F.W. Faber, (1814-1863)
"Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept . . . The
plastic ####### of the world."
William Faulkner
"A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes
fiction."
William Faulkner
"Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity; it must be produced and discharged and used
up in order to exist at all."
William Faulkner
"The purpose of U.S. foreign policy is protecting the security of Americans, not crusading for goodness abroad."
"How can the public choose sides, when one side has nothing left to surrender? Not until the right is prepared to lose on principles will we ever hope to win this culture war on which the survival of our nation depends."
Don Feder
"Let's pass more gun control laws and buy metal detectors for every public school in the land -- anything but tell kids that life is sacred, because its Creator deems it so."
Don Feder
Tom Feeney
"Living in the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles,
causes you to bump into people not going your way."
Edna Ferber, (1887-1968, American author)
"The determining factor of my existence is no longer my past. It is Christ's past."
"Anyone who's ever filed a tax return or visited the Department of Motor Vehicles
understands that government does two things well: spend our money and waste our time."
Ed Feulner, (1941- ) Founder and President of the Heritage Foundation
"The best way to put more money in people's wallets is to leave it there in the first
place."
Edwin Feulner
"If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part."
Richard Feynman, 1918 - 1988
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person
to fool."
Richard Feynman
"Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she'll expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your life."
W.C.
Fields
"I always keep a supply of stimulant
handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy."
W. C. Fields
"Start every day with a smile and get it over with."
W.C. Fields
"Women are like elephants to me - I like to look at 'em, but I wouldn't want to own one."
"Hello seeker! Now don't feel alone here in the New Age, because there's a seeker born
every minute."
The Firesign Theatre
"Fascism will come
at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans who have been working to
commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering
in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management
of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great
national banker and investor, borrowing billions every year and
spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government
can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great
armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and
preparation for war which will become our nation's greatest industry;
and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning,
regeneration, and domination, all to be done under the authority of a
powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in
effect all the powers, with Congress reduced to the role of a debating
society."
John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching [1944]
"We will not
recognize it as it rises. It will wear no black
shirts here. It will probably have no marching songs. It will rise out
of a congealing of a group of elements that exist here and that are the
essential components of Fascism....
It
will be at first decorous, humane, glowing with homely American
sentiment. But a dictatorship cannot remain benevolent. To continue, it
must become ruthless. When this stage is reached we shall see that
appeal by radio, movies, and government-controlled newspapers to all
the worst instincts and emotions of our people. The rough, the violent,
the lawless men will come to the surface and into power. This is the
terrifying prospect as we move along our present course."
John T.
Flynn,
American Mercury,
February 1941
"The
enemy
aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine, and
barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny
imposed by the deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally
capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoidal
peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal
mines."
John T. Flynn,
As We Go Marching, 1944
"No matter
what the cause, even though it be to conquer with tanks and planes and
modern artillery some defenseless black population, there will be no
lack of poets and preachers and essayists and philosophers to invent
the necessary reasons and gild the infamy with righteousness. To this
righteousness there is, of course, never an adequate reply. Thus a war
to end poverty becomes an unanswerable enterprise. For who can decently
be for poverty? To even debate whether the war will end poverty becomes
an exhibition of ugly pragmatism and the sign of an ignoble mind."
John T. Flynn, As
We Go Marching, 1944
"The
so-called Christian virtues of humility, love, charity, personal
freedom, the strong prohibitions against violence, murder, stealing,
lying, cruelty - all these are washed away by war. The greatest hero is
the one who kills the most people. Glamorous exploits in successful
lying and mass stealing and heroic vengeance are rewarded with
decorations and public acclaim. You cannot, when the war is proclaimed,
pull a switch and turn the community from the moral code of peace to
that of war and then, when the armistice is signed, pull a nother
switch and reconnect the whole society with its old moral regulations
again. Thousands of people of all ranks who have found a relish in the
morals of war come back to you with these rudimentary instincts
controlling their behavior while thousands of others, trapped in a sort
of no man's land between these two moralities, come back to you
poisoned by cynicism."
John
T. Flynn, As We Go Marching, 1944
"Actually
the one
thing [Franklin Roosevelt] did that was based on a very definite
philosophy was the program that consisted of the NRA and the AAA. This
was a plan to take the whole industrial and agricultural life of the
country under the wing of the government, organize it into vast farm
and industrial cartels, as they were called in Germany, corporatives as
they were called in Italy, and operate business and the farms under
plans made and carried out under the supervision of government. This is
the complete negation of [classical] liberalism. It is, in fact, the
essence of fascism."
"You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing
for them or to them."
Malcolm Forbes
"Anyone who says the Confederate Flag is a symbol of hate should be required to go to sensitivity training classes."
Ezola
Foster
Harry
Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)
"I
hate war for its consequences, for the lies it
lives on
and
propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships
it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks
after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support
another."
"The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst."
"He
is a
poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable
him to
understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their
hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland."
"Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing."
Redd Foxx
"Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe."
Anatole France, (1824-1924)
"Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable."
Anatole
France
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know.
It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."
Anatole France
"It is by acts and not by ideas that people live."
Anatole France
"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are
books that other folk have lent to me."
Anatole France
"Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a
rational animal."
Anatole France
"A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It
demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military
equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for
the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant
source of gain."
Anatole France
"To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture."
Anatole France
"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
Anne
Frank
"Anybody who is any good is different from anybody else."
Felix Frankfurter
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have |
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"All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are"This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins."
movable, and those that move."
"All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones."
"In rivers and bad governments the lightest things swim at the top."
"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can arise without His aid?... I... believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and byword down to future ages. And, what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, and conquest."
addressing the Constitutional Congress
"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech."
"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own... Who ever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
"The importation of foreigners into a country that has as many inhabitants as the present employments and provisions for subsistence will bear, will be in the end no increase of people, unless the new comers have more industry and frugality than the natives, and then they will provide more subsistence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out. Nor is it necessary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occasional vacancy in a country for such vacancy will soon be filled by natural generation."
"Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries," 1751
"Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late."
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (1755)
"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of."
Poor Richard's Almanac [1746]
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means.I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
in "The Encouragement of Idleness," 1766
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you."
"How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments."
"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part."
"Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain and most fools do."
"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?"
"There is a difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him."
"He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner."
"If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some."
"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other."
Poor Richard's Almanac [1743], "December"
"Where
liberty dwells, there is my country."
"Anger is never without a reason, but
seldom a good one."
"A little house well filled, a little field well tilled, and a little
wife well willed, are great riches."
"Beer
is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
"No man's life, liberty or fortune is safe while our legislature is in session."
Robert Freeman
Paul Fregosi, Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries, 1998
"The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations."
"This plea comes from the bottom of my
heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as
revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an
armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of
an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on
slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes
"on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not
the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to
future generations."
Milton Friedman, �An Open Letter to Bill Bennett� [September 7, 1989]
"The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another."
Milton
Friedman, (1912-2006) Nobel
Prize-winning
economist
"If you put the
federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there
would be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman,
attributed
"Hell
hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned."
Milton Friedman
"Freedom in
economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly
understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself . . . Economic
freedom is also an indespensable means toward the achievement of
political freedom."
Milton
Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom [1962]
"A society that puts equality... ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor
freedom."
Milton Friedman
"I'm not in favor of no government. You do need a government. But by doing so many things that the government has no business doing, it cannot do those things which it alone can do well. There's no other institution in my opinion that can provide us with protection of our life and liberty. However, the government performs that basic function poorly today, precisely because it is devoting too much of its efforts and spending too much of our income on things which are harmful."
Milton Friedman, June 1992
"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."
Milton
Friedman
"The
heart
of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual,
in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities
according to his own lights... This implies a belief in the equality of man in one sense; in their
inequality in another."
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1962
"Fundamentally,
there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of
millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the
technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state.
The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of
the market place."
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1962
"The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."
Milton Friedman
"He's turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he's miserable
and depressed."
David Frost
Robert
Frost, (1874 - 1963)
"If society fits
you comfortably enough, you call it freedom."
Robert Frost
"The best way out
is always through."
Robert Frost
"In three words I
can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
Robert Frost
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper."
Robert Frost
"The people I am most afraid of are those who are the most afraid."
Robert Frost
"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."
Robert Frost
"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."
Robert Frost
"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places."
Robert Frost, "Desert Places," 4th stanza
"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning
and does not stop until you get into the office."
Robert Frost
"Great hopes make great men."
Thomas Fuller, (1608-1661) English Historian
"He does not believe who does not live according to his belief."
Thomas Fuller
Frank Furedi, "Making a virtue of vice", The Spectator, 12 Jan 2002