Manliest Man

...some sort of dishrag proposition, a wishy-washy, sissified sort of galoot, that lets everybody make a doormat out of him. Let me tell you, the manliest man is the man who will acknowledge Jesus Christ.

Billy Sunday (Evangelist)

War is...

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Trust

...a government that doesn't trust its citizens is a government that can't be trusted

Levi Mulkey (12/27/2010, He attributes the quote to someone somewhere that he once read)

Prohibitions & Statutes

The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people become ...
The greater the number of statutes, the greater the number of thieves and brigands.

Lao-tzu

Christmas

Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it.  Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it.

Richard Lamm, former governor of Colorado

Wise Alternatives

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

~Abba Eban (Israeli diplomat, 1915-2002)

Christ

There is something which makes Christianity more than a religion, more than an ethic, and more than the idle dream of the sentimental idealist. It is this something that makes it relevant to each one of us right now as a contemporary experience. It is the fact that Christ Himself is the very life content of the Christian faith. It is He who makes it “tick.”

Major W. Ian Thomas (The Saving Life of Christ, 1961)

Adrift

The end of an Empire is messy at best
And this Empire is ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We're adrift in the land of the brave
And the home of the free

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Randy Newman (A Few Words in Defense of Our Country, Harps and Angels, 2008)

Jefferson and Gun Control [edited]

The laws ... which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. ... It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.

Cesare Beccaria (1764, Essay on Crimes and Punishments)

A similar quote is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but he merely included the above passage in his "Legal Commonplace" Book.  That quote that is often attributed to him is below.  Thanks to "Josh" in the comments section for bring this to my attention.

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

Liberty

Liberty: not the daughter but the mother of order,

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (~1881 from the Liberty periodical)

Monopolists

... if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy.  And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable.

 F.A. Hayek (Road to Serfdom, 1944)

Liberty is

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. 

H.L. Mencken (Chicago Tribune, January 30th, 1927)

New Failed Deal

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot!

Henry Morgenthau (FDR's Treasury Secretary, Unsourced, ~1940s)

Democracy is...

democracy is the illusion that my wife and I, combined, have twice the political influence of David Rockefeller.

Butler Shaffer (2009)

Timing

A man on his way to Texas asked an Arkansas store owner if he thought he would need a gun. "Well," the store owner said, "maybe you will and maybe you won't, but if you do, you'll need it in a hurry."

Story from the 1800s

Spirit

When the government is too intrusive, people lose their spirit,

Lao-tzu

Economist is...

An economist is someone who describes the way the world works. 

Doug Casey (12/10/2010)

Wounded and Staggering

The money-wasting is staggering. [U.S.] Aid payments are never followed, never audited, never evaluated. The impression is of the world's superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden. Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the United Nations, are all perpetually off script. Washington reacts like a wounded bear, its instincts imperial but its power projection unproductive.

Simon Jenkins (November 28th, 2010, Guardian.co.uk)

Individualism

it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead different lives, ... whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men

John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1859)

Peace and Joy

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Paul the Apostle (Romans 15:13, NIV, ~56AD)

Short Socialization of Risk

To be long gold is, in a grand thematic way, to be short the socialization of risk

James Grant (Mr Market Miscalculates, 2008)

Money grows on Trees

Don't ask me where we're going to find the money.  I'm going to get it where Paulson found it.

Charles Rangel, House Ways and Means Committee (~2008)

Time

A generation goes and a generation comes, But the earth remains forever.

Ecclesiastes 1:4

Wealth is

Wealth is the product of the progressive mastery of matter by mind,

Richard Buckminster Fuller (1968, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth)

Steve McQueen

We got rockstars in the Whitehouse
All our popstars look like porn
All my heroes hit the highway
Cause They don't hang out here no more

Sheryl Crow (Steve McQueen, 2002)

Honest Money

In contrast to political money, gold is honest money that survived the ages and will live on long after the political fiats of today have gone the way of paper.

Hans F. Sennholz (Unsourced Quote, 1922 - 2007)

The True Gentleman

The True Gentleman

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds
from good will and an acute sense of propriety
and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies;
who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty,
the obscure man of his obscurity,
or any man of his inferiority or deformity;
who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another;
who does not flatter wealth,
cringe before power,
or boast of his own possessions or achievements;
who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy;
whose deed follows his word;
who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own;
and who appears well in any company;
a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

John Walter Wayland (1899 , The True Gentleman)

Jefferson and Bacon

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.

Thomas Jefferson (February 7, 1788, Letter to Alexander Donald)

America is...

America is a nation of openness, boldness and risk-taking. Close this nation, cow it, constrict it and you unravel its magic.

Roger Cohen (11/26/2010, New York Times, "The Real Threat to America")

Slaves and Food

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us: "Make us your slaves, but feed us"

Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor (1879-80, The Brothers Karamazov)

Methods and Principles

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (source unknown)