Quotes of note:

[Crafty_Dog]

 “We do not want a deterioration of international relations, we want to be respected. We want our people, our values to be respected. We have always been a peace-loving state. Practically there is not a single occasion in the history of the Russian or Soviet state when we first started military actions. We have not attacked anyone, we only secured the rights and dignity of people as peacekeepers.” —Russia president Dimitry Medvedev

“I could care less about the color of Barack Obama’s skin, but the thinness of it is starting to wear on me.” —Dennis Miller

[JDN]

In today's L.A. Times there was a good article on Sen. Biden; good and bad was pointed out.
But I did like the quote, "Respected, but not always popular".

Not bad for one's epitaph

[Crafty_Dog]

“Not only is [Sarah Palin] young, they’re saying she’s the prettiest candidate for vice president since John Edwards.” —Jimmy Kimmel

[Crafty_Dog]

“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?” —Marcus Tullius Cicero
 

[Crafty_Dog]

There comes a point when every society advances enough to eliminate natural selection.Then you get liberals.

[Crafty_Dog]

"It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder."
-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law," 1850

[Crafty_Dog]

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

-- Woodrow Wilson, after signing the legislation that created the Federal Reserve

[Crafty_Dog]

"Separation of economics and State"  Ayn Rand

[Crafty_Dog]

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion -- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing -- when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -- when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you -- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice -- you may know that your society is doomed."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, page 413

[Crafty_Dog]

a) The price of freedom is infernal vigilantes

b) I'll keep my money, freedom, and guns. You keep the change.

c) Democracy has no convictions for which people would be willing to stake their lives."
Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl

d) "Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars."
Gen G.C. Marshall
       
e) "We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a
symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other."
Gen G.C. Marshall

[Crafty_Dog]

"Unsustainable developments usually have a longer life than is good for the reputation of the prophet."

internet friend Bob Polhausen

[Crafty_Dog]

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. —Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)

[Crafty_Dog]

Friedrich Hayek in "The Constitution of Liberty," 1960:


Not only is liberty a system under which all government action is guided by principles, but it is an ideal that will not be preserved unless it is itself accepted as an overriding principle governing all particular acts of legislation.

Where no such fundamental rule is stubbornly adhered to as an ultimate ideal about which there must be no compromise for the sake of material advantages—as an ideal which, even though it may have to be temporarily infringed during a passing emergency, must form the basis of all permanent arrangements—freedom is almost certain to be destroyed by piecemeal encroachments. For in each particular instance it will be possible to promise concrete and tangible advantages as the result of a curtailment of freedom, while the benefits sacrificed will in their nature always be unknown and uncertain.

If freedom were not treated as the supreme principle, the fact that the promises which a free society has to offer can always be only chances and not certainties, only opportunities and not definite gifts to particular individuals, would inevitably prove a fatal weakness and lead to its slow erosion.

[prentice crawford]

  "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
                   Friedrich Nietzsche

[prentice crawford]

 "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."
                                     Henry David Thoreau
 

[Crafty_Dog]

'We should not expect the state to appear in the guise of an extravagant good fairy at every christening, a loquacious companion at every stage of life's journey, and the unknown mourner at every funeral.'

[Crafty_Dog]

For some reason, this strikes me as profound:

"I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?"

[Crafty_Dog]

"The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation." --C.S. Lewis*

[Crafty_Dog]

"Liberals will always be against the right to self-defense because it gives them cover for their personal cowardice."

Cold War Scout

[G M]

"Liberals will always be against the right to self-defense because it gives them cover for their personal cowardice."

Cold War Scout

Brilliant ! CWS for the win!