Paul Johnson -

The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy.

Moe Lane -

Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people; it tends to attract the sort who can’t understand that an economic system that cannot feed its own population reliably has failed at the game of Life. Literally.

Milan Kundera -

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.

Frederic Bastiat -

"We must remember that law is force, and that, consequently, the proper functions of the law cannot lawfully extend beyond the proper functions of force."

"When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they…oblige him only to abstain from harming others. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property. They safeguard all of these. They are defensive; they defend equally the rights of all."

"But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men…the law is no longer negative…It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills...they lose their personality, their liberty, their property."

"As it takes from some persons and gives to other persons…the law…is an instrument of plunder."

Jeff Snyder -

...to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless.

Marcus Tullius Cicero -

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

Rickover and the Nuclear Navy: The Discipline of Technology -

The Oak Ridge experience left Rickover a legacy of keen distrust of scientists, an attitude that marked all his future undertakings. He was not opposed to science or to scientists, but scientific truth was not engineering truth, nor was the mission of the scientist the same as the task of the engineer. The scientist in his quest had to exercise strict discipline to exclude human bias, preconception, and prejudice; the engineer in his job had to take these frailties into account, for his machines and devices would be operated by and in the midst of humans with all of their shortcomings. Both approaches were essential, but for practical application of nuclear technology the principles of engineering had to govern.

Glenn Reynolds -

After hearing nonstop from feminists about how fragile and impressionable women are, I’m beginning to think that patriarchy is a good idea.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin -

The way to crush the bourgeoisie [middle class] is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Napoleon Bonaparte -

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

Thomas Sowell -

We should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

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Who will be the first to stop clapping?

Peter Drucker -

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Theodore Dalrymple -

In the tattoo parlour, the customer is always wrong.

Eric Hoffer -

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

Glenn Reynolds -

Communism capitalizes on envy, which is why it’s largely sustained by intellectuals, in whose personalities envy tends to be a particularly powerful component.

Richard P. Feynman -

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is ... If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

Issac Newton -

As to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Sun Tzu -

If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn -

It’s a universal law — intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education, an ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.