Insightful Quotes

Cervantes

• “Fortune may have yet a better success in reserve for you, and they who lose today may win tomorrow.“

John Adams

• “A government of laws, and not of men.”
• “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
• “Genius is sorrow’s child.”
• “While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill – little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.”
• “Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion… in private self-defense.”

James Madison

• “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
• “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
• “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”
• “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
• “Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”
• “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
• “In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.”
• “Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”
• “Philosophy is common sense with big words.”

Thomas Jefferson

• “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.”

Benjamin Franklin

• “The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.”
  

Abraham Lincoln

• “Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.”
• “Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”
• “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”
• “Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.”
• “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.”
• “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Misc.

• “Every light carries a shadow.”