The Next War

The next war ... may well bury Western civilization forever.

Source:  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Unsourced
Taken From: Antiwar.com Anti-War Quotes

Economic History

It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well founded, the more they hate him.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 2, The Procedure of Economics, 1949

Entitlement

Where we once thought ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as individually entitled.  

Source: Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997, pg 1

The 1960s

I can just see, having done arbitration in the industrial scene, that the employers will love this generation, that they are not going to press very many grievances, there won't be much trouble, they are going to do their jobs, they are going to be easy to handle. There aren't going to be riots. There aren't going to be revolutions. There aren't going to be many strikes.

Source: Clark Kerr, Spotlight on the college student, 1959
Taken From: Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997 pg169

Religion, Progress and Time Preference

In the ages of faith, the final end of life is placed beyond life.  The men of those ages, therefore, naturally and almost involuntarily accustom themselves to fix their gaze for many years on some immovable object toward which they are constantly tending; and they learn by insensible degrees to repress a multitude of petty passing desires in order to be the better able to content that great and lasting desire which possesses them ..... This explains why religious nations have often achieved such lasting results; for whilst they were thinking only of the other world, they had found out the great secret of success in this.

Source:  Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, V2 Ch2 Section XVII, 1840
Taken From: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Moral Blindness

The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference of age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.

Source:  Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776, p. 128
Taken From: Casey Research, Conversations with Casey, 12/22/2010, My Favorite Quotes

On Civil Disobedience

Historically, the most terrible things—war, genocide, and slavery—have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

Source:  Howard Zinn, 1990, Declarations Of Independence Cross-Examining American Ideology, pg 104
Taken From: AntiWar.com Quotes

Definition: Classical Liberalism

Classical liberalism — which we shall call here simply liberalism — is based on the conception of civil society as, by and large, self-regulating when its members are free to act within very wide bounds of their individual rights. Among these the right to private property, including freedom of contract and free disposition of one's own labor, is given a very high priority. Historically, liberalism has manifested a hostility to state action, which, it insists, should be reduced to a minimum

Source:  Ralph Raico, Austrian Economics and Classical Liberalism at Mises.org, 03/04/2010
Taken From:  Source

Winter's Waterfall

Wherever we’re headed, America is evolving in ways most of us don’t like or understand. Individually focused yet collectively adrift, we wonder if we’re heading toward a waterfall. Are we?

Source:   Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning (1997)
Taken from:  21st Century Breakdown by James Quinn

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

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/

Laws and Corruption

... laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.

Publius Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117)

Men have forgotten

Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1985)
 Edward E. Ericson, Jr., "Solzhenitsyn – Voice from the Gulag," Eternity, October 1985, pp. 23, 24.

Violence and Lying

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970, Nobel Prize Harvard address)

About the quote: This quote is often mis-attributed to Mikhail Gorbachev, who merely quoted the remark from Solzhenitsyn's Nobel prize Harvard address.

American Defeat

... since 1789, the only government on earth that has had the power to crush the American people’s liberties across the board has been the government of the United States. 

Robert Higgs (2006, America Won the World Wars, but Americans Lost)

Taking the Bait

 As long as Republicans say they are pro-life, support endless wars in Muslim countries, and compare themselves to the evil Democrats instead of some worthwhile standard, the majority of conservative Christians take the bait, only to be disappointed yet again when the election is over.

 Laurence Vance (2010)

Chestnuts

Let the British get their own chestnuts out of the fire

~1940 (American Isolationist or Non-Interventionist Phrase, according to Gore Vidal)

Waterloo and Richmand

I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.
... and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

Lord John Acton (1866, In a Letter to Robert E Lee)

Indistinguishable from Evil

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy

Christopher Dawson (1942, The Judgment of the Nations)

Private Armies

the rich burghers and merchants of medieval Italy were too busy making money and enjoying life to undertake the hardships and dangers of soldiering themselves. So they adopted the practice of hiring mercenaries to do their fighting for them, and, being thrifty, businesslike folk, they dismissed their mercenaries immediately after their services could be dispensed with. Wars were, therefore, fought by armies hired for each campaign. . . . For the first time, soldiering became a reasonable and comparatively harmless profession. The generals of that period maneuvered against each other, often with consummate skill, but when one had won the advantage, his opponent generally either retreated or surrendered. It was a recognized rule that a town could only be sacked if it offered resistance: immunity could always be purchased by paying a ransom. . . . As one natural consequence, no town ever resisted, it being obvious that a government too weak to defend its citizens had forfeited their allegiance. Civilians had little to fear from the dangers of war which were the concern only of professional soldiers.

F.J.P. Veale (1953, Advance to Barbarism)