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"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -- Albert Einstein
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"The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." -- Mark Twain
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"Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right...when the governor...makes not the law, but his will, the rule." --John Locke
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"A nation dies culturally and spiritually first. Its money and its army are the last to go, but go they do once the light goes out in the nation's soul." --Charley Reese
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"But select capable men from all the people -- men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain -- and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens." (Exodus 18:21)
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"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." --Voltaire
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"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." --George Washington
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"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." --John Adams
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"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." --Thomas Jefferson
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"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president...." --Theodore Roosevelt
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"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." --Barry Goldwater
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"The time has come to turn to God and reassert our trust in Him..." --Ronald Reagan
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"By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher." --Socrates
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"As a general principle you should not force young men to do their duty, but let them do it voluntarily and thereby develop their characters." --Robert E. Lee
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"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times." --Winston Churchill
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"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." --George Bernard Shaw.
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"It is the absence of bars that makes a beast free -- but only the truth can make a man free." --Alan Keyes
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"The building of bridges requires architects who understand the laws of physics. If they substitute their own opinions of mass, weight, and gravity, their bridges will fall and people will die. Similarly, the sustaining of democracies requires citizen-governors who understand the 'laws of nature and of nature's God' that underlie human freedom. If we teach our children to substitute their own opinions about men's relationship to God and to each other, our democracy will fall and die." --Larry P. Arnn
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"To achieve happiness by a succession of pleasures is like trying to keep up a light all night by striking successive matches." --Sir William Beach Thomas
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"[T]he chief moral cause of all that is good, and the best corrector of all that is evil, in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal concerns of men, and the only book that can serve as an infallible guide to future felicity." --Noah Webster on the Bible.
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"Man proposes, God disposes." -- Chinese Proverb
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"We tend to get what we expect." -- Norman Vincent Peale
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"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations." -- Elton Trueblood
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Ability is what you're capable of doing... Motivation determines what you do... Attitude determines how well you do it. Author Unknown
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Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody. -- Mark Twain
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"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." --Thomas Paine
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FOR THE RECORD "The Clinton administration has the dubious honor of breaking the record for the most number of:
Convictions and guilty pleas
Cabinet officials under criminal investigation
Independent counsels named (Attorney General Janet Reno has had to tap more than all other attorney generals combined)
White House lawyers
Claims of executive privilege
Presidential legal bills
Witnesses who fled the country or took the Fifth
Key witnesses who died unexpectedly
Illegal foreign donations accepted
No other elected, sitting president has ever been:
Impeached
Recommended for disbarment
Guilty of violating The Privacy Act
Held in contempt of court and fined for giving false and misleading answers under oath
Sued for sexual harassment
Forced to settle a sexual-harassment lawsuit
Accused of rape
In business and/or good pals with more convicted felons
Now after 39-plus scandals (the White House counsel's office's own internal count) and seven special outside investigations, you'd think Clinton's crookedness would be bumper-sticker obvious to even his sappiest apologist (Dan Rather) and shrillest shill (Eleanor Clift). Fat chance." --Paul Sperry
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I will prepare and some day my chance will come. -- Abraham Lincoln
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To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past. Wisdom is of the future. -- Native American Proverb
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Surrounding yourself with dwarfs does not make you a giant. -- Yiddish Proverb
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The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. -- Chinese Proverb
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Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. -- Mark Twain
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"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truth without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." --Thomas Jefferson
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"[T]he main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average can not be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher." --Theodore Roosevelt
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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. -- Mark Twain
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A fault confessed is half redressed. -- Polish Proverb
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A clear conscience is a good pillow. -- American Proverb
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"We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power.... The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." -- Patrick Henry
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"There is no patent recipe for getting good citizenship. You get it by applying the old, old rules of decent conduct, the rules in accordance with which decent men have had to shape their lives from the beginning .. fundamental precepts, put forth in the Bible and embodied consciously or unconsciously in the code of morals of every great and successful nation from antiquity to modern times." --Theodore Roosevelt
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"Who gossips to you will gossip of you." -- Puerto Rican Proverb
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"Listen to what they say of others and you will know what they say of you." -- Cuban Proverb
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"Don't stare at the steps of success - step up the stairs." -- American Proverb
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"The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night." --Otto von Bismark
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"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time." --Abraham Lincoln
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"The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level." --Theodore Roosevelt
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"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." --Galileo Galilei
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"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." --C.S. Lewis
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"Sometimes when I'm faced with an unbeliever, an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook." --Ronald Reagan
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"Whenever we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." --Thomas Paine
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"I believe in grace, because I have seen it; in peace, because I have felt it; in forgiveness, because I have needed it." --George W. Bush
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"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." --Yogi Berra
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"What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, everything in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything." --Blaise Pascal
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"You never know the best about men until you know the worst about them." --G.K. Chesterton
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"Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest." --Fredrick Douglass
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"A false Friend and a Shadow, attend only while the Sun shines." --Benjamin Franklin
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"As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out." --Mark Twain
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"Adversity toughens manhood, and the characteristic of the good or the great man, is not that he has been exempted from the evils of life, but that he has surmounted them." --Patrick Henry
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"The measure of a man's character can be gauged by how he handles success and power. While there are trials peculiar to adversity, there are temptations perilous in prosperity. Some amount of failure and adversity is the lot of every man.... How a man uses his position of influence says as much, if not more, about his character, than how he responds to struggles and setbacks. If he overcomes the trials of adversity he must face the even greater trials of success. ... We confuse the shadow for the substance when we imagine that fame and power are traits of a great leader. Fame has been given to fools, and power to tyrants. Rather, the real test of greatness is not whether a man possesses fame or power, but how he employs them. ... When one looks at the letters, speeches, and public papers produced by the Founding Fathers, the influence of Biblical Christianity is undeniable.... A recent study of their political writings has demonstrated that the 'source most often cited by the Founding Fathers was the Bible'. ... Thus, the Founding Fathers, contrary to the modern notion of revolution, were not rebelling against law and order. They were not anarchists or revolutionaries. Rather, they were attempting to uphold the law of God against the unjust and oppressive laws of men. They had a profound respect for the 'laws of nature and of nature's God.' So instead of being 'rebels without a cause' they were 'patriots under the law' -- the law of Almighty God. ... Real patriotism, then, is not simply the exaltation of one's country over someone else's simply because it is 'mine'. Rather, it is the courage to stand on God's Word in the face of unjust human authority, whether in one's own country or abroad.... It means appealing to the God of Heaven for justice on earth. And most importantly, it means that we live out our lives, even in the political realm, with our primary allegiance to God. Those who live in this manner...are the real patriots in the eyes of God. ... Patriotism was more than a narrow self-interest, it was a principled position rooted in the immutable laws of nature and God. To be a patriot meant standing on the firm foundation of God's justice in the face of oppression, injustice, and obloquy. A patriot was one who stood with his country because his country stood for right. But should his country turn toward the wrong, then a patriot must stand against his country. A true patriot as well as a genuine leader must always take the higher ground of God's law when confronted with the evils of man's law. ... Government is not the enemy, for it is ordained of God. The enemy to freedom is tyrannical government that presumes to take the place of God." --David J. Vaughan in "Give Me Liberty, The Uncompromising Statesmanship of Patrick Henry"
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"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." --Thomas Paine
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"Character is much easier kept than recovered." --Thomas Paine
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"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties." --Francis Bacon
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"I believe and disbelieve 100 times in an hour, which keeps believing nimble." --Emily Dickinson
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"I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered." --Poet Jean Ingelow
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"Should I keep back my opinions through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my country and an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings." --Patrick Henry
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"The belief in a God All Powerful, wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources." --James Madison
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"It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. ... Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things, which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. ...Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" --Patrick Henry, 23 March 1775
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"Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies." --C.S. Lewis
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"'Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed' was the ninth beatitude." --Alexander Pope
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"There's small choice in rotten apples." --William Shakespeare
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"When angry, count four; when very angry, swear." --Mark Twain
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"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." --Thomas Paine
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"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." --Sir Winston Churchill
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"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." --Winston Churchill
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"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." --Will Rogers
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"So long as we govern our nation by the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights, we can be sure that our nation will grow in strength and wisdom and freedom." --Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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"A truth told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent." --William Blake
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"The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be accessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer." --Noah Webster
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"Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." --Henry Ford
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"You just can't beat the person who never gives up." --Babe Ruth
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"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." --George Washington
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"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win great triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." --Theodore Roosevelt
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