Archive for the ‘Quotes’ Category
Ignorant and free?
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
- Thomas Jefferson
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
Good men must associate
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
- Edmund Burke
‘God will not hold us guiltless’
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor executed by Nazi Germany in 1945
Power corrupts
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
- Lord Acton
When Washington becomes the center of all power…
“[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another.”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond – 1821
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
If ye love wealth better than liberty…
“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 your 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.”
- Samuel Adams, address to the Philadelphia State House, 1766
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Samuel Adams
Hyphenated Americans
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
“This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
“But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.
“The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.”
- Theodore Roosevelt, addressing the Knights of Columbus in New York City – October 12, 1915
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Theodore Roosevelt
Treat your veterans well
“The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were Treated and Appreciated by their Nation.”
- George Washington
In: Military, Quotes · Tagged with: George Washington
Patton on tactics
“There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.”
- General George S. Patton, Jr.
In: Military, Quotes · Tagged with: General George S. Patton, Jr.
Trading liberty for order
“A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither”
- Thomas Jefferson
In: Quotes · Tagged with: Thomas Jefferson
