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.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws. And asks no omen but his country’s cause.
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Homer (“Smyrns of Chios”)
The Iliad (bk. XII, l. 283), (Pope’s translation)
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We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line-the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
[…]
We believe in democracy; we believe in freedom; we believe in peace. We offer to every Nation of the world the handclasp of the good neighbor. Let those who wish our friendship look us in the eye and take our hand.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt (8-14-1936 - five years later he declared war)
Full Speech
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I read somewhere… how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong… but to feel strong.
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Christopher McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp)
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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.
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Henry D. Thoreau (Walden, 1854)
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For I have learned the truth: there are greater pursuits than self-seeking. Glory is not a conceit. It is not a decoration for valor. It is not a prize for being the most clever, the strongest, or the boldest. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no humiliation can destroy it.
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John McCain (Faith of My Fathers)
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