Words From the Past Archive
- A few people have even objected to prayers being said in the Congress. That’s just plain wrong. The Constitution was never meant to prevent people from praying; its declared purpose was to protect their freedom to pray. — from President Ronald Reagan’s Radio Address to the Nation on Prayer, September 18, 1982
- No place so sacred from such fops is barred,
Nor is Paul’s Church more safe than Paul’s Churchyard:
Nay, fly to altars; there they’ll talk you dead,
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread – from An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope - A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice. — Unsourced. Attributed to Thomas Paine
- The very first thing the President did was to show me the new Presidential Seal, which he had just redesigned. He explained, ‘The seal has to go everywhere the President goes. It must be displayed upon the lectern when he speaks. The eagle used to face the arrows but I have re-designed it so that it now faces the olive branches… what do you think?’ I said, ‘Mr. President, with the greatest respect, I would prefer the American eagle’s neck to be on a swivel so that it could face the olive branches or the arrows, as the occasion might demand.’ — What Winston Churchill said in an exchange (March 4, 1946) with Harry S. Truman aboard the Presidential train in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station before journeying to Fulton, Missouri; as quoted in “The Genius and Wit of Winston Churchill” by Robin Lawson (from here)
- This reminds me of a conversation which I once had with the Hon. Frederick Douglass. At one time Mr. Douglass was traveling in the state of Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in the baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price for his passage that the other passengers had paid. When some of the white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass, and one of them said to him: “I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner,” Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: “They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.” — from Up From Slavery: An Autobiography, by Booker T. Washington
- If any man err from the right way, it is his own misfortune, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in the things of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in that which is to come. — John Locke (from A Letter Concerning Toleration) (text available from here)
- Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back an ass. — Japanese proverb (from here)
- Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means-to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal-would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face. — Louis Dembitz Brandeis
- Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. — appeared originally in the Greek play Medea by Euripides.
- About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends. — President Herbert Hoover.
- The best of men are but men at best. — General John Lambert (1619-83)
- But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. — Edmund Burke
- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. — John 1:1-5
- Government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. — Gerald R. Ford
- Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. — John Kennedy
- Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. — Hanlon’s razor
