Charles > Charles's Quotes

“Mr. Powell raised an eyebrow. “I’m a librarian,” he said. “I always know what I’m talking about.”
― Gary D. Schmidt, Okay for Now

“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.”
― Martin Luther

“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”
― Charles Colson

“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”
― Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty

“The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to publish anything about Congress or the president that would bring them into “contempt or disrepute.” In other words, the Sedition Act made it a federal crime to publish anything about Congress or the president. Fortunately”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Don't Vote, it Just Encourages the Bastards

“Capitalism, so called, is when free people accumulate capital of their own free will for use on freely determined projects. The fact of the matter is that most of these projects flop. Donald Trump, for example. Every property he touches seems to go to hell. “Fat Cat” would be the wrong epithet for Trump. If someone other than paroled former Enron accountants were keeping his books, he’d probably be shown to have a net worth less than that of your twenty-pound tabby who just shredded the drapes. What”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Don't Vote, it Just Encourages the Bastards

“Zero-sum thinking is a name for envy. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, gives an apt description of the “House of Envy” (as a poet in that most zero-sum of political systems, the Roman empire, might): “Envy within, busy at the meal of snake’s flesh... her tongue dripped venom. Only the sight of suffering could bring a smile to her lips. She never knew the comfort of sleep, but... looked with dismay on men’s good fortune... She could hardly refrain from weeping when she saw no cause for tears.” I didn’t know Hillary Clinton’s involvement in politics dated back to the reign of Augustus. Then”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Don't Vote, it Just Encourages the Bastards

“But for all of that life-shaping power, race is a mirage, which doesn’t lessen its force. We are what we see ourselves as, whether what we see exists or not. We are what people see us as, whether what they see exists or not. What people see in themselves and others has meaning and manifests itself in ideas and actions and policies, even if what they are seeing is an illusion. Race is a mirage but one that we do well to see, while never forgetting it is a mirage, never forgetting that it’s the powerful light of racist power that makes the mirage.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways. Imagining away the existence of races in a racist world is as conserving and harmful as imagining away classes in a capitalistic world—it allows the ruling races and classes to keep on ruling. Assimilationists believe in the post-racial myth that talking about race constitutes racism, or that if we stop identifying by race, then racism will miraculously go away. They fail to realize that if we stop using racial categories, then we will not be able to identify racial inequity. If we cannot identify racial inequity, then we will not be able to identify racist policies. If we cannot identify racist policies, then we cannot challenge racist policies. If we cannot challenge racist policies, then racist power’s final solution will be achieved: a world of inequity none of us can see, let alone resist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“White supremacists love what America used to be, even though America used to be—and still is—teeming with millions of struggling White people. White supremacists blame non-White people for the struggles of White people when any objective analysis of their plight primarily implicates the rich White Trumps they support. White supremacist is code for anti-White, and White supremacy is nothing short of an ongoing program of genocide against the White race. In fact, it’s more than that: White supremacist is code for anti-human, a nuclear ideology that poses an existential threat to human existence.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Unfortunately, all of these things that government provides have a cost and need to be paid for. Typically, they are funded through taxation. Certain libertarians proclaim, “All taxes are theft.” Perhaps, but the claims would have more force if libertarians would refuse to call the police when their homes have been robbed, or the fire department when their homes are burning. One could say that this holds the libertarian to too high a standard, since we must all live in the world as it is and obey its rules. But since we do live in the world, we must pay for the services we consume; this is not theft, it is simply being an adult.”
― John Médaille, Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More

“Human beings are not self-sufficient as individuals. We are born naked against the elements and helpless in ourselves; we are dependent upon others from the beginning, and apart from them we would not last our first day on earth. This dependency continues throughout our lives, since none of us can or should acquire all the skills necessary to grow our own food, make our own shoes, provide our own education, etc. We are by nature social beings and thrive only in community. Therefore, the purpose of government is to provide the conditions under which all the other communities that make up the social fabric can flourish. First and foremost among these other communities is the community of the family, the one that first calls us into being through an act of love and gives us the gifts that will form us—not only the material gifts of food, clothing, and shelter, but also the gifts of language, of culture, of our first experience of love and belonging, and, most importantly, the gift of a name, a name that ties us to family but is uniquely ours, the name that lets us know that we are both part of something and unique beings.”
― John Médaille, Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More