Thought for Today

"If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force."

~~~~~ Auberon Herbert

Thought for Today

"Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin."

~~~~~ Henry Cabot Lodge

Thought for Today

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

~~~~~ Ariel Durant

Thought for Today

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

~~~~~ Ariel Durant

Thought for Today

"The test of civilization is its estimate of women."

~~~~~ George William Curtis

Thought for Today

"Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success."

~~~~~ Mark Skousen

Thought for Today

"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."

~~~~~ Adam Smith

Thought for Today

"All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order."

~~~~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Thought for Today

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

~~~~~ Ariel Durant

Thought for Today

"If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends."

~~~~~ Orson Welles

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

"Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not."

~~~~~ Daniel Pipes

Thought for Today

"Hold fast to the Bible. To the influence of this Book we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization and to this we must look as our guide in the future."

~~~~~ Ulysses S. Grant

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

"Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences."

~~~~~ Freeman Dyson

Thought for Today

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind of self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

~~~~~ James Madison

Thought for Today

"Ludwig Von Mises, that great economist, once noted: 'People must fight for something they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil.' Well, the conservative movement remains in the ascendancy because we have a bold, forward-looking agenda. No longer can it be said that conservatives are just anti-Communist. We are, and proudly so, but we are also the keepers of the flame of liberty. And as such, we believe that America should be a source of support, both moral and material, for all those on God's Earth who struggle for freedom. Our cause is their cause, whether it be in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, or Angola. When I came back from Iceland I said – and I meant it – American foreign policy is not simply focused on the prevention of war but the expansion of freedom. Modern conservatism is an active, not a reactive philosophy. It's not just in opposition to those vices that debase character and community, but affirms values that are at the heart of civilization."

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan

Thought for Today

"In the end, the explanation for this long, long war – which grows longer – doesn't lie in anything we've done but in who we are: a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Has there ever been a doctrine more subversive to the despotisms of the world? What we in the West do, right or wrong or neither, is but an excuse for the war being waged against our civilization by a rapacious enemy. It is what we are that threatens them: a beacon. Ideas have consequences; they can spread of their own accord. That is why we are such a threat to their closed societies. It is what we represent: freedom. And freedom attracts by its very existence. Eternal vigilance, it turns out, isn't just the price of liberty but of our existence."

~~~~~ Paul Greenberg

Thought for Today

“Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude. People ask, ‘Why is there poverty in the world?’ It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition... The interesting question isn’t ‘Why is there poverty?’ It’s ‘Why is there wealth?’ Or: ‘Why is there prosperity here but not there?’ At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own... In large measure our wealth isn’t the product of capitalism, it is capitalism. And yet we hate it. Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity. The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because, unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual... Meanwhile, billions have ridden capitalism out of poverty. And yet the children of capitalism still whine.”

~~~~~ Jonah Goldberg

Privacy

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

~~~~~ Ayn Rand (1905-1982)