Your favorite quote...

[Kylie]

I know, there are so many you think of, but what is the one that makes you believe that we will prevail?

What carries you on when you start to feel defeated?


My daughter just read Anthem. I decided to re-read it so we could discuss it, because it was such an eye opener to me as far as a "big picture". When I got to this:


And I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and there night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on.

Man, not men.


It hit me again. This is the point. This is why we carry on in what we do. It will not die, we will not let it. In fact, you guys have helped me to "wake up" so much, and I know we get depressed or cynical when we see what they are still doing, we can look back to quotes like these to remind us that we are not the only ones who have been fighting this fight. We follow in a long line of those who have fought, and lost everything, and those who have fought, and won.



So, what quotes move you?

What gets you re-engaged, in your heart, to carry on in the truths that we deem self evident, but most choose to ignore?






I think this just may be my favorite.

 

[Drex]

' When the people fear the government there is tyranny; but when the government fears the people there is liberty ' Thomas Jefferson

 

[Appalachia]

"If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain."

-Winston Churchill

(Not sure if this is my favorite though, but I sure like this one).

 

[IPSecure]

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S. Eliot

"Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing." - Jon Lord

 

[Travlyr]

"Do unto to others as you would have them do unto you."

 

[kah13176]

"If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain."

-Winston Churchill

(Not sure if this is my favorite though, but I sure like this one).

Either I have no heart, or Churchill was wrong.

 

[Tyler_Durden]

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here." America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better." - Senator Barack Obama, March 2006

 

[bluesc]

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here." America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better." - Senator Barack Obama, March 2006

Can someone get 30 seconds face-to-face with Obama, read him that quote, and question him about it on camera? And show the video to every Democrat in the country?

 

[ican'tvote]

"If people are basically good, you don't need a government; if people are basically evil, you don't dare have one."
I think it's from David Bergland.

 

[DaninPA]

"Make fun buddy..."-Ron Paul

Guess who he was responding to.

 

[thoughtomator]

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." - H. L. Mencken

 

[Inkblots]

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

"I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else." - W. Churchill

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it - always." - M. Gandhi

 

[Bosco Warden]

“One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.”
― Ron Paul

“Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states "accountable" for their education performance...In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable to parents, not federal bureaucrats.”
― Ron Paul

“I'm convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you're less safe when you give up your liberties.”
― Ron Paul

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”
― Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto

“Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.”
― Ron Paul

“When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.”
― Ron Paul

“Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.”
― Ron Paul

“It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”
― Ron Paul, End the Fed

"1913 wasn't a very good year. 1913 gave us the income tax, the 16th amendment and the IRS."
Ron Paul

"Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism."
Ron Paul

 

[Philosophy_of_Politics]

My signature.

 

[PierzStyx]

"If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain."

-Winston Churchill

(Not sure if this is my favorite though, but I sure like this one).

But I want to know why we can't have both a heart and a brain? -Ron Paul at Berkeley, CA.

 

[cstarace]

Two of my favorites are in my signature.

 

[Anti Federalist]

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 

[emazur]

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here." America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better." - Senator Barack Obama, March 2006

He said something very much along these lines short after taking office in 2/2009. You will never hear him speak like this again:

2/9/2009 Obama: "Our savings rate has declined and this economy has been driven by consumer spending for a very long time. And that's not gonna be sustainable. If all we're doing is spending and we're not making things, then over time other countries are gonna get tired of lending us money and eventually the party's gonna be over. Well, in fact, the party now is over"

 

[Pericles]

"This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

ADM James Stockdale

which barely beat out

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

 

[Xenophage]

I know, there are so many you think of, but what is the one that makes you believe that we will prevail?

What carries you on when you start to feel defeated?


My daughter just read Anthem. I decided to re-read it so we could discuss it, because it was such an eye opener to me as far as a "big picture". When I got to this:


And I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and there night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on.

Man, not men.

This is a magnificent quote and an example of Ayn Rand at her finest. +1

This is my personal favorite, from John Galt at the end of Atlas Shrugged, and a quote I've always loved:


Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.