I don't like when people say "I'm doing my best", it seems......lame. I think of this when I hear that-
“Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required". Winston S. Churchill
I don't like when people say "I'm doing my best", it seems......lame. I think of this when I hear that-
“Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required". Winston S. Churchill
Heraclitus
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
John Paul Jones
"I have not yet begun to fight."
General Anthony McAuliffe at Bastogne
"Nuts."
Theodore Roosevelt
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. "
Issac Newton
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."
If you tell a big enough lie,and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
The lie can be maintained only for such a time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequnces of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all it's powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus, by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy to the state..
Joseph Geobbles
More than ever these words ring true considering what's going on in our country today, everytime I hear some liberal open their pie hole, or see anti-fi riots on collages around this country these words come to mind.If anything, the quote above sums up the left, and it's thinking...
Last edited by ralph; 09-24-2017 at 09:06 AM.
Some R. A. Heinlein favorites:
How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show — it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy...censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that “news” is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different—in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government – sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive – and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?
There is an old song which asserts that ‘the best things in life are free.’ Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.
"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." - R. A. Heinlein
One of my absolute favorites and one of the most simply truthful statements ever.
"Comparison is the thief of joy"
-Teddy Roosevelt
And one I use on my squabbling kiddos frequently:
"Leave the wrong with the person who did it."
-Marcus Aurelius
Another fave:
"Unearned suffering is redemptive."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
--Josh
“Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws.” - Tacitus.
"That government is best which governs least..." H.D. Thoreau
There's nothing civil about this war.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it...
...Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. - Thomas Paine
There's nothing civil about this war.
I have read that what he really said was "Not a penny", but why spoil a colorful quote with accuracy?Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.
Representative Robert Goodloe Harper
Last edited by Drang; 09-24-2017 at 10:13 AM. Reason: adding link
Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
Okay, here are a few of my favorites. I found most of them, and found them most meaningful, when I was running a unit and trying to teach our pilots, crew chiefs, etc, how to get airplanes airborne very quickly to defend our region of the country.
"Fear makes men forget, and skill that cannot fight is useless."
-Brasidas of Sparta, 429 B.C.
"Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily."
-Johann Friedrich von Schiller
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
-Theodore Roosevelt
"An amateur practices until he can do it right, a professional practices until he can't do it wrong."
-Stephen Hillier
"The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable."
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
-Aristotle
To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder to do a special thing unique to him and his talents.
What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.
-Winston Churchill
Better in full, imo...Originally Posted by blues
I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
— Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
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