Quote-a-palooza
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." —George Washington
"In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes." —John Ruskin
"The attitude of the state and culture toward the value of human life is in constant flux. Like the Dow Jones Industrial Averages, it is up one day and down the next. Some want to use embryonic stem cells for research into all sorts of afflictions and diseases, though no clinical tests have proved they are effective and stem cells from placentas and other sources, which cause no harm to human life, are available. Life in the womb—indeed life emerging from the womb—may be destroyed at any time and for any reason. There is pressure at the other end of life to euthanize the elderly and handicapped when they become 'burdensome' to family members or 'too costly' to the state." —Cal Thomas
"Only the morally obtuse—or perverse—cannot recognize the difference between a terrorist group that targets civilian population centers with anti-personnel weapons designed to maximize civilian casualties and a democracy that seeks to prevent terrorism by employing smart bombs designed to minimize civilian casualties. [UN Secretary General Kofi] Annan knows better than to suggest a moral equivalence. He is fully aware of the tactic employed by terrorists of launching their rockets from, and hiding behind, civilian shields, so as to make democracies have to kill some civilians to get at the terrorists... [E]ven worse than the one-sided condemnations that ignore Hezbollah and Hamas are the numerous statements that perversely suggest moral equivalence. The UN peacekeepers on the Lebanese border have turned out to be collaborators with Hezbollah, videotaping the Hezbollah kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in 2000 and then refusing to release the video—which could have helped in the rescue—on the grounds that it might compromise their 'neutrality.' This is a real test for the UN. If it cannot—or will not—distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution." —Alan Dershowitz
"Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself... [I] hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts." —Ronald Reagan
"[T]he government spending rate...has grown by more than $800 billion—nearly 50%—during the Bush administration. Excluding war and homeland security expenditures, it has grown about 7% a year, and virtually nothing has been done to stem it. A veto or two by the president would help, and so would some spine in the Republican House and Senate. A recent National Taxpayers Union Foundation study found that in 2005 the average Republican House member voted to increase discretionary spending by $168 billion, close to the average Democrat's $178 billion. Republicans senators' votes averaged $183 billion in new spending; Democratic senators $217 billion. Compare these numbers to the golden days of the Gingrich leadership: In 1997 the average House member voted to reduce spending by $6 billion while the average senator's increase was only $4 billion. So there is still economic work to be done in the White House and Congress. But President Bush's tax reductions have been the most successful economic growth and opportunity work of any president in a quarter of a century. To paraphrase JFK, tax rate reduction is indeed a rising tide that lifts all individuals to greater opportunity." —former Delaware Governor Pete du Pont
"I believe the Left has been wrong on virtually every great moral issue in the last 30 years. During that period, it was wrong on the Cold War—it devoted far more energy to fighting anti-communism than to fighting communism. It was wrong for attacking Israel for its destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. It was wrong on welfare. It was wrong in its demanding less morally and intellectually from black Americans than from all other Americans. It was wrong in advocating bilingual education for children of immigrants. It was wrong in generally holding American society rather than violent criminals responsible for violent crime. It was wrong in imposing its view on abortion on America through the courts rather than through the democratic process... It was wrong in identifying 'flag waving' with fascism. It was wrong in supporting the teachers' unions rather than students and educational reform. It was wrong in allying itself with trial lawyers and blocking tort reform. It was wrong in blocking the military from recruiting on campuses and teaching a generation of young Americans that 'war is not the answer' when war is at times the one moral answer... In just about every instance, one could say that the Left was foolish, the Left was naive, the Left was wrong, even that the Left was dangerous." —Dennis Prager