Vicky > Vicky's Quotes

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”
― John Steinbeck

“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: Writings

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
― Ronald Reagan

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
― Gerald R. Ford

“If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.”
― Stephen Colbert

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
― John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867

“We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”
― Ronald Reagan

“The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.”
― Aristotle

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
― Plutarch

“I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.”
― Tom Stoppard, Jumpers

“Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.”
― Ronald Reagan

“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Remember that every government service, every offer of government - financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom... In the days to come, whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forgo in return for such service.”
― Ronald Reagan

“Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”
― Harry S. Truman

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.
From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be
managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of
the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the
capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the
burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher
price.”
― Ronald Reagan

“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order --or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.”
― Ronald Reagan

“The job facing American voters… in the days and years to come is to determine which hearts, minds and souls command those qualities best suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal the wounds of a nation as opposed to aggravate its injuries, and to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one of reactions based on unknowing fear.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home”
― James Madison

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love