Quote-a-palooza
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” —Patrick Henry
“Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh, be not weary of well-doing. Go on in the name of God and in the power of His might.” —John Wesley to William Wilberforce
“[For over two decades, William Wilberforce] fought tenaciously until the slave trade was finally outlawed. And then he fought for another twenty-five years, despite failing health, for the emancipation of all slaves in 1833. The battle had taken forty-six years. Forty-six years! Today, we are tempted to throw up our hands and go home if we lose a single election. In our campaigns against modern moral evils, we are too easily discouraged; we have forgotten how to persevere. Of course we will have fierce opposition; sometimes the opponents will play dirty, as they did with Wilberforce. But that is no excuse to give up. Who do we think we are working for?... In our own era, the campaign to eliminate the killing of unborn children has already taken thirty-four years. And that is just one battle: Christians are fighting as well modern slavery, embryo-destructive research, and the attack on marriage. We had better take a lesson from Wilberforce (and Wesley) and roll up our sleeves—permanently, if necessary... persevering until the battle is won.” —Chuck Colson
“We have to recognize that in this country ‘ideology’ is a scare word. And for good reason. Marxist-Leninism is, to give but one example, an ideology. All the facts of the real world have to be fitted to the Procrustean bed of Marx and Lenin. If the facts don’t happen to fit the ideology, the facts are chopped off and discarded. I consider this to be the complete opposite to principled conservatism. If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free from slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism.” —Ronald Reagan