QUOTES OF THE DAY 2-2-12

The seductive notion that some Big Daddy in Washington can solve our problems for us– whether healing the sick, preventing poverty or “growing the economy”– is encouraged by politicians for obvious reasons, and the media echo the idea. Thomas Sowell

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it. P.J. O’Rourke

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. Thomas Sowell

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. Voltaire

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

A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism Alexis de Tocqueville

The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it. James A. Donald

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. H. L. Mencken

For society as a whole, nothing comes as a ‘right’ to which we are ‘entitled’. Even bare subsistence has to be produced…. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it… The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more the providers have to carry the load. Thomas Sowell

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

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. Ayn Rand