Safe for Democracy

After each war there is a little less democracy left to save. 

Brooks Atkinson
 - Quote from 'The Anti-War Quote Book,' edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)

Focusing on the wrong thing

The United Nations reports that over ten thousand people starve to death each day, and most of you don't give a shit.  However, what is even more tragic is that most of you are more concerned about the fact that I just said a bad word than you are about the fact that ten thousand people are going to die today.

Tony Campolo (Often start a speech this way)

Confidence in Character

Confidence that God is who He says he is and will do what He has promised

Unknown, Common Saying

What does it Profit?

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the masses?
What does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit the men who are maimed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler (1935, War is a Racket)
"Old Gimlet Eye" was the most decorated Marine at the time of his death in 1940

Linearity

I have this distressing habit which I have to disclose to you.  I have a very linear mind.  I believe that this is true, and this is true and this is true and this is true and this is true and this has to happen.  What I do is I confuse two words in English - one is inevitable, and the other is imminent.

Rick Rule - May 2011
Source:  PDAC 2011: The True Contrarian Investor - Link

Rights and Rulers

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?

Blaise Pascal
Source: Pensèes, Section V - Link

Heaven and Hell

The project of bringing heaven down to earth always results in bringing hell up from below.

Lesslie Newbigin (1986
Source:  Foolishness to the Greeks: the Gospel and Western culture pg117 - Link

Proper Defense

Think it over, my dear fellow Americans.  Can't we be satisfied with defending our own homes, our own women, our own children?  Right here in America?  There are only two reasons why you should ever be asked to give your youngsters.  One is defense of our homes.  The other is he defense of our Bill of Rights and particularly the right to worship God as we see fit.  Every other reason advanced for the murder of young men is a racket, pure and simple.

Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler (1939, Essay from Common Sense Neutrality)

Closing Statement from Essay

The Economist's Job

An Economist is somebody who doesn't just see the immediate and direct effects of an action.  A six year old can usually tell you the immediate and direct effect of actions.  That's not hard.  An Economist tells you the indirect and delayed effects.

Doug Casey (March 7th-9th)
Source:  Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) 2011 - Link
Introduction by Doug Casey:  War Stories from a Successful Speculator

After Victory

After victory, you have more enemies. 

Cicero (Unsourced)
Taken From:   AntiWar.com - Link

Sense of Sin

It is the saints who have a sense of sin, the sense of sin is the measure of a soul's awareness of God.

Father Danièlou (1950-70, Unsourced)

Faults

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognise them

Blaise Pascal (~1660s, Pensées)

A "Glorious Adventure"

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die.  This was the "war to end wars."  This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy."  No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason.  No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits.  No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here.  No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents.  They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler , 1935
Source:  War is a Racket - Link

Desire for Peace

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it. 

Dwight D. Eisenhower (August 31st, 1959. TV talk with Prime Minister Macmillan)
Source:  WikiQuote - Link
Taken from:  AntiWar.com - Link

God's Help

It is the diligent hand that gathers in, because its works are blessed. . . . And now, not any further, and more particularly to add, how it is most God's glory, and man's good, that we should help ourselves, that God may help us.

Samuel Moodey in 1715, "The Debtors Monitor."
Source:  http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3370987
Taken From:  http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north956.html 

Destroyers and Benefactors

As long as mankind shall bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst for military glory will remain the vice of the most exalted characters. 

Edward Gibbon (Unsourced)

Edward Gibbon is most famous for his work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 
Taken From:  http://www.antiwar.com/quotes.php

To Love God

To love God I take to be man’s mission and God’s desire. We are in this together. To love God is to love his creation, which includes other people. To love one’s neighbor implies, at a minimum, tolerance of his freedom and the ways of life that he creates. Be slow in judging him. Be slower still in using force to hinder and dominate him. If, in your eyes, his ways are strange or evil, tolerate them. I am not speaking of the crimes such as murder, theft, arson, and rape of which we all know, but of the myriad of other behaviors on which human beings are prone to disagree.

Mike S. Rozeff (03/11/2011)

Source: Leapfrog the West - Link

Broken Promises, Fiat Money

We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no, Sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors, and a ruined people.

Daniel Webster, Speech in the US Senate, 1833
Source:  The Works of Daniel Webster, Speeches in Congress - Link
Taken from:  321 Gold: The Barbaric Relic - Link

Technology and Theft

The higher the technological level of a society, the less sense theft makes. The whole story of civilization is one of the replacement of theft by production as a means to live. ... In a hi-tech world, theft is actually counterproductive, much like stealing the answers to a test really gains one nothing.

Doug Casey (07/2007, Waiting for WWIII)
Source: Conversations with Casey, 03/09/11 - Link

Economical Numbers

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

Richard Feynman (Unsourced)

The Military Spirit

The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these states ... Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America.

Gazette of the United States, October 14, 1789

What we don't

The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so.

Josh Billings (19th Century Humorist)

On the Drug War

Fighting a multi-decade war against plants is just a dumb idea, ranking up there with other such gems as spending our way out of recession, borrowing our way out of debt, and invading other countries to reduce hatred against America.

Simon Black (3/8/2011)
  Source:  "Mexico’s biggest problem is the US government" - Link)
  Simon Black is a pseudonym for an unknown entrepreneur and international investor.

On Blind Adherence to Authority

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Albert Einstein (unsourced)

On Infinity

the whole is no greater than some of its parts.

Edward Kasner and James Newman
  Mathematics and Imagination (2001, Beyond the Googol) - Link
  Taken From:  The Western Tradition Blog - Link

Character

No costly mansion, no mass of gold, no pride of race, no grandeur of office, no charm or force of eloquence can bestow upon life so clear skied a serenity as a soul purged of evil deeds and thoughts which keeps as a fountain of life a character imperturbable and untainted.

Plutarch

Take from:  http://westerntradition.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/how-to-stare-death-in-the-face-with-style/

Free and Ignorance

We...are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant. 

Charley Reese (Unsourced)

Policing the World

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

Benjamin Harrison (23rd President of USA, from an 1888 address to Congress)

Preventive War

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953, seems to be an accurate paraphrase)

Barbarity and Collectivism

The worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

Ellen Key (Unsourced)

Smart or Imbecilic?

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.

Innocente (1969, The Peter Principle, p. 69, by Laurence F. Peter and Raymond Hull)
Peter attributes the quote to a student of his, though often it is mis-attributed to Mark Twain.