Thought for Today

"Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort."

~~~~~ John Ruskin

Thought for Today

"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve... But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic."

~~~~~ Frederic Bastiat

Thought for Today

"The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves."

~~~~~ Eric Hoffer

Thought for Today

"Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear."

~~~~~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

Thought for Today

"The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death."

~~~~~ Voltaire

Thought for Today

"A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer."

~~~~~ Novalis

Thought for Today

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."

~~~~~ Alan K. Simpson

Thought for Today

"There is, in fact, no recognized principle by which the propriety or impropriety of government interference is customarily tested. People decide according to their personal preferences."

~~~~~ John Stuart Mill

Thought for Today

"The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth; that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one."

~~~~~ H. L. Mencken

Thought for Today

"For how many things, which for our own sake we should never do, do we perform for the sake of our friends."

~~~~~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Thought for Today

"What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?"

~~~~~ James Madison

Thought for Today

"A few years' experience will convince us that those things which at the time they happened we regarded as our greatest misfortunes have proved our greatest blessings."

~~~~~ George Mason

Thought for Today

"Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care."

~~~~~ William Safire

Thought for Today

"A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better."

~~~~~ Stephen Leacock

Thought for Today

"It is immoral from almost any point of view to refuse to defend yourself and others from very grave and terrible threats, even as there are limits to the means that can be used in such defense."

~~~~~ Herman Kahn

Thought for Today

"Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will."

~~~~~ John Acton

Thought for Today

"My father was the son of immigrants, and he grew up bilingual, but English is what my father taught me and what he spoke to me. America's strength is not our diversity; it is our ability to unite around common principles even when we come from different backgrounds."

~~~~~ Ernest Istook

Thought for Today

"Fortunate people often have very favorable beginnings and very tragic endings. What matters isn't being applauded when you arrive – for that is common – but being missed when you leave."

~~~~~ Baltasar Gracian

Thought for Today

"I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: September 11th we are all Americans – in grief, as in defiance."

~~~~~ Benjamin Netanyahu

Thought for Today

"The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations."

~~~~~ John Adams

Thought for Today

"Freedom is a lonely battle, but if the United States doesn't lead it – sometimes imperfectly, but mostly with honor – who will?"

~~~~~ Cal Thomas

Thought for Today

"Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company."

~~~~~ Booker T. Washington

Thought for Today

"When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."

~~~~~ Jonathan Swift

Thought for Today

"The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows."

~~~~~ Gaston Bachelard

Thought for Today

"The American Constitution is the greatest governing document, and at some 7,000 words, just about the shortest."

~~~~~ Stephen Ambrose

Thought for Today

"There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves."

~~~~~ Jane Austen

Thought for Today

"A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks."

~~~~~ John C. Calhoun (speech – May 27, 1836)

Thought for Today

"It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win."

~~~~~ John Paul Jones

Thought for Today

"Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency."

~~~~~ H.L. Mencken

Thought for Today

"Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force."

~~~~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes