Friday Quotes

Here’s a collections of the Friday Quotes, organized by author. I’m only posting the notable quotes, not the joke or personal quotes.

John Adams

There are two ways to enslave and conquer a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.

Samuel Adams

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Ayann Hirsi Ali

Many well-meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these Westerners are the ones who misunderstand Islam. The Quaran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse, so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience of their community. I wanted my art exhibit to make it difficult for people to look away from this problem. I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that “Islam is peace and tolerance.

Susan B. Anthony

I declare to you that woman must not be dependent upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.

Aristotle

It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion.

Neil Armstrong

It was never a concern…I know that somebody is going to go fly back up there and pick up the camera I left.

Isaac Asimov

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe in anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.

Massad Ayoob

If anyone still has the fantasy that you’ll always be treated as a hero after a clean shoot, this case [the Zimmerman trial] teaches us the reality. It’s often an ordeal of lies, misunderstandings, and false accusations…and, as seen here, your family will go through that ordeal with you.

Ron Bailey

Liberty is not advanced by misinformation and pseudoscience.

Battle of Mogadishu

We have a Blackhawk down.

Todd Beamer

Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.

Gary S. Beck

Capitalism was doomed-not by its failures, as in Marxian analysis, but by its successes. For according to Schumpeter, capitalism alienated intellectuals, who were unhappy because they are not important players in a decentralized free-market system. Moreover, intellectuals do not like the profit motive that drives this system. But Schumpeter greatly exaggerated the long-run influence of intellectuals on public policy.

Samuel Beckett

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Ambrose Bierce

There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy…

Otto Von Bismarck

Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.

Kenn Blanchard

The name Black Man With a Gun was not without some drama. It would work in the porn industry too.

William Blum

No matter how paranoid or conspiracy minded you are, what the government is doing is worse this you imagine.

Peter Boettke

If you bound the arms and legs of gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool, and he sank, you wouldn’t call it a “failure of swimming.” So, when markets have been weighed down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a “failure of capitalism?”

Neils Bohr

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.

If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.

Daniel Boone

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

Ray Bradbury

The problem in our country isn’t with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Richard Branson

Train people well enough that they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.

Geraldine Brooks

September 11, 2001, revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage.

Wallace Bruce

Who kept the faith and fought the fight; the glory is theirs, the duty ours.

David Burge (Iowahawk)

Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.

George Carlin

Sooner or later, the people in this country are going to realize the government doesn’t give a fuck about them. The government doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare, or your safety. It simply doesn’t give a fuck about you. It’s only interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it, and expanding it wherever possible.

Alexis Carrel

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

Sean Carroll

We’re not allowed to call the Higgs boson the ‘God Particle’ anymore because now there is evidence that it exists.

Johnny Cash

It’s good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people.

Col. Joshua Chamberlain

At that crisis, I ordered the bayonet. The word was enough.

Lord Chesterfield

The difference between a man of sense and a fop is that the fop values himself upon his dress; and the man of sense laughs at it, at the same time he knows he must not neglect it.

Winston Churchill

Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone says anything back, it’s an outrage.

Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease.

Tom Clancy

What government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms, and killing people. It’s not good at much else.

Rayn Clecker

Calling for more gun control is an admission that gun control doesn’t work.

Calvin Coolidge

The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond a reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny.

The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much more meager.

Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual.

Col. Jeff Cooper

The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.

The media insists that crime is a major concern of the American public today. In this connection they generally push the point that a disarmed society would be a crime-free society. They will not accept the truth that if you have take all the guns off the street you will still have a crime problem, whereas if you take the criminals off the street you will not have a gun problem.

The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely on the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized.

Robert Cormier

The beautiful part about writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.

Larry Corriea

If you are serious, and you want to make a living as an author, then you need to hustle. Period. If you can’t make that quality, then you need to concentrate on your craft and practice more. One other thing, quality comes with practice. If you are prolific, then you become a better writer because you are writing. The more you do anything the better at it you will become. So in a way, quantity does add to quality.

Brian Cox

The problem with the world today is that everyone believes they have the right to express an opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to express an opinion, but crucially, that opinion may be roundly ignored, even be made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably NONSENSE.

Wes Craven

The first monster you have to scare the audience is yourself.

Jeff Cudwin

You can’t have too much ammunition unless you are on fire or trying to swim.

Richard Dawkins

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God’s approval and reward or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That’s not morality, that’s just sucking up.

Jeff Deist

If there is one overriding economic myth that plagues us today it is the notion that society can do collectively what we cannot do individually.

Rene Descartes

Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.

Frederick Douglass

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning…

Power never concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

Steven Dubner

People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable or manifest. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences.

W.E.B Dubois

A mob had raged for days killing Negroes. I bought a Winchester double-barreled shotgun and two dozen rounds of shells filled with buckshot. If a white mob had stepped on the campus where I lived, I would without hesitation have sprayed their guts over the grass.

William C. Easton II

God says “Do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in Hell.” That, sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend “Do what you wish, but if you leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out.” When a man says this, we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment. When God says the same thing, we call Him “Loving” and build churches in His honor.

Rick Ector

Violence is a tool. It is no more evil than a hammer or a carving knife. It can be used for good or evil. Punish and ban people who use violence for evil ends.

Albert Einstein

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is all comprehensible.

Barry Eisler

The two most important things to do for self-defense are not to take a martial arts class or get a gun, but to think like the opposition and know where you’re most at risk.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Alex Epstein

It’s time to stop thinking about how to save the planet from human beings and start thinking how to improve the planet for human beings.

Breda Fallon

Carry your gun. It’s a lighter burden than regret.

James Feibleman

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

Richard Feynman

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Frank J. Flemming

One of the amazing things in America is there are a group of people known for being armed and what they’re mainly feared for is that they vote.

Ken Follet

World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.

Kevin Folta

It’s easy to stand against a technology with a full belly and 20/20 vision.

Milton Friedman

The most important central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.

Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

Doing good with other people’s money has two basic flaws. In the first place, you never spend anybody else’s money as carefully as you spend your own. So a large fraction of that money is inevitably wasted. In the second place, and equally important, you cannot do good with other people’s money unless you first get the money away from them. So that force – sending a policeman to take the money from somebody’s pocket – is fundamentally at the basis of the philosophy of the welfare state.

Stephen Fry

It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what?

It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.

R. Buckminster Fuller

It is now feasible to take care of everyone on Earth at a higher standard of living than have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting high technology from weaponry to livingry.

John Taylor Gatto

By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers – backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, et al. – has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.

Ghost In The Shell

Peace is not merely the absence of violence, but the presence of justice.

Tom Givens

You don’t get to pick the day you need your gun. Someone else gets to pick that day and they will only tell you at the last minute.

Jonah Goldberg

Star Wars is now a commercial religion. It’s Dianetics with Yoda.

Sir Edward Grey

The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.

Gregg Gutfield

A Smith & Wesson does more for empowering women than feminism ever could.

Jonathan Haidt

There are people who are less emotional and more reasoned. They’re called libertarians.

KrisAnne Hall

If society is honest and historically accurate, the only question that has any relevance to the gun control debate is, “Do you trust those in government, now and forever in the future, to not take your life, liberty, or property through the force of government?” If the answer to that question is “no,” the gun control debate is over.

If exercising my right to keep and bear arms, my right to freedom of speech, or my right to religious liberty makes you uncomfortable, just remember… The exercise of rights is only uncomfortable to two classes of people – tyrants and slaves. Take a moment to classify yourself.

Laurel K. Hamilton

My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you’ve been mean to someone, they won’t believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it’s time to stop being nice, then destroy them.

Learned Hand

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.

Sam Harris

Why can’t civilized people like ourselves simply rely on the police? Well, look around you: Do you see a cop? Unless you happen to be a police officer yourself, or are married to one, you are very unlikely to be attacked in the presence of law enforcement. The role of the police is to respond in the aftermath of a crime and, with a little luck, to catch the person who committed it. If you are ever targeted by a violent predator, whether you and your family are injured or killed will depend on what you do in the first moments of the encounter. When it comes to survival, therefore, you are on your own. Once you escape and are in a safe place, by all means call the police. But dialing 911 when an intruder has broken into your home is not a reliable strategy for self-defense.

F.A. Hayek

The basic tools of civilization – language, morals, law, and money – are all the result of spontaneous growth and not of design.

What we have to deal with in the case of “social justice” is simply a quasireligious superstition of the kind which we should respectfully leave in peace so long as it merely makes those happy who hold it, but which we must fight when it becomes the pretext of coercing other men.

The curious task of economics is to to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

“Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded.

If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes, necessarily, the supreme rule.

Henry Hazlitt

The “private sector” of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and the “public sector” is, in fact, the coercive sector.

The real problem of poverty is not a problem of distribution, but of production. The poor are not poor because something is being withheld from them, but because, for whatever reason, they are not producing enough. The only permanent way to cure their poverty is to increase their earning power.

Robert Heinlein

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”

There is no worse tyranny than forcing a man to pay for what he does not want, merely because you think it would be good for him.

The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

Patrick Henry

We should not forget the spark that ignited the American Revolution was caused by the British attempt to confiscate the firearms of the colonists.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Frank Herbert

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts, but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

Alexander Herzen

History is the autobiography of a madman.

Charleston Heston

Let me make a short opening statement. There are no good guns. There are no bad guns. Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody – except bad people.

Robert Higgs

When presented with a choice between two evils, do not choose the lesser. Choose the exit.

Hippocrates

Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they don’t understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.

Christopher Hitchens

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things… One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.

Terrorism is demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say, ‘I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.’ In this country, I’ve been told, ‘That’s offensive,’ as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment. Not to me they don’t. And I’m not running for anything, so I don’t have to pretend to like people when I don’t.

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

Faith is the surrender of the mind, it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust and faith in someone or something that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.

Jacob Hornberger

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, then are not free at all.

Jared Howe

Anything which requires the labor or property of other people is not a basic human right. That includes education, healthcare, food, internet access, housing, or anything else that involves an investment of capital and labor. To demand free goods and services from people who sacrifice time and capital to produce them is to demand that those people become your slaves. You don’t have the right to enslave people for food or education or healthcare anymore than plantation owners had a right to enslave people to pick cotton.

Victor Hugo

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Nipsey Hussle

If you look at the people in your circle and don’t get inspired, then you don’t have a circle. You have a cage.

Aldous Huxley

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Robert G. Ingersoll

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education, then to have education without common sense.

Kathy Jackson

There’s a world of difference between “Never Again” and “It Can’t Happen Here.”

A civilized society is one where it is safe to be small, safe to be weak, safe to hold contrary opinions, and safe to express those opinions to others. Those who argue for physical assault in response to mere speech, are those who argue against civilization and in favor of barbarism.

Thomas Jefferson

Believe me, dear Sir: there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America.

I prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery.

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of Constitution.

Penn Jillette

Every time something really bad happens, people cry out for safety, and the government answers by taking rights away from good people.

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It’s just ganging up on the weird kid, and I’m always the weird kid.

Manowar is like Spinal Tap, without the joke.

James Earl Jones

A lot of Star Wars fans come up to me and ask me to say ‘Luke, I am your father.’ And I’ll remind them the quote is actually, ‘No, I am your father.’ Then I use the Force to choke them within an inch of their life while they weep and beg for forgiveness. I love my fans.

Father Kevin Kealy

You cannot exaggerate about the Marines. They are convinced to the point of arrogance that they are the most ferocious fighters on earth – and the amusing thing about it is that they are.

Sam Kean

Think of the most fussy science teacher you ever had. The one who docked your grade if the sixth decimal place in your answer was rounded incorrectly; who tucked in his periodic table T-shirt, corrected every student who said “weight” when he or she meant “mass”, and made everyone, including himself, wear goggles even while mixing sugar water. Now try to imagine someone whom your teacher would hate for being anal-retentive. That is the kind of person who works for a bureau of standards and measurement.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

We need leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Marko Kloos

You’re not the better human by not fighting back. You’re not the better human for choosing to have no claws or teeth. You’re not the better human for delegating responsibility your personal safety to some underpaid guy or girl with a tin badge. And you damn sure don’t get to claim a halo for your attitude.

Holding up paper signs with hashtags isn’t “doing something.” It’s demanding that someone else do something.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some. When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

Judge Alex Kozinski

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Phil Labonte

If the constitution were meant to be interpreted, if it were meant to change and be fluid with the times, why would the founders have made an amendment process in the first place? Furthermore, if it was meant to be interpreted and a “living constitution” that changes, why would the amendment process be so stringent?

Larry Lambert

The problem with socialism is that you can vote your way into it, but you need to shoot your way out of it.

Ann Landers

Opportunities are often disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.

Bruce Lee

Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.

Stan Lee

If I got a superpower I wouldn’t say, oh, I got to get a costume and put on a mask. I would say hey, I can do something better than other people. How can I turn it into a buck?’

Aaron Levenstein

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

Abraham Lincoln

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

John Locke

To love truth for the truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

Jack London

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom in me a magnificent glow, then a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

E. Lovejoy

As long as I am an America citizen and American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject.

Matthew Makarios

We found that gun buyback programs have not shown to be effective….They’re rifles, shotguns, things like that. Less likely to be small handguns, which are really more likely the types of guns to be used in gun crime.

Amanda Marcotte

Atheists are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of Hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain comes from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority.

Frank Martin

You know what makes me sick to my stomach? When I hear grown people say that kids have changed. Kids haven’t changed. Kids don’t know anything about anything. We’ve changed as adults. We demand less of kids. We expect less of kids. We make their lives easier instead of preparing them for what life is truly about. We’re the ones that have changed.

George R.R. Martin

Tyrion Lannister

When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar; you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.

George Mason

No branch of government should ever be able to combine the power of the sword with the power of the purse.

Gen. James Mattis

Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

My good reason to carry a knife is that God gave me rather weak teeth and rudimentary claws in an evolutionary trade-off. The hairy-armed person who figured out how to put an edge on a suitable rock made it possible for us to be recognizably human in the first place. I wear a wristwatch whether or not I have an appointment to keep, and I keep a pen and/or pencil because I am a literate person whether or not I have a specific writing task ahead of me, and I carry a knife because I am a human and not an ape. A knife comes in handy for all sorts of random tasks that involve separating matter. Like cutting a string, or making a sandwich, or opening a package. It can also come in handy in an emergency, which need not involve a human assailant, and emergencies are by their nature unforeseen, so one should carry a knife all the time. And in a perfect world where nobody needed a weapon, I’d probably carry a slightly larger knife, because it wouldn’t scare people.

W. Somerset Maugham

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Matt McCaffrey

I doubt most people plaything the Powerball seriously believe they’ll win. Instead, people treat a ticket as the price of daydreaming about what they’d do with an enormous pile of cash. You can’t win without playing, so people pay a small amount as a way to justify spending their scarce time imagining their own Scrooge McDuck scenarios. For these people, the benefit of the ticket is greater than its cost.

John ‘Shrek’ McPhee

If you ever have to use a firearm for your own safety, this will be one of the worst situations you will ever face. This is humanity at its worst. Before, during, and after this situation, the skills need to save you will not just come to you. These skills have to be learned before that moment. Training has to begin before, and you need to know this cold and on demand. Training is for life and can only be achieved through perfect practice and repetition. There are no short cuts here. Refuse to be a victim.

H.L. Mencken

Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

The trouble with fighting human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.

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.

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach into their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.

I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist… He plans to be both an artist and a moralist – a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community – that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success.

Tim Minchin

Alternative medicine, by definition, has either not been proved to work or proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.

Throughout history, every mystery ever solved, has turned out to be not magic.

Edmundo Mireles Jr.

You have to be mentally prepared for a possible violent confrontation. I can say with some authority that if you give up, if you lay down to die, than that is exactly what will happen. You will die.

Ludwig Von Mises

There can be no freedom in arts and literature when the government determines who shall create them.

A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system where men can live as human beings.

If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason reject every kind of government action.

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!

James Monroe

The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.

Charles de Montesquieu

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Edward R. Murrow

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men…

When politicians complain that TV turns their proceedings into a circus, it should be made plain that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all of the performers are well trained.

Elon Musk

The enemy of my enemy is myself.

Larry Niven

The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He’s entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been waited, you’re in violation.

Colion Noir

If you don’t feel the need to carry a gun because you believe the government will keep you safe, why do you care if I or anyone else decides to carry a gun? If anyone tries to harm you, the government will stop it right? Where is your faith in government?

Dr. Steven Novella

The only real consensus I found [in the literature] was that these types of school shootings, or even spree killings, are too rare to do any kind of meaningful analysis of cause and effect… There’s more variables than there are data points. So you can’t do any kind of meaningful analysis. So we just don’t know what the important influences are and policies might reduce the risk of this happening again in the future.

When someone looks at me and says “I know what I saw,” I am fond of replying “No, you don’t.” You have a distorted and constructed memory of a distorted and constructed perception, both of which are subservient to whatever narrative your brain is operating under.

Bill Nye

Everyone you will ever meet will know something that you don’t.

Dara O’Briain

Just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you get to fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.

Xander Opal

A civil right shouldn’t have a single point of failure.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

P.J. O’Rourke

At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child – miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic, and useless. Liberalism is the philosophy of sniveling brats.

No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.

George Orwell

That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Erin Pallette

If you think the NFL was right to dump Kaepernick but ABC was wrong to dump Roseanne, you’re likely a conservative who doesn’t understand business decisions. If you think ABC was right to dump Roseanne but the NFL was wrong to dump Kaepernick, you’re likely a progressive who doesn’t understand business decisions. In either case, you’re a hypocrite.

Nick Palmisciano

Free speech is free speech. We have the right to be assholes. That’s what makes America great. We all hate the Westboro Baptist Church and they’re among the biggest, most worthless assholes on the planet. But we don’t kill them because…America. And people need to stop making excuses for people willing to kill people over speech. “It was hate speech.” So fucking what? Hate speech has to be protected the same as nice speech, cuddly speech, and rainbow speech, or this isn’t America anymore.

Louis Pasteur

Science advances through tentative answers to a series of more and more subtle questions which reach deeper and deeper into the essence of natural phenomena.

Ron Paul

The use of government force to stop adults from putting certain substances into their bodies – whether marijuana, saturated fats, or raw milk – violates the nonaggression principle that is the bedrock of a free society.

Jordan Peterson

A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has it under voluntary control.

Phil Plait

I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is held up as fact.

Plato

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics, is that you end up being governor by your inferiors.

Henri Poincare

The scientist must order. Science is made with facts like a house with stones, but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of stones is a house.

Richard Pryor

The reason people use a crucifix against vampires is that vampires are allergic to bullshit.

Chesty Puller

All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us. They can’t get away this time.

Nate Pyle

We’ve been taught that a woman’s body will cause men to sin. We’re told that if a woman shows too much of her body men will do stupid things. Let me be clear: a woman’s body is not dangerous to you. Her body will not cause you harm. It will not make you do stupid things. If you do stupid things, it is because you chose to do stupid things.

Alex Rainert

The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

Dave Ramsey

A budget is not about restricting what you can spend. It gives you permission to spend without guilt or regret.

Ayn Rand

(The Doctrine of Original Sin) declares that (man) ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge – he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil – he became a moral being/ He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor – he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire – he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which (the preachers) damn him are reason, morality, creativeness joy – all the cardinal values of his existence.

The question isn’t who is going to let me; the question is who is going to stop me.

Fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory – both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.

James Randi

Every time something really bad happens, people cry out for safety, and the government answers by taking rights away from good people.

No amount of belief makes something a fact.

Ronald Reagan

Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. The U.S. Marines don’t have that problem.

Roman Van Ree

Don’t be fooled by the words “socialism” and “communism”. Once you come to understand what they mean in terms of economic freedom you will know that they are anything but social, and have nothing to do with community. They simply mean “centralization of power in the hands of the people that make up the state, in the hands of the master class. They are nothing but euphemisms for “slavery”.

Thomas B. Reed

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.

Malcolm Reynolds

If someone tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back.

Stewart Rhodes

…in Ferguson, what they’re being told is you only have two choices: 1) a hyper-militarized police state to stop violence, including arson, or 2) let it go and burn the town down. Twenty different buildings have burned to the ground. That’s a false choice. For Ferguson in particular if…they don’t believe that the police department is legitimate, they should be protecting themselves and secure themselves because the more they secure themselves, the less reason there is for the police to be in their neighborhoods and communities. So they should take care of themselves for both reasons—to be secure, but also to be more free.

Anne Rice

To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

Russ Roberts

Capitalism involves struggle, but it has an invisible heart beating at its core that transforms people’s lives.

Stephen F. Roberts

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Maximillian Robespierre

The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

Fred Rogers

Love doesn’t mean a state of perfect caring. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now – and to go on caring through the joyful times and through the times that may bring us pain.

Eleanor Roosevelt

We do not move forward by curtailing people’s liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say.

Theodore Roosevelt

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Fleming Rose

The only right you should not have in a democracy is the “right” not to be offended.

Murray Rothbard

The man who puts all the guns and all of the decision-making in the hands of the central government and then says “Limit Yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

It is easy to be conspicuously ‘compassionate’ if others are being forced to pay the cost.

The only equality that can be achieved in the world, hence the only rational concept of equality, is equality in liberty.

Carl Sagan

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give the charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Portia St. Luke

Nothing says “I’m not getting raped (mugged/ beaten) today!” like a large-caliber round to the center chest. Simple, eloquent, and to-the-point.

Brandon Sanderson

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, and I’ll hire you as my lawyer.

Anthony Scalia

The transformation of charity into a legal entitlement has produced donors without love and recipients without gratitude.

Ernest Shackleton

Inveniam vaim aut faciam translated I shall find a way or make one.

Piper Smith

If you’re fighting homophobia but not hoplophobia you’re doing it wrong. If you’re fighting hoplophobia but not homophobia you’re also doing it wrong.

Sean Sorrentino

The problem with gun people is not getting them to tell you information, most of the time it’s getting them to shut up.

Thomas Sowell

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

Four things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black markets.

Why do price controls cause shortages? There are basically two reasons: supply and demand. People will not supply as much at a lower price as they will at a higher price. Some oil wells that will repay their costs and earn a profit when the price of oil is $25 a barrel will not cover their costs when the price is $15 a barrel. Some people who will rent out a bungalow in their backyard when rents are high will not bother when rents are low. Some farmers will give up farming when food prices are kept below the point where they can earn a living. On the demand side, people will demand more when the price is kept artificially low by price controls. Before rent control laws were passed in Sweden, less than one-fourth of unmarried adults there had their own separate housing units, but afterwards more than half did. People buy more of anything that is cheaper. With more being demanded and less being supplied, shortages are inevitable, whether with housing, food, medical care or whatever.

The political left’s welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty. Unless we believe that some people are predestined to be poor, the left’s agenda is a disservice to them, as well as to society.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes expects to hear: “But what would you replace it with?” When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?

The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves.

There are three questions that will destroy most of the arguments on the left: 1. Compared to what? 2. At what cost? 3. What hard evidence do you have?

I cannot understand people who say that minorities should be represented everywhere and yet are upset when there are blacks represented in the conservative movement.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

Government spending is often said to be beneficial to the economy, as the money disbursed is spent and re-spent, creating jobs, raising incomes, and generating tax revenues in the process. But usually if that same government money had remained in the hands of the taxpayers from whom it came, they too would have spent it, and it would still have been re-spent, creating jobs, raising incomes, and generating tax revenues in the process.

Many colleges claim that they develop “leaders.” Often, that means turning out graduates who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do. There are already too may people like that, and they are a menace to everyone else’s freedom.

What do automobiles, guns, and home-schooling all have in common that makes the liberals hate them? All these things reduce individual dependence on the government and the grandiose schemes for other people’s lives created by liberals and imposed by the government.

Love is one of those bonds which enable people to function and societies to flourish – without being directed from above. Love is one of the many ways we influence each other and work out our interrelated lives without the help of the anointed. Like morality, loyalty, honesty, respect, and other immaterial things, love is one of the intangibles without which the tangibles won’t work.

Will Spencer

I could never be a conspiracy theorist; conspiracy theorists believe in government competence.

John Stewart

You can truly grieve for every officer who’s been lost in the line of duty in this country and still be troubled by cases of police overreach. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want them to be held to high standards.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but playing a poor hand well.

J. Michael Straczynski

Writing as Captain America

Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world — *”No, you move.”

Howard Tayler

That which does not kill us has made a tactical error.

Margaret Thatcher

From my experience let me say this: in today’s world it is no bad thing for a politician to have had the benefit of a scientific background. And not only politicians. Those who work in industry, in commerce, in investment. Indeed, so important has it become that I believe we are right to make science a compulsory subject for all schoolchildren.

Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.

Socialists cry “Power to the People!” and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean. “Power over people. Power to the state.”

themerrywriter

You can edit a bad book, but not a blank page.

Henry David Thoreau

There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all of its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

Thucydides

The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.

Alexis de Tocqueville

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Alvin Toffler

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those that cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Maj Toure

I don’t think there’s a Black gun culture or a White gun culture. I think there’s informed and uninformed gun culture. Our job is to get urban America on the informed side.

Mark Twain

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.

I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when somebody is full of shit.

I’m optimistic. I see no longer people accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren’t still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you’re in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for saying so.

Politicians lie, not because they’re evil, but because they say what the voters want to hear. So, it’s we who are the problem.

Gerald Vernon

Black people have been programmed to think self-defense, our defense, is someone else’s responsibility – that good, honest, decent black people have nothing to do with guns, because guns are for white folks, police, and black criminals. I find it to be an absurd notion. The vast majority of gun laws in America have been aimed at disarming black people.

George Washington

Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

John Wayne

When you allow unlawful acts to go unpunished, you’re moving toward a government of men rather than a government of law.

A man’s got to have a code, a creed to live by.

Scott Westerfield

Sometimes the thoughts in my head get so bored they go out for a stroll through my mouth. This is rarely a good thing.

Oscar Wilde

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Capt. Lloyd W. Williams

Retreat? Hell, we just got here!

Walter Williams

Does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid was legal; the Nazi’s Nuremberg laws were legal; the Stalinist and Maoist purges were legal. The fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality alone cannot be the guide for moral people.

Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.

Michael Z. Williamson

First they came for the blacks, and I spoke up because it was wrong, even though I’m not black. Then they came for the gays, and I spoke up, even though I’m not gay. Then they came for the Muslims, and I spoke up, because it was wrong, even though I’m an atheist. When they came for illegal aliens, I spoke up, even though I’m a legal immigrant. Then they came for the pornographers, rebels and dissenters and their speech and flag burning, and I spoke up, because rights are not only for the establishment. Then they came for the gun owners, and you liberal shitbags threw me under the bus, even though I’d done nothing wrong. So when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.

Rachael Wolchin

Givers need to set limits because takers rarely do.

R. Lee Wrights

Democracy? I want nothing to do with a system which operates on the premise that my rights don’t exist simply because I’m outnumbered.