COMMON SENSE; Revisited
-
Thomas Paine
July 08, 2009 at 04:59 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (R. Bell, Philadelphia, 1776) p. 48.Youth is the seed time of good habits, as well in nations as in individuals. It might be difficult, if not impossible, to form the Continent into one government half a century hence…The more men have to lose the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel.
-
Helen Keller
July 08, 2009 at 04:52 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
John Cook, Steve Deger, Leslie Ann Gibson, The Book of Positive Quotations (Fairview Press; 2nd edition, 2007) p. 427.I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I still can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
-
Thomas Jefferson
July 08, 2009 at 04:51 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, edited by William Peden (Chapel Hill Univerity of North Caroline Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1954).The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless…From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore…will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.
-
George Santayana
July 08, 2009 at 04:34 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense (2nd ed., Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1924) Chapter XII.Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-
Hermann Goering
July 08, 2009 at 04:28 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Mark Gerzon, Leading Through Conflict (Harvard Business School Press, 2006) p. 22.Naturally the common people don’t want war. Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist disctatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
-
Thomas Jefferson
July 08, 2009 at 04:12 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Thomas Jefferson, Paul Leicester Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1807-1815 Vol. IX (1898) p. 520.I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.
-
John Adams
July 07, 2009 at 07:23 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Written in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787.All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise, not from defects in the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.
-
John Maynard Keynes
July 07, 2009 at 07:21 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
John Maynard Keynes, C.B., The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Macmillion and Company, London, 1920) p. 220, 221.By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
-
Frederic Bastiat
July 07, 2009 at 07:03 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, 1850) p. 59.God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
-
Edward Bernays
July 07, 2009 at 07:01 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Stuart Ewenm PR!: A Social History of Spin (Basic Books, 1998) p. 34, 35.The duty of the higher strata of society — the cultivated, the learned, the expert, the intellectual — is therefore clear. They must inject moral and spiritual motives into public opinion.
