Dave > Dave's Quotes

“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“To fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else.
(writing of public education in the April 1924 The American Mercury)”
― H.L. Mencken

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

“In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.”
― Edward Abbey

“Any fool can make a rule
And any fool will mind it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Journal #14

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

“I urge you to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have no choice but to submit to being schooled by strangers.”
― John Taylor Gatto

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
― P.J. O'Rourke

“Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system”
― P.J. O'Rourke

“If men are good, you don’t need government; if men are evil or ambivalent, you don’t dare have one. ”
― Robert LeFevre

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain

“War is the health of the state.”
― Randolph Bourne

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin

“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”
― George Carlin

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”
― James Madison

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
― Hermann Goering, Germany Reborn

“If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker.”
― Albert Einstein

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. ”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry could be one or the other, but it cannot--despite the pretensions and protestations of psichiatrists--be both.”
― Thomas Szasz

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
― Howard Zinn

“Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”
― Howard Zinn

“Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

“Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.”
― Eugene Victor Debs

“...occasionally I like carrying raw steel to remind myself of an important lesson.
The blade's an extension of the hand, the agent--no pun intended--of my will. Most people understand this immediately of edged weapons...
The trick--and few are subtle or sophisticated enough to master it--is to see that this is equally true... by implication, of all machines.”
― L. Neil Smith, The Nagasaki Vector