John Arnold > John's Quotes

“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”
― Winston Churchill

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
― S.G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
― Robert E. Howard

“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

“While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice our local destination. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world.”
― John Adams, Thoughts on government applicable to the present state of the American colonies.: Philadelphia, Printed by John Dunlap, M,DCC,LXXXVI.

“I'm a Christian first, and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it. You know who else was kind of "divisive" in terms of challenging the status quo and the powers-that-be of his day? Jesus Christ.”
― Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

“Guns are our friends because in a country without guns, I'm what's known as "prey." All females are.”
― Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

“The Democratic Party supports criminals and Islamic terrorists but has no sympathy for taxpayers.”
― Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

“We've finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don't want to fight it. They would, except it would put them on the same side as the United States.”
― Ann Coulter

“Government should do a few things, and do them right”
― George W. Bush

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.”
― Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle

“May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately... These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

[Letter to Roger C. Weightman on the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, 24 June 1826. This was Jefferson's last letter]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
― George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
― Jon Stewart

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon

“We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.”
― Carl Bernstein

“Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World