COMMON SENSE; Revisited
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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.
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William J. H. Boetcker
July 07, 2009 at 07:39 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
William J. H Boetcker, The Ten Cannots (1916)You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. -
Frederic Bastiat
July 07, 2009 at 07:42 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, 1850) p. 13, 14.The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay…If such a law is not abolished immediately, it will spread: multiply and develop into a system. -
John Adams
July 07, 2009 at 04:34 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Reinhold Niebuhr, Andrew J. (INT) Bacevich, The Irony of American History (University of Chicago Press, 2008) p. 21.Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.
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Thomas Paine
July 07, 2009 at 04:50 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (R. Bell, Philadelphia, 1776) Introduction.Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides.
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Frederic Bastiat
July 07, 2009 at 04:56 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, 1850) p. 2.Life, liberty and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforhand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
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James Thomson
July 07, 2009 at 06:03 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (R. Bell, Philadelphia, 1776) Front Cover..Man knows no master save HEAVEN, Or those whom Choice and common Good ordain.
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Samuel Adams
July 07, 2009 at 06:06 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Jim Hightower, Susan DeMarco, Swim Against the Current (John Wiley and Sons, 2008) p. 193.It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.
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Thomas Jefferson
July 07, 2009 at 06:09 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Thomas Jefferson to Georgetown Republicans (1809) ME 16:349.The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for.
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Thomas Jefferson
July 07, 2009 at 06:17 pm by COMMON SENSE; RevisitedQuote under:
Karna Small Bodman, Checkmate (Macmillian, 2008) p. 279.A government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have…The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
