Emphasizing Civiization

I fill up my quote file randomly, with what happens to come across my path on a given day. But recent additions have leaned toward the Social Sphere—Civilization and how to get there. Or maybe it's that, as we've known all along, the political, economic, and social spheres are interrelated, and you don't get freedom and prosperity if you sink from civilization into savagery. So it's wise to emphasize civilization.

The Social Sphere--or Civilization Sphere

So here are some of my recent additions to the file:

There always has been, and is now more than ever, only one hope for rescue. If we abide in God’s truth revealed in his Son, then we shall know the truth and the truth will set us free. That is why I say again and again that we must dispense with our verbal arsenal that speaks only in terms of right and left. We have forgotten there is an up and a down. May God help us! We need His transforming power to change our thinking and to give us a hunger for what is true. True freedom is not in doing whatever we wish but in doing what we ought. That has been buried in America. And only one who knows the way out of the grave can give us a second chance to live: Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life that sets us free from within first, before we learn to deal with the lies around us.—Ravi Zacharias, “The Soul of America,” 7-2-2016

The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

—John F Kennedy

The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.—George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30 1789

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day." Lincoln Observed: The Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks edited by Michael Burlingame (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 210.

I feel a strong desire to tell you—and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me—which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking about which is the worse. You see why of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.—Ronald Reagan

Happiness, whether in despotism or democracy, whether in slavery or liberty, can never be found without virtue.—John Adams

All the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make or invent or contrive principles. He can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.—Thomas Paine

Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life.—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"[N]o wall of words, [and] no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."—George Washington (1789)

Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”—Martin Luther King, Jr. (quoting 19^th Century abolitionist Theodore Parker)

This is still God’s world. The forces of evil, working through some mortals, have made a mess of a good part of it. But it is still God’s world. In due time, when each of us has had a chance to prove ourselves—including whether or not we are going to stand up for freedom—God will interject himself, and the final and eternal victory shall be for free agency.

And then shall those complacent people on the sidelines, and those who took the wrong but temporarily popular course, lament their decisions.

To the patriots I say this: Take that long eternal look.

Stand up for freedom, no matter what the cost. Stand up and be counted. It can help to save your soul—and maybe your country.—Ezra Taft Benson

“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

"This is our vision. This is our mission.

But we can only get there together.

We are one people, with one destiny.

We all bleed the same blood.

We all salute the same great American flag.

And we are all made by the same God.

And when we fulfill this vision; when we celebrate our 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began."—President Donald Trump (first speech to Congress 2-28-2017)

Random Quotes

My quote file continues to grow. I add a quote every few days. Over eight years or so, that adds up. It’s the length of a short book. I don’t think I’ve done a post straight from the quote file since last November. So maybe it’s time for another sample.

I thought I’d offer up the last several. As always, they are somewhat random. Not so random that some are on cooking or cleaning. But random while related to The Spherical Model somehow, which covers the political, economic, and social spheres, so that covers a lot of ground. I collect them so I can read and think through these thoughts again. I hope you find them worth reading, and maybe keeping, as well.

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”—James Madison, Federalist 51

“A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion; to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind—if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else—then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease.”—C.S. Lewis

“Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous the authority that kills it; and free individualism uninformed by moral value rots at its core and soon brings about conditions that pave the way for surrender to tyranny.”—Frank S. Meyer

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers."—John Adams

“How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively. Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; Apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the Talisman of moral people.”—Walter E. Williams

“[T]he whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”—Henry Hazlitt

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."—Will Rogers

“Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government—in pursuit of good intentions—tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the costs come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.”—Milton Friedman

“The Constitution is not a living organism. It’s a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”—Justice Antonin Scalia

One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do, and because America remains, as Lincoln said, "the last best hope of earth."—Dennis Prager, “A Dark Time in America,” May 3, 2016

It’s easy to be an American liberal. All that is required are hypocrisy and ignorance.

Ignorance is an absolute must, but especially ignorance of three things: economics, human nature and all of recorded history.—Matt Patterson, American Thinker, 9-5-2016 “How to Be a Liberal”

“Who in their right mind looks at the Internet and says ‘You know what we need? We need Russia, China, and Iran to have more control over this.’”—Ted Cruz

“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.”—Walter Williams

“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what happened once in 6,000 years may not happen again.”—Daniel Webster

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.”—Samuel Adams (1776)