rogamus autem vos fratres corripite inquietos consolamini pusillianimes suscipite infirmos patientes estote ad omnes
1 Thessalonians 5:14
Archives For November 30, 1999
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?…If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
J.R.R. Tolkien
nam si quis existimat se aliquid esse cum sit nihil ipse se seducit (For if any man think himself to be some thing, whereas he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.)
Galations 6:3
All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
Niccolò Machiavelli
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves
Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia (via poorrichardsnews)
Spot on. So sick of these courts and government in general usurping more power than they are constitutionally given. Instead of letting the people decide what is best we allow 9 individuals who are above reproach.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Plato, Πλάτων
I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind – it is my own truth alone – but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have – for what they are – are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.
Patrick O’Brian, Master and Commander
Acerbity [əˈsɜːbɪtɪ] 