Jefferson Review

	Jefferson Review
	"Your Liberty is Our Interest"
Home / Archives / Search / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

Quote Archives

Listed Alphabetically by Author

M-P

Tibor Machan

It is too bad that the overall value to human beings of their basic right to private property is so widely and prestigiously denied. It is one of the most beneficent institutions and certainly the bulwark against any kind of tyranny, be it that of a ruling party, a dictatorship, or even of a democratic majority.

Tibor Machan

General Douglas MacArthur
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."

-- General Douglas MacArthur

Machiavelli

“Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.” – Machiavelli (The Prince).

James Madison

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...."

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may seek the provision of the poor… (all of which) would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.”

James Madison, 1789

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” -- James Madison
Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention [June 16, 1788]

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort.... This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." -- James Madison

“All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” -- James Madison

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”

-- James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention [June 20, 1788]

Karl Marx

"The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty."

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

-Karl Marx

H.L. Mencken

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They
have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their
principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made
good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen
goods."

- H.L. Mencken

John Stuart Mill

"A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." -- John Stuart Mill, 1859

... the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or to forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because in the opinions of others to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else.

-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mill, 19th century British philosopher

Ludwig Von Mises

“The very principle of capitalist entrepreneurship is to provide for the common man. In his capacity as consumer the common man is the sovereign whose buying or abstention from buying decides the fate of entrepreneurial activities. There is in the market economy no other means of acquiring and preserving wealth than by supplying the masses in the best and cheapest way with all the goods they ask for.”-- Ludwig von Mises

Richard Mitchell

"..far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in
fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system."

-- Richard Mitchell

Steve Moore

"Uncle Sam Inc. will spend more money in just this year than it spent combined between 1787 and 1900 -- even after adjusting for inflation."

- Steve Moore, president, Club for Growth

Daniel P. Moynihan

~~"Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good." --Daniel P. Moynihan

Edward R. Murrow

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” – Edward R. Murrow

Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984

When they came to arrest the Jews, I did not say anything, because I was not Jewish.
          When they came to arrest the communists, I did not say anything, because I was not a communist.
          When they came to arrest the homosexuals, I did not say anything, because I was not homosexual.
          When they came to arrest me, nobody was left to speak for me.

Albert Jay Nock

"Lord, how the world is given to worshiping words! Eschew the coarse word
slavery, and you get glad acceptance for a condition of actual slavery. A
man is a slave when his labour (sic) products are appropriated, and his
activities are governed by some agency other than himself; that is the
essence of slavery. Refrain from using the word Bolshevism, or Fascism,
Hitlerism, Marxism, Communism, and you have no troubles getting
acceptance for the principle that the State is everything, and the
individual nothing." - Albert Jay Nock

"The theory of freedom rests on the doctrine of natural rights, and I have always held with the Declaration of Independence that this doctrine is a sound one, that mankind is endowed by its Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that one of them is liberty. But the world is fast going away from old-fashioned people of my kind, and I am told that this doctrine is debatable and now quite out of style; that nowadays almost no one believes that mankind has any natural rights at all, but that all the rights it enjoys are legal and conventional, and therefore properly subject to abridgement or suppression by the authority that confers them."

"If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price-fixing, wage fixing, inflation, political banking, 'agricultural adjustment,' and similar items of State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under one head. They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this reason they monopolize public attention, but they all come to the same thing; which is an increase of State power and a corresponding decrease of social power." - Albert J. Nock ( "Our Enemy the State," Chap. 1, first paragraph).

Edmund A. Opitz

"To the extent that a society limits its government to policing functions which curb the individuals who engage in aggressive and criminal actions, and conducts its economic affairs on the basis of free and willing exchange, to that extent domestic peace prevails. When a society departs from this norm, its governing class begins, in effect, to make war upon the rest of
the nation. A situation is created in which everyone is victimized by everyone else under the fiction of each living at the expense of all." --Edmund A. Opitz

P.J. O'Rourke

~“The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy - a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting "Sieg Health" and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind.”-- PJ O'Rourke

~~"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'Rourke, January 10, 2000

~~“The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.”
-- P.J. O'Rourke

~~"If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it’s free." -
P.J. O'Rourke

~~George W. Bush had a plan -- just like every other blowhard who's occupied the White House since Calvin Coolidge. Never mind that this is a free country. Freedom means that people are, you know, free. And, if we're free to do what we want, why does government always have a plan for us?

P.J. O'Rourke

There's only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

-- P.J. O'Rourke

“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
-- P.J. O'Rourke

~~We are a free people. We are self-organizing. You can’t destroy our leadership. We are our leadership. You can’t destroy America by destroying our elite. Think about America’s elite. Think about it down through history. Destroy our elite and about half the time you’re doing us a favor.

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license. -- P.J. O'Rourke

P.J. O’Rourke

(from Cato’s letters, Volume 1, number 1, http://www.cato.org)

"The ugliest strip-mall shopping development is better than the most
beautiful gulag."

Thomas Payne

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave
little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."

-- Thomas Paine ("Common Sense," 1776)

"We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in." --Thomas Paine

Dolly Parton

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb .... and I also know that I'm not blonde.

-Dolly Parton

Louis Pasteur

"When I approach a child he inspires me in two sentiments: tenderness for what he is; and respect for what he may become."

Louis Pasteur

Isabel Paterson

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than is required to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure. If this principle really is not understood, let any parent holding a positive religious faith consider how it would seem to him if his child were taken by force and taught an opposite creed. Would he not recognize tyranny naked?
- Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine

Elvis Presley

“Do what’s right for you, as long as it don’t hurt no one.” – Elvis Presley

Wesley Pruden

"Greed has replaced religion as the national religion, and with greed comes envy." --Wesley Pruden

Pope John Paul II

Whereas at one time the decisive factor of production was the land, and later capital – understood as a total complex of the instruments of production—today the decisive factor is increasingly man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them.”

Pope John Paul II

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest / Search / White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN

To forward this article to a friend, go to your toolbar and click "file" > "send".