Archive for the ‘quotes’ Category
“Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties.” – Ron Paul
In any successful attack on freedom the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who forgets his duty, wastes away his strength in the sleep of sin and sensual pleasure, and so loses the power of his own initiative. Among a nation healthy at its core . . . no state can subvert the principles of justice without meeting the people’s strong moral resistance under God. — Abraham Kuyper, 1880.
True then. True now. As we steadily lose our freedoms to an ever-expanding state with an ever-expanding scope, we the citizens bear the brunt of the blame. Especially so in a democracy, where we continue to elect the grasping, gasping leeches who live off our labor.
We the Willing
Led by the Unknowing
Are doing the Impossible
For the Ungrateful
We have done So Much
With So Little
For So Long
We are now Qualified
To do Anything With Nothing.
– Mother Teresa
I saw this thought-provoking quote over at “Catholic and Enjoying It!”:
C.S. Lewis remarks somewhere about a pastor he knew who once saw Hitler in the flesh. Lewis asked him what he looked like.
The pastor replied, “Like all men. Like Christ.”
Shea is right: we do desperately want to believe evil and monstrous men are a different species from us. But they aren’t. They’re like us. They’re like me.
I think I’ve been struggling with this idea for quite sometime. It was never as focused or as vividly stated as in the episode above, but the general idea has been there. The question I’ve been thinking about for months now is, “What are we to do with these monsters?” I know what my gut reaction is, but I’m worried that my gut reaction might be horribly wrong and sinfully bereft of mercy. Is the answer really as simple as I want to think and hope it is? Most of the time I believe it is, but I’m also aware that these people share my humanity. Yet they are people who have been cursed with the will, opportunity, and power to commit atrocious acts against other human beings. How then are we to deal with them? How then am I to respond to them? I wish I had a black and white answer, but through my sin-scaled eyes all I see is gray.
“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.” — from a email forward
“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stumped by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, ‘Hi.’ They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.” — Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors, quoted on a Starbucks cup.
“In the United States of America, you have a right to be stupid.” — Sen. John Kerry, speaking against the recent attempt to pass a flag burning amendment.
Some of you may be confused where the Freedom of Stupidity clause is found in the US Constitution. It can be found in the Eleventeenth Amendment, which reads in part, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom to be stupid nor prevent the free exercise thereof.”
(via Best of the Web)
Conservatives, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others. — Ambrose Bierce
Sounds about right.
“You know, the more I see of women, the more I think that there ought to be a law. Something has got to be done about this sex, or the whole fabric of society will collapse, and then what silly asses we shall all look.” — Bertie Wooster, life-long bachelor, in The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse.
Bertie in ’08!
