Pointman’s Page

“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God […]

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.”
–W. Somerset Maugham

“If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without […]

“We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.”
–George Washington

“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
- Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”
– Samuel Adams in a letter to James Warren, […]

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he […]

“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.”
Samuel Adams

The gaping void of comprehension between a speaker of sarcasm ( irony, satire, witty or caustic remark) and his target audience.

“One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country’s problems, just because they say so—or say so loudly or inspiringly. Politicians’ top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending […]

“We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. […]

“The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”
-Czech President Vaclav Klaus

“[L]et us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for… Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.”
-Ronald Reagan

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
—John Adams

“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”
—John Marshall

“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 […]

“You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing is worth dying for, when did this begin? Should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should […]

“Well, Seamus Wright, I’ll keep this brief. On St. Patrick’s Day, you should spend time with saints and scholars, so of course, you know, I have two more stops I have to make. I turned back to the ancient days of Ireland to find a suitable toast, and I think I have found it. St. […]

“It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life . . .”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“. . . popularity may be united with hostility to the rights of the people, and the secret slave of tyranny may be the professed lover of freedom.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“The goal of the ‘liberals’ —as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction […]

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.”
Samuel Adams

“Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.”
Translation: A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer’s hands.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca “The Younger” , circa 45 AD

“If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honor of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, […]