quotes
Those of you who have followed our ramblings for some time now, know how much we love a good quote. You will find throughout the writings posted here many that have to do with edged weapons and tools. This page is reserved as a collecting place for those previously used and those also without a sharpened edge reference. All previously posted quotes are in red, scroll down to the bottom for the newer ones.
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
(Paris Sorbonne,1910)
"Sure, there's an ICBM threat, but the Space Wall -- which will cost more than it would to send every kid in America to fine schools like those the Clinton and Bush girls attend, modernize every hospital to the standards of the ones
that look after our lawmakers so well and eliminate the thousands of ghettos that shame America -- is decades away from functioning as a viable deterrent.
And many experts say that $100 billion later, the development of this latest version of Star Wars: the defense shield will have produced nothing more than the mother of all arms races."
David HackworthThis one above reminds me of the line spoken by George C. Scott in the movie Patton to the effect that walls are the "monument to man's stupidity" and that they just asked to be breached one way or another. Frank Trzaska
"The cure for drugs and alcohol addiction is to stop taking drugs. The end of crime is in proper law and order. The secret to a good marriage is to be faithful and resolve to work it out ...no matter what. The solution IS simple. It takes dedication and hard work. Instead: we hire analysts to study, bean-counters to measure; in short, we demand complexity. It is little wonder we are sucking for oxygen."
Jeff Cooper 2000
".....we live in a time when legal and constitutional principles are under attack. What once was to a large extent a government of law has become more and more openly a government of tribes. The edifice of civil rights has degenerated into a naked spoils system. Hate-crime laws have come close to outlawing undesired thought. The iron rule of political correctness has distinct resemblance to Soviet-style social control. Much of this is imposed less by the official government than by the meta-government of academia, media, and Hollywood. Yet it's there."
Fred Reed 2000
"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke
"Share your fears with yourself and share your courage with others. You will inspire people to do things that are incredible, inspire them to do things beyond your wildest dreams."
Author unknown but often quoted by CSM Franklin D. "Doug" Miller CMOH / MACVSOG
"Old Breed, New Breed, all that matters is the Marine Breed."
General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller
"The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get rich quick theory of life."
Theodore Roosevelt.
"An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger."
Dan Rather
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight: nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety: is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions and blood of better men than himself."
- John Stuart Mill
"Let us remember that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.'"
Samuel Adams
"Are you guys ready? Let's roll."
Todd Beamer, Passenger on United Airlines Flight 93, just before helping to lead the assault on the hijackers and the cockpit that led to the crash in rural Pennsylvania instead of Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington D.C.
"Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: either you are with us or you are with the terrorists."
George W. Bush, in a speech to a joint session of congress.
"When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive."
George W. Bush, spoken in a September 13th 2001 Oval Office meeting with senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer of New York and senators John Warner and George Allen of Virginia.
"It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protester to burn the flag."
Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC
"[W]e cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. ... Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity. ...
"The weakling and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but without honesty, the brave and able man is merely a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by every lover of righteousness.
"No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community. ... 'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law."
On May 12, 1900, then-New York Gov. Roosevelt
This one would have been great a few years ago!
"It is ... a peculiarly noble work rescuing from oblivion those who deserve immortality,"
Pliny the Younger, the Roman writer who lived more than 2,000 years ago. By extending the renown of those who deserve historical fame, we advance our own national achievements and align ourselves with those who achieved that immortality.
In the military itself, feminization has brought a focus on feelings and self-esteem, a drastic lowering of physical standards, the usual obsession with sexual harassment, and the conversion of the armed services into homes for unwed mothers. In none of this is there any comprehension of what militaries are for. Nor is there sympathy for the competitiveness of the military male, for the urge to push limits, for charging hard and taking chances, for the rough camaraderie of barracks and encampment.
Fred Reed
"Bombing is the worst way to kill guerrillas; Bayonets are the best"
John Paul Vann
(In light of the recent Cruise missile attacks this one arose very timely)
"When bayonets deliberate, power escapes from the hands of the government."
Napoleon I, 1848
"Under Divine blessing, we must rely on the bayonet when firearms cannot be furnished."
In a letter from Stonewall Jackson with a requisition for 1,000 pikes, 1862
"There is no weapon too short for a brave man".
Richard Steele, in the Guardian, 1713
"The first dry rattle of new drawn steel changes the world today".
Rudyard Kipling, Before Edgehill Fight, 1911"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword...."
Hebrews 4:12
"There can not be good laws where there are not good arms"
Machiavelli: The Prince, 1513
"The first artificer of death; the shrewd, Contriver who first sweated at the forge,
And forc’d the blunt and yet unbloodied steel
To a keen edge and made it bright for war".
William Cowper: The Task, 1758
"The onset of bayonets in the hands of the Valiant is irresistible".
MG John Burgoyne, 1777
"Have you not got bayonets"?
Sir George Cathcart Inkermann,1854. Uttered when his division claimed they were low of ammunition.
"A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end".
A Socialist slogan from the early 20th century.
"Until the world comes to an end the ultimate decision will rest with the sword".
Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1913
"A sword is defensive or offensive depending on which end is pointed at you".
Aristide Briand, 1930
As Andrew Jackson once said, "It's a damn poor mind that can't think of at least two ways to spell any word!
(It doesn’t have anything to do with knives but I liked it, thank God for spell checkers)
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
--Thomas Jefferson
No knife content it that one but it seems to be as relevant in this day and age as much as it was when Jefferson said it, maybe even more so today.
"Our spirits are living bayonets. The ideals which we carry in our hearts are more deadly to the enemy than any man-made weapons."
Coningsby Dawson
"By push of bayonets, no firing until you see the whites of their eyes"
Frederick the Great at the battle of Prague 1757
"The bullet is a mad thing, only the bayonet knows what it is about"
Field Marshal Prince Alexander Suvorov, The Science of Victory, 1796
"The bayonet has always been the weapon of the brave and the chief tool of victory"
Napoleon
"A man may build himself a throne of bayonets but he cannot sit on it."
William R. Inge
DICK THE BUTCHER, SHOUTED ENTHUSIASTICALLY, "THE FIRST THING WE DO, LET'S KILL ALL THE LAWYERS."
SHAKESPEARE'S HENRY VI Part 2, Act IV : Scene IIAnd for those of you who want a knife quote from the master, here it is:
"WHY DOST THOU WHET THY KNIFE SO EARNESTLY?"
The Merchant of Venice, Act IV: Scene I.
"Because of the neglect of history in our educational system, most people have no idea how many of the great American fortunes where created by people who were born and raised in worse poverty then the average welfare recipient today."
Thomas Sowell
Military, Vol. XVII, No. XI April 2001.
Nothing to do with knives but being a "student" of history myself it really hit home.
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares, often do the plowing for those who did not."
Author Unknown.
Thanks to Gerry Bennett for submitting that last pearl of wisdom.
"Polishing an old blade removes all the original surface. This is like skinning a cat. When you are done it is still a cat, but it is no longer much use as a pet."
Bernard Levine on the Blade Forum.
4/08/01"Quemadnowm gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est."
A sword is never a killer, it is but a tool in the killer’s hands.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4 B.C. - 65 A.D.
".........men fell writhing and others melted from sight. And we saw the glitter of bayonets coming against our flank. And we heard the order to retire."
Major Abner R. Small, U.S.A. First Battle of Bull Run, Manassas Va. 1861.
Gold is for the mistress - silver for the maid
Copper for the craftsman cunning in his trade.
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall
But steel - cold steel is master of them all.
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)
"My second day as chairman, a plane I lease, flying with engines I built, crashed into a building that I insure, and it was covered with a network I own."
Jeff Immelt, brand new chairman of General Electric.
"Don’t ever apologize for being right and forget about being politically correct, just be correct"
Drill Instructor on Parris Island
And last but not least I was sent this one but neither I nor the sender know where it came from other then it was attributed to President John F. Kennedy. If you know please let me know so we can properly credit it.
"...our destinies are sometimes focused on the small point of a bayonet."
President Kennedy
This one relayed to us via our good friend Joe Blandford,
"It is God's place to forgive Osama bin Laden, It is the Marines job to arrange the face to face meeting!"
Paul Harvey, December 2001
Along that line while most American’s decry this War Against Terrorism is not a religious war I have tried to dig into it in my limited background with various religions. If another person tries to tell me the war is not about Islam I will attempt to strangle that person with my bare hands. If is isn’t about Islam just what in the hell is it about??
Here are a few quotes from the King James Version of the Bible.
"He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one."
Luke 22:36"Think not that I am come to send peace: I came not to send peace but a sword"
Matthew 10:34"Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’"
Exodus 32:27I could not find any from the Koran which have an edged weapon in the text. (If you know of any please forward them to me.) I did find the one most often cited as the "reason" behind the terrorist attacks.
"Let those who fight in the cause of God who barter the life of this world for that which is to come; for whoever fights on God’s path, whether he is killed or triumphs, He will give him a handsome reward."
Nothing about the reputed 72 virgins there but I imagine that is the "handsome reward??"Murphy's Laws of Combat in Latin.
As you faithful followers of my ramblings are aware, I love a good quote. While not a quote the following is fairly close and is profound enough to add to our discussion list.
If the enemy is in range, so are you.
Si hostes visibilis, etiam tu.
Incoming fire has the right of way
Missiles invenientes semper potestatem viae habent
Don't look conspicuous, it draws fire
Noli eminere, catapultas allicies
There is always a way
Putamus viam semper esse
The easy way is always mined
Via perfacilis laqueis semper plena
Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo
Conare nullius momenti videri fortasse missilibus careant
Professionals are predictable, it is the amateurs who are dangerous
Peritissimos semper praevidere possumus, rudi autem periculosi sunt
The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions:(a) when you are ready for them, (b) when you are not ready for them
Duobus temporibus oppugnant hostes: cum parati estis, et cum imparati estis
Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at
Collaboratio maximi momenti est, quia eis alterum scopum praebet
If you can't remember, the claymore is always pointed at you
Si id memini non potes, scutula dirumpens semper at te collineata est
The enemy diversion you have been ignoring will be the main attack
Negligentia hostium quam non coluistis primus impetus erit
A sucking chest wound is nature's way of telling you to slow down
Vulnus pectoris sugens ne properetis mos naturae dicendi est
If your attack is going well, you have walked into an ambush
Si impetus bene it, in laqueum incessistis
Never draw fire, it irritates everyone around you
Numquam catapultas allice, iram omnium concitabis
Anything you can do can get you shot, including nothing
Ex quocumque facere poteris te sauciabit, nihilo comprehenso
Make it tough for the enemy to get in and you won't be able to get outSi hostibus difficile incedere facias tu quoque male extricabis
Never share a foxhole with one braver than yourself
Numquam fossam compartire cum viro tibi fortiore
If you are short of anything but the enemy you are in a combat zone
Si nihilo carueris nisi hostibus loco pugnae es
When you have secured an area, don't forget to tell the enemy
Si locum inexpugnabilis facias, memento hostibus de hoc profiteri
Never forget your weapon is made by the lowest bidder
Numquam obliviscaris tua tela facta ab eis qui minima liciti sunt
The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops ...
Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia (1787)
"Don't breed 'em if you can't feed 'em."
Larry Elder
"I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the Bowie Knife."
James Russell Lowell
"The scariest thing about politics today is not any particular policy or leaders, but the utter gullibility with which the public accepts notions for which there is not a speck of evidence, such as the benefits of "diversity," the dangers of "overpopulation," and innumerable other fashionable dogmas."
Thomas Sowell 2002
This one hits close to home with us, every time we try to prove a knife is not what others may think it is we get the shit knocked out of us. To disagree with the established "facts" is akin to raping one’s sister. The sentence is eternal damnation. Sometimes the folks can get pretty rough!
"One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain".
Thomas Sowell 2002
"To fight with a sword may be brutal, but honorable. To fight with a germ is merely disgusting."
Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries Vol 10 No. 3
"The officers will take all proper opportunities to inculcate in the mens' minds a reliance on the bayonet; men of their bodily strength and even a coward may be their match in firing. But the bayonet in the hands of the valiant is irresistible."
Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, General Orders, 20, June 1777
"Deny your soldiers a proper bayonet and you will find a foreign one at your throat."
Attributed to an "old soldier saying." Can anyone tell me where it originated?
"What is scary about our times is how easy it is to get Americans to give up our most basic rights if you just use some pretty words. You can violate the "equal protection of the laws" provided by the 14th Amendment if you use the word "diversity" and you can violate the free speech protections of the First Amendment if you call it "campaign finance reform."
Thomas Sowell April 2002
"Ordinary life has been even more disrupted by the civil war in Sri Lanka than in Israel and has been marked by even more atrocities. Recently, there have begun to appear the first signs of a desire on both sides for peace in Sri Lanka. This was not brought about by a "peace process," by externally imposed cease fires or by photo ops at the White House. It was brought about by decades of suffering by both sides until they were exhausted."
Thomas Sowell, May 2002
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence . . . "
John Adams
"Nothing can be made proof against a fool. The problem is keeping fools and gadgetry separate."
Jeff Cooper
When speaking on the topic of the Iran / Iraq war;
"The only thing wrong with this confrontation is that only one side can lose."
Henry Kissinger
"The Constitution of the United States was designed for a moral and religious people and is inadequate for the government of any other kind"
John Adams
"The facts constitute a sharp sword.
Intelligence constitutes the bone, muscle and sinew which yield the sword.
Wisdom constitutes the will, which causes intelligence to employ the sword."
Winston Churchill
"When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace."
Luke 12:21
Here is an extended quote from Mead about Jacksonian ideas regarding war:
For the first Jacksonian rule of war is that wars must be fought with all available force. The use of limited force is deeply repugnant. Jacksonians see war as a switch that is either "on" or "off." They do not like the idea of violence on a dimmer switch. Either the stakes are important enough to fight for—in which case you should fight with everything you have—or they are not, in which case you should mind your own business and stay home. To engage in a limited war is one of the costliest political decisions an American president can make—neither Truman nor Johnson survived it.
The second key concept in Jacksonian thought about war is that the strategic and tactical objective of American forces is to impose our will on the enemy with as few American casualties as possible. The Jacksonian code of military honor does not turn war into sport. It is a deadly and earnest business. This is not the chivalry of a medieval joust, or of the orderly battlefields of eighteenth-century Europe. One does not take risks with soldiers’ lives to give a "fair fight." Some sectors of opinion in the United States and abroad were both shocked and appalled during the Gulf and Kosovo wars over the way in which American forces attacked the enemy from the air without engaging in much ground combat. The "turkey shoot" quality of the closing moments of the war against Iraq created a particularly painful impression. Jacksonians dismiss such thoughts out of hand. It is the obvious duty of American leaders to crush the forces arrayed against us as quickly, thoroughly and professionally as possible.
In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids claimed the lives of more than 900,000 Japanese civilians—not counting the casualties from the atomic strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is more than twice the total number of combat deaths that the United States has suffered in all its foreign wars combined.
On one night, that of March 9-10, 1945, 234 Superfortresses dropped 1,167 tons of incendiary bombs over downtown Tokyo; 83,793 Japanese bodies were found in the charred remains—a number greater than the 80,942 combat fatalities that the United States sustained in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.
Since the Second World War, the United States has continued to employ devastating force against both civilian and military targets. Out of a pre-war population of 9.49 million, an estimated 1 million North Korean civilians are believed to have died as a result of U.S. actions during the 1950-53 conflict. During the same war, 33,870 American soldiers died in combat, meaning that U.S. forces killed approximately thirty North Korean civilians for every American soldier who died in action. The United States dropped almost three times as much explosive tonnage in the Vietnam War as was used in the Second World War, and something on the order of 365,000 Vietnamese civilians are believed to have been killed during the period of American involvement.
Regardless of Clausewitz’s admonition that "casualty reports . . . are never accurate, seldom truthful, and in most cases deliberately falsified", these numbers are too striking to ignore. They do not, of course, suggest a moral parallel between the behavior of, say, German and Japanese aggressors and American forces seeking to defeat those aggressors in the shortest possible time. German and Japanese forces used the indiscriminate murder of civilians as a routine police tool in occupied territory, and wholesale massacres of civilians often accompanied German and Japanese advances into new territory. The behavior of the German Einsatzgruppen and of the Japanese army during the Rape of Nanking has no significant parallel on the American side.
In the Cold War, too, the evils the Americans fought were far worse than those they inflicted. Tens of millions more innocent civilians in communist nations were murdered by their own governments in peacetime than ever died as the result of American attempts to halt communism’s spread. War, even brutal war, was more merciful than communist rule.
Walter Russell Mead
"I believe that political correctness is the scourge of modern mankind, underpinned with nothing more than semantics, innuendo, touchy feely, if we ignore it it will go away, so stick your head in the sand, symbolism over substance."
Charlie Daniels
"If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom."
Ronald Reagan, 1983
"I have never let let my schooling interfere with my education"
Mark Twain
"War is a Racket. It always has been." (See the commentary section for more)
Smedley D. Butler
"Well, think about it," he said. "They blew up a couple of our best buildings full of lawyers, killed several thousand people, made fools of the US to the whole world, and about crippled the airlines and hotels. Then they made us spend billions on Afghanistan and more billions on stupid security stuff for airports and you still can't get on an airplane without hopping around barefoot like a damn fool, and the FBI gets to spy on us three times as much as it used to. Now we're waiting for the A-bomb to go off somewhere and fry everybody's catfish. So we got mad and blew up some mud huts and never did catch anybody important." "It's a good thing we won. Suppose we'd lost?"
Fred Reed 6/17/02
Sometimes, when I look at all my children, I say to myself, 'Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.'"
- Lillian Carter
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
-Ronald Reagan
The sword itself often incites a man to fight.
Homer, Odyssey, XVI, Circa 1000 B.C.
One Sword keeps another in it's sheath.
George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs, 1640
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs...
Shakespeare: King John, ii, 2, 1596
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.Shakespeare: Macbeth
Rangers of Connaught! It is not my intention to expend any powder this evening. We'll do this business with Cold Steel.
General Sir Thomas Picton, 6 April 1812 to the 88th Foot before the assault on Badajoz.
I beg leave to remind the Cavalry Board that very few people have ever been killed with the bayonet or sabre, but the fear of having their guts explored with Cold Steel in the hands of battle maddened men has won many a fight.
General George S. Patton, The Patton Papers Vol II.
If your close enough to stick 'em, you're close enough to shoot 'em!
Bill Maudlin, via "Willie and Joe"
Reporter at news conference in Washington:
General, what would you ever use a 20,000 lb. bomb for?Reply from General Peter Pace, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
To kill people, next question!
He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.
Luke, 16:36
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
George Orwell
It's funny how much feminism resembles a rejection of everything feminine, almost like vicarious male-chauvinism. A woman who works sixty-hour weeks in some depressing law firm is a hero (feminists don't like the feminine "heroine") but a woman who raises her children is an embarrassment. Which is more important? Continuing the species? Or having another lawyer?
Fred Reed 5/03
Memo to Leftist media outlets: Hamas is a terrorist organization, not a "political party." Learn the difference and quit trying to redefine the lexicon. We don't care how many Nobel "Peace" Prizes are awarded to Yasser Arafat, he is the most notorious terrorist in the Middle East!
Mark Alexander 06/03
The martyr may get 70 virgins, lets just hope they are mean, nasty, retired nuns who taught school for 50 years!! And besides that, what makes you think any of the suicide bombers will even get into heaven? Remember whose standing post on the streets of heaven, the USMC.
Unknown
Despite the squeaking of those who would have it otherwise, the United States of America remains the last free nation on earth. God made it so. The Bill of Rights keeps it so. And the National Rifle Association keeps that so.
Jeff Cooper 8/03
"
For men of understanding do not say that the sword is to blame for murder, nor wine for drunkenness, nor strength for outrage, nor courage for foolhardiness, but they lay the blame on those who make an improper use of the gifts which have been bestowed upon them by God, and punish them accordingly."St. John Chrysostom (circa 341-410 A.D.), from "Treatise on the Priesthood,"
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up your remains, just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, and go to your god like a soldier."
Rudyard Kipling
"Islam is a religion in which Allah (God) requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sent His Son to die for you."
John Ashcroft
Now "Judges" tells us that Samson used the jawbone of an "ass" to slay thousands. Luckily this method of improvised weaponry has fallen into dis-use. If not, think of the multitudes who would be walking around totally void of the ability to speak, chew, spit, and keep their tongues firmly planted.
Unknown
"One weekend a month my ass!"
Marine Reservist in Iraq
"Onward we stagger, and if the tanks come, may God help the tanks."
Col. William O. Darby, U.S. Rangers
To cry to a ruler of gathering war!
Slowly he led to a peach-tree small,
That grew by a cleft of the city wall.
And he said to the boy: `They shall praise thy zeal
So long as the red spurt follows the steel.Rudyard Kipling "The Ballad of the King's Jest"
To-day, across our fathers' graves,
The astonished years reveal
The remnant of that desperate host
Which cleansed our East with steel.
Hail and farewell! We greet you here,With tears that none will scorn--
O Keepers of the House of old,
Or ever we were born!
One service more we dare to ask--
Pray for us, heroes, pray,
That when Fate lays on us our task
We do not shame the Day!Rudyard Kipling, The Veterans, 1907
Thank Heaven! At last the trumpets peal
Before our strength gives way.
For King or for the Commonweal--
No matter which they say,
The first dry rattle of new-drawn steel
Changes the world to-day!Rudyard Kipling, Edgehill Fight
"Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered. Yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
Thomas Paine
One day, men will "beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, [and] neither shall they learn war anymore."
The prophet Isaiah
"How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments."
Benjamin Franklin
"Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know, be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities."
John F. Kennedy 1961
"We fill the universities with people who have no business being there. We then accept their values."
Fred Reed 1/6/04
from Julius Caesar, is:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste death but once.
Of all the wonders that I have yet heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it come.
"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." –
Barry Goldwater
"To act in concert with a great man is the first of blessings."
Marquis de Lafayette, 1778 in a letter to George Washington
"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog."
General of the Armies Dwight D. Eisenhower, 31 Jan, 1958 Republican Convention
"Television bathes us all in the moral and cultural drains from which there is no escape."
Fred Reed 1/6/04
"There is no such thing as equality. It is a beautiful and worthy ideal, but highly impractical as it discriminates against those who excel at what they do."
Unknown
"If it wasn't for the murders, Washington would have one of the lowest crime rates."
Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, D.C.
From the speech; The Strenuous Life. In Roosevelt’s view inaction and isolation were unthinkable;
"If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where man must win at hazard of their lives and at risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world."
Theodore Roosevelt
... you could follow the advice of Meg Whitman (president of eBay). She says that if you cannot tell whether an item is authentic or not, it should not matter to you whether it is authentic or not. Although this is cynical and self-serving on her part, it does make a perverse kind of sense. If a person is too busy, or lazy, or vain (the usual culprit) to learn what is real, then fakes are what he deserves. One could even argue that fakes serve a useful function, in distracting this sort of dabbler away from real items they won't appreciate anyway. In the immortal words of David Petty, "I never show a real bowie knife to a man who buys fakes."
Bernard Levine
No scientific study shows that organic foods are safer, healthier or more nutritious than conventional foods. The "organic" label only means that the products were raised inefficiently without benefit of several modern technologies.
Milk -- whether organic, conventional or conventional produced without use of rbST -- is all the same stuff. Marketing and labels that imply otherwise hardly educate the public. Mostly, they line the pockets of the companies selling them at a premium -- as much as twice the price of conventional milk.
Steven Milloy, Junk Science
We as a nation had better support the War on Terror idea or start looking for deals on prayer rugs and figure out which way is East.
Unknown
Women dominate domestic politics and so we have the Fear State. With them security security security trumps liberty or taking chances of any sort, and so we must ban pocket knives. They are afraid of guns, want kids to wear helmets on bikes, and think tag is a violent and dangerous game.
Fred Reed 9/24/06
Putting unarmed national guardsmen on the border is another cosmetic move, a placebo instead of real medicine. The excuse is that it is not possible to train more than 1,500 border patrol agents a year. Meanwhile, we have trained well over 200,000 Iraqi security forces while guerilla warfare raged around them.
Thomas Sowell
"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American.
If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American."
Theodore Roosevelt