a barn for human cattle.
- Alexis De Tocquiville
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You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot help the wage-earner by tearing down the wage-payer.
You cannot further the brotherhood of mankind by encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative.
You cannot help man permanently by doing for them what they could do and should do for themselves.
-Although often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, he did not say this. The exact origin of this quote is unknown.
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The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.
- Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party Candidate 1940, 1944, 1948
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The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.
- Joseph Sobran
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Property is the fruit of labor. Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently to build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence.
- Abraham Lincoln
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The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk."
- Harry Browne
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The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.
- The Atlanta Journal
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What's *just* has been debated for centuries but let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn *belongs* to you – and why?
- Walter Williams
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In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
-Alan Greenspan
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Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-Ronald Reagan
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We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him. . . . But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure.
-Ronald Reagan
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Men receive blessings by obedience to God's laws, and without obedience there is no blessing. Before the final triumphal return of the Lord, the question as to whether we may save our constitutional republic is simply based on two factors: the number of patriots and the extent of their obedience.

That the Lord desires to save this nation that he raised up, there is no doubt. But that he leaves it up to us, with his help, is the awful reality.

There is a time and season for all righteous things, and many of life's failures arise when men neither take the time nor find the season to perform their eternal duties.

- Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, April 1967
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Man is not free unless government is limited... As government expands, liberty contracts.
-Ronald Reagan
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"Next to being one in worshipping God there is nothing in this world upon which this Church should be more united than in upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States."
-David O. McKay, President of the LDS Church
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"Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, they don't hurt anybody. When they do something they can be dangerous."
-Will Rogers
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"In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."
-From President Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation
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You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." 
-Charles A. Beard (American Historian)
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I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice (and) that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
- Barry Goldwater
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