"And, behold, I [am] with thee, and will keep thee in all [places] whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done [that] which I have spoken to thee of." - Gensis 28:15 (KJV)

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the curiosity of inquiry." - Albert Einstein

"Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong-but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong! Heaven save us from
poltroons who fear to make a choice. Let us stand up and be counted." - John Joseph Bonforte, a character in Robert A. Heinlein's novel "Double Star"

"Tears are the silent language of grief." - Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)

"Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason." - Jerry Seinfeld

"...the United States government and its agencies have, by far, the largest pile-up of interest-bearing debts ($15.6 trillion), the largest accumulation of unsecured obligations (over $60 trillion), the largest yearly deficit ($1.6 trillion), and the greatest indebtedness to the rest of the world ($4.8 trillion)." - Martin D. Weiss

"Are you where you want to be if it doesn’t work?" - Novelist Louis L’Amour (1908-1988)

Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, [and] his praise in the congregation of saints.
Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.
Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.
For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation.
- Psalm 149:1-4 (KJV)

"As I looked at my two young sons, each with his gun, and considered how much the safety of the party depended on these little fellows, I felt grateful to you, dear husband, for having acquainted them in childhood with the use of firearms." - Elisabeth Robinson, narrating in "The Swiss Family Robinson" by Johann David Wyss

"What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. If all it be nominally that of ‘society’ as a whole of that of a dictator, whoever exercises this control has complete power over us." - Friedrich A. Hayek

"There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime." - Sign posted over the Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Montham Air Force Base, Arizona.

"'Value for value.' Building 'on the square and on the level.' The Hippocratic Oath. Don't let the team down. Honest work for honest pay. Such things did not have to be proved; they were an essential part of life-true throughout eternity, true in the farthest reaches of the Galaxy." - Lawrence Smith, a character in Robert A. Heinlein's novel "Double Star"

"Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its triumphs,-- as the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims. It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law, and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom." - Alexis De Tocqueville, "Democracy in America"

"Believe in your cause. The stronger your belief, the stronger your motivation and per severance will be. You must know it in your heart that it is a worthwhile cause and that you are fighting the good fight. Whether it is the need to contribute or the belief in a greater good, for your buddy, for the team or for your country, find a reason that keeps your fire burning. You will need this fire when the times get tough. It will help you through when you are physically exhausted and mentally broken and you can only see far enough to take the next step." - MSG Paul R. Howe, U.S. Army Retired, from "Leadership and Training for the Fight: A few thoughts on leadership and training from a former Special Operations soldier"

"Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." - 1Th 5:16-18 (KJV)

"He'd forgotten the precautions and the care a human had to observe in the depths of the arctic winter. How very easy it would be to cease to exist, by doing nothing, just being out there, getting lost, freezing." "It's called death by omission," said Ian. - from the novel "Ice Trap" by Kitty Sewell , 2008

"… [M]any gun owners readily concede that their right to keep and bear arms is “not absolute” and is subject to “reasonable” regulation. This concession to moderation or reasonableness is fatal to the right. Yes, there are people who should not have guns. However, the point of the Second Amendment is precisely to deny government the power to decide who those people are, just as the point of the First Amendment is to deny government the power to decide what you may read and hear. Rights are not reasonable, and are not to be made reasonable, because government itself is not reason; it is force." - Jeff Snyder

"The true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful being. His duration reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity. He governs all things." - Sir Isaac Newton

"To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice." - The Magna Carta, Clause 40, 1215

"Paper money was born with the seed of self-destruction within. This is why the Founding Fathers mandated that only gold and silver coin can pass as legal tender; and no bills of credit (promissory notes: i.e. Federal Reserve Notes). Our Constitution is quite clear on this issue." - Douglas V. Gnazzo

"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience." - John Locke (1690)

"When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace." - Luke 11:21(KJV)

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room." - Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley, in Dr. Strangelove. (Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George)

"Every person has a natural, fundamental and inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional right to obtain and carry their weapon of choice without asking anyone's permission." - L. Neil Smith, addressing the Libertarian 2nd Amendment Caucus

"I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere." - Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787

"We must remember that one man is much the same as another and that he is best who is trained in the most severe school." - Thucydides

"Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter". - Benjamin Disraeli

”Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution; for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world." - Daniel Webster

"If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed." - Exodus 22:2

"Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power" - David Ricardo, "The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo", 1817

"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error." - American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442

"And this is the law of the jungle;
As old and true as the sky.
And the wolf that shall keep it will prosper;
But he wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk,
The law runneth forward and back.
For the strength of the pack is the wolf,
And the strength of the wolf is the pack."
- Rudyard Kipling, The Law of the Jungle (from The Jungle Book)

"An armed republic submits less easily to the rule of one of its citizens than a republic armed by foreign forces. Rome and Sparta were for many centuries well armed and free. The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom. Among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible. It is not reasonable to suppose that one who is armed will obey willingly one who is unarmed; or that any unarmed man will remain safe among armed servants." - Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince" (1532)

"Like I told my last wife, I says, "Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it's all in the reflexes." - Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, in John Carpenter's 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China. (Screenplay by Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein. Adapted by W.D. Richter.)

“If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

"Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah.

Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;
There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god.
I [am] the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." - Psalm 81:7-10 (KJV)

"Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises; for never intending to go beyond promises, it costs nothing." - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"As things get worse the next time around, there is going to be violence. When the people realize A.) that what the government has done has been wrong, B.) it hasn't solved the problem, C.) it has made the problems worse, you are going to see people unhappy, you are going to see social unrest, you are going to see violence, and you will probably see some more governments toppled--no question about that. That may sound like a radical statement; it's just the way the world has always worked." - Veteran investment guru Jim Rogers, February, 2010

"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state." - Thomas Jefferson

"Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated." - Calvin Coolidge

"The best strategy is always to be very strong." - Carl von Clausewitz, "On War"

"The disease of modern character is specialization...The specialist system fails from a personal point of view because a person who can do only one thing can do virtually nothing for himself." - Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

"Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness [which] they have prescribed;
To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and [that] they may rob the fatherless!
And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation [which] shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?
Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand [is] stretched out still." - Isaiah 10:1-4

"The people of every country are the only guardians of their own rights and are the only instruments which can be used for their destruction. It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of people themselves, that, too, of the people with a certain degree of instruction." - Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to W.S. Smith, 1787

"I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go." - Martha Washington, from The Life of Washington by Anna C. Reed, niece of a signer of the Declaration of Independence; first published in 1842 by the American Sunday-School Union, now called the American Missionary Fellowship (AMF).

"No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training... The instinct of self-preservation demands it likewise: for how helpless is the state of the ill-trained youth in war or danger!" - Socrates

"He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision." - John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

"In a country like America where riots occur during brownouts, and people stab each other for cutting ahead in service station lines during gasoline shortages, one has to wonder how our society would react to a total disruption of its artificial life-support system. In researching magazine articles I've interviewed urban disaster planning authorities who are more skeptical about saving their citizens from major civil disruption than Mel Tappan ever was." - Massad Ayoob, in "The Truth About Self Protection"

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." - Edward Everett Hale (A descendant of Nathan Hale)

"The LORD God [is] my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' [feet], and he will make me to walk upon mine high places..." - Habakkuk 3:19 (KJV)

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." - C.S. Lewis

"No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer or quicker." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Prepping, to me, is much like a seat belt. I wear a seat belt every time I get behind the wheel. I do not expect to need it. I pray to God that I'll never need it. I'd be ignorant to ignore the possibility that it may save my very life." - Pat Riot

"At the moment of every day I must decide what I am going to do the next moment; and no one can make this decision for me, or take my place in this." - Jose Ortega y Gasset

"If there was a way out of this, someone would have thought of it long ago in the past 4000 years of one government after another spending itself into unpayable, bankrupting debt!" - Richard Daughty (aka "The Mogambo Guru")

“It must be, I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that ‘it can’t happen here’; that one’s own little time and place is beyond cataclysms." - John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." - John 1:5 (KJV)

"People are resilient. Correction, survivors are resilient" - Sam North, from his novel "Another Place to Die", p. 157

"In the Middle Ages, the average human life expectancy did not reach into the teen years, not only because of the extremely high perinatal mortality that heavily skewed the data, but also because Europeans (and much of the world during this time) lived in an unhealthy milieu of filth, poor hygiene, and nearly non-existent sanitation. Superstition and ignorance, along with pestilential diseases and vermin infestation, were rampant. Epidemic and endemic diseases such as the bubonic plague, typhus, variola (smallpox), and the White Death of tuberculosis (consumption) took a heavy toll on the population, both young and old." - Miguel A. Faria, Jr., MD

"If every Jewish and anti-nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic." - Aaron Zelman, co-founder of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

"FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD
TRADING POST & RESTAURANT BAR
American Vodka
Corn Liquor
Applejack
Pure Spring Water
Grade "A" Milk
Corned Beef & Potatoes
Steak & Fried Potatoes
Butter & some days Bread
Smoked Bear Meat
Jerked Quisling (by the neck)
Crepes Suzettes to order.
!!!Any BOOK Accepted as Cash!!!!
DAY NURSERY
!!FREE KITTENS!!
Blacksmithing, Machine Shop,
Sheet Metal Work-You Supply the Metal
FARNHAM SCHOOL OF CONTRACT BRIDGE
Lessons by Arrangement
Social Evening Every Wednesday
WARNING!!!
Ring bell. Wait. Advance with your Hands Up.
Stay on path, avoid mines. We lost three customers last week. We can't afford to lose YOU.
No sales tax.
Hugh & Barbara Farnham & Family, Freeholders" - Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham's Freehold

"There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered seriously looks strange; what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not be considered seriously." - Thomas Schelling

"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality." - Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God, but he that doeth evil hath not seen God." - 3 John 11

"I am fortunate for a wonderful graduate education in the PhD program at Stanford, but I learned more about the way the world works in two months of farming (which saved a wretch like me) than in four years of concentrated study." - Victor Davis Hanson

"Take hope from the heart of a man and you make him a beast of prey." - Marie Louise de la Ramée

"Survival begins not with guns, gold, and a garden. It starts with self-reliance, strong family and communal bonds, a plan of subterfuge, and clandestine acts centered in the refusal to be subdued. You can’t have it all so you had better spend the scarce time, energy and resources you have left to prepare." - Tim Case

"For the record, every program the government put in place in 2009 has failed. Yet, we keep doing the same thing, at a cost of literally trillions of dollars. This is madness to the nth power." - Editor of The Investor's Business Daily, December, 2009

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." - Mark Twain

"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." - Aldous Huxley

"Unattended children will be given an espresso and a puppy." - Sign seen posted at the Real Goods store, Hopland, California

Vizzini: "He didn't fall? Inconceivable!"
Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
- Wallace Shawn as Vizzini, and Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, in The Princess Bride (1987). Screenplay by William Goldman

"Gold - the ultimate money - Why? Because it is the only monetary asset that isn't someone else's liability. It doesn't represent a promise to pay and it isn't dependent up the survival of a particular power or group of powers. In a word, it is valuable because it is." - C. M. Allen, 1974

"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others." - Thomas Jefferson

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." - U. S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, in the Public Utilities Commission v. Pollack decision, 1952

"A danger foreseen is half avoided." - The words in a Chinese fortune cookie recently handed to SurvivalBlog reader David W. in Colorado

"I am the good shepherd, and know my [sheep], and am known of mine.
As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.
And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, [and] one shepherd." - John 10:14-18 (KJV)

"Look at the means which a man employs; consider his motives; observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself." - Confucius [Ware's translation, The Sayings of Confucius, p .26]

"The clocks stopped at one seventeen one morning. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. Each night is darker - beyond darkness. The world gets colder week by week as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived. All the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will have fallen. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and road gangs looking for fuel and food. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke." - Viggo Mortensen as The Man, in The Road, (2009), screenplay by Cormac McCarthy and Joe Penhall. (Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.)

"Now it becomes my duty to carry out the sentence which I have imposed on these men for killing and stealing within the territory under my jurisdiction. However, I want it strictly understood that there will be no undo shooting or cheering or drunken talk when I pull that lever on account it would offend the dignity of the occasion." - John McIntire, as Skagway Sheriff Gannon in The Far Country (1954). Screenplay by Borden Chase.

"We're on a journey - and we don't know it - back to a nation of communities where your character really matters, and where character rests on whether your deeds comport with truthfulness. Many will be dragged kicking and screaming upon that journey, and many a dark night will be passed in the cold and damp on the way. But it will take us to a place where the hearths are burning brightly and the estranged spirits of our national character await a reunion with us: fortitude, patience, generosity, humor. That will be a Christmas to live for and remember" ! - James Howard Kunstler (Author of the post-Peak Oil novel World Made by Hand)

"Science has come full-circle, taking a page from the medieval Church by using fear and persecution to silence sceptics. The oppressed have become the oppressors. Given that most professional scientific bodies and peer-reviewed journals have been active accomplices in this scandal, one wonders how many other so called scientific consensuses have been similarly engineered and waiting for their own ClimateGates before truth is known." - Joanne Nova

"The degree of equality in education that we can reasonably hope to attain, but that should be adequate, is that which excludes all dependence, either forced or voluntary. We shall show how this condition can be easily attained in the present state of human knowledge even by those who can study only for a small number of years in childhood, and then during the rest of their life in their few hours of leisure. We shall prove that, by a suitable choice of syllabus and methods of education, we can teach the citizen everything that he needs to know in order to be able to manage his household, administer his affairs, and employ his labor and his faculties in freedom; to know his rights and to be able to exercise them; to be acquainted with his duties and fulfill them satisfactorily; to judge his own and other men's actions according to his own lights and to be a stranger to none of the high and delicate feelings which honor human nature; not to be in a state of blind dependence upon those to whom he must entrust his affairs or the exercise of his rights; to be in a proper condition to choose and supervise them; to be no longer the dupe of those popular errors which torment man with superstitious fears and chimerical hopes; to defend himself against prejudice by the strength of his reason alone; and, finally, to escape the deceits of charlatans who would lay snares for his fortune, his health, his freedom of thought and his conscience under the pretext of granting him health, wealth, and salvation." - Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet

"To confess you were wrong yesterday, is only to acknowledge that you are a little wiser today." - Charles Spurgeon

"A people may want a free government; but if, from insolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all cases they are more or less unfit for liberty; and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it." - John Stuart Mill, Essays on Representative Government, 1861 & 1862

"God rest you merry Gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay;
Remember Christ our Saviour,
Was born on Christmas-day;
To save our souls from Satan's power,
Which long time had gone astray:
This brings Tydings of Comfort and Joy."
- from "Three New Carols for Christmas", Wolverhampton, printed by J. Smart, circa 1760

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, the the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." - The Gospel of Luke 2:8-11 (KJV)

"Be on your guard against the ruling power; for they who exercise it draw no man near to them except for their own interests; appearing as friends when it is to their own advantage, they stand not by a man in the hour of his need." [2:3]

"Judge not your neighbor until you have come into his place." [2:5]

"In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man." [2:6]

"Let your friend's honor be as dear to you as your own." [2:15]

- Selected quotes from "Sayings of the Fathers" in the Standard Prayer Book, a Jewish prayer book published in 1922. (Translated by Reverend S. Singer.) Special thanks to Alex H. for selecting and transcribing these quotes.

"Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become." - Brooke Foss Westcott

"Assessing, developing, attaining and sustaining needed emergency preparedness, response and recovery capabilities is a difficult task that requires sustained leadership… there is no silver bullet, no easy formula." - William Jenkins

"Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night, because of them.." - Nehemiah 4:9 (KJV)

"Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist - it reduces him to his fighting weight." - Josh Billings

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." - Edwin H. Chapin

"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction." - Thomas Jefferson

"We pay too little attention to the reserve power of the people to take care of themselves. We are too solicitous for government intervention, on the theory, first, that the people themselves are helpless, and second, that the government has superior capacity for action. Often times both of these conclusions are wrong." - President John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

"One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them." - Thomas Sowell

“Sure I am that this day - now we are the masters of our fate; that the task which has been set us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable will-power, salvation will not be denied us.” - Winston Churchill, addressing a joint session of the US Congress, December 26, 1941

"Just as we must learn to obey God one choice at a time, we must also learn to trust God one circumstance at a time…We honor God by choosing to trust Him when we don’t understand what He is doing or why He has allowed some adverse circumstance to occur." - Jerry Bridges

"If it be not to come, it will be now,
If it be not now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V. Scene 2

"Empires and currencies rise and fall, but gold stands strong, monolithic and proud, casting an enormous shadow over all monetary history." - Adam Hamilton, April 2, 2002

"Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think, and act for myself--and then I will obey every law or submit to the penalty." - Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." - Sachel Paige

"When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will." - Frederic Bastiat

"The only thing that can stop a bad man with a gun, is a good man with a gun" - Major Lars Laine, a fictional character in the forthcoming sequel to "Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse", scheduled for release in 2011. The working title is: Veterans: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse. Its storyline will be contemporaneous with that of JWR's first novel, and will have a few cross-over characters. This novel will be set primarily in the southwestern United States.

"Search me, Oh God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. And see if there be and wicked way in me, and lead me to way everlasting." - Psalm 26:2

"The nation needs to return to the colonial way of life, when a wife was judged by the amount of wood she could split." - W. C. Fields

"You need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty: finish high school, marry before having a child, and marry after the age of 20. Only 8 percent of the families who do this are poor; 79 percent of those who fail to do this are poor." - William Galston

"Inflation is the senility of democracies." - Sylvia Townsend Warner

“Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.” - Charles M. Schulz (American cartoonist, 1922-2000)

"We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate." - Thomas Jefferson

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." - Edmund Burke

"Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls down and has no one to help him up!" - Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

"It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country ... in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives -- the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for their country, for us. All we can do is remember." - Ronald Wilson Reagan

"A fine marksman is with a second rate rifle is far more effective than the reverse." - Colonel Jeff Cooper, writing in Mel Tappan's P.S. Newsletter

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." - Patrick Henry

"A wise [man] feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident." - Proverbs 14:16 (KJV)

"We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free." - Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go." - Joshua 1:9

"The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the LORD are true; they are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb." - Psalm 19:7-10

"Mischief springs from the power which the monied interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, and from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privilege. . .which are employed for their benefit." - President Andrew Jackson

"The new danger was that when the peasants finally refused to deliver produce to the towns, the towns would go and fetch it. It had happened in Austria during the blockade. It had happened in the Ruhr and the Rhineland under the provocation of French militarism and enforced idleness. Now there were reports from Saxony -unoccupied Germany -- that bands of several hundred townspeople at a time had taken to riding out into the countryside on bicycles to confiscate what they needed. Anna Eisenmenger's diary included a first-hand account of the plunder of Linz and its neighbourhood in Austria -- the place which Hitler regarded as his home town. She transcribed a letter from her daughter who had been staying there for a few weeks with cousins who ran a small farm with eight cows, two horses, twelve pigs and the usual poultry:

I had driven with Uncle and Aunt to church at Linz. The nearer we approached the more crowded became the usually deserted high road. All kinds of odd-looking individuals met us. One man wearing three hats, one set on top of the other, and at least two coats, excited our amusement … We met people drawing carts piled high with tinned foods of every description … A man and a woman were seated in a ditch by the side of the road and, without the least embarrassment, were changing their very ragged garments for quite new ones. 'Hurry up', the woman shouted to us, 'or there'll be nothing left!' We did not understand this remark until we passed the first plundered shops.

Peaceful Linz looked as if it had been visited by an earthquake. Furniture smashed beyond recognition littered the pavements. But not only provision shops, inns, cafes, and drapers' shops had been looted. Jewellers and watchmakers, too, had been unable to defend their wares. We saw that the inn at which Uncle and Aunt usually stopped after Mass was completely devastated. The old innkeeper caught sight of us and hurried up, almost in tears. He could not open his inn because all the furniture had been smashed and all the provisions stolen; and he strongly advised my uncle to drive home, since the ringleaders of the mob were inciting their followers to ransack the neighbourhood." - From When Money Dies (1975), as recently quoted in Bison Survival Blog

"It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable." - Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière

"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it." - Theodore Roosevelt

"It is a cruel thought that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in every respect, the cursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should effect, by depreciating our money, what the open arms of a powerful enemy could not." - Thomas Jefferson

"I, for one, do not trust Congress to be in charge of monetary policy. But I do not argue that the Federal Reserve System should maintain its independence from the Federal government. I maintain that it should be made completely independent of the Federal government: cut loose and left to fend for itself, just as the Second Bank of the United States was in 1836. It went bust.

I am not so naive as to imagine that this will happen in my lifetime, short of a true social collapse in which several million people die because of the collapse of the division of labor due to hyperinflation. I do not expect this to happen. But I can dream [of such a catastrophe]." - Dr. Gary North

"The righteous cried [out], and the Lord heard, And delivered them out of all their troubles." - Psalm 34:17

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue. - John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint." - Isaiah 40:31

"The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise." - Mark Twain

"You have never lived until you have almost died. For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected will never know." - An unattributed quote, penned on a C-ration box for display at a Marine Corps command post, Khe Sahn, South Vietnam, during the 77-day siege in 1968

"Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money." - Daniel Webster

"With reasonable men I will reason, with humane men I will plead, with tyrants I will show no mercy." - Thomas Jefferson

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in thy sight, O Jehovah, my rock, and my redeemer. " - Psalm 19:14

"I am being unfairly accused. Time will prove that I have done nothing wrong, and I am confident that I will be found innocent of these charges." - Mayor Sheila Dixon, in her blog on January 10, 2009. (Her trial on a dozen theft, corruption, perjury and bribery charges is scheduled to begin on November, 9, 2009. Two others implicated have already pled guilty, and are cooperating with prosecutors in Dixon's case. Dixon is a member of the controversial Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition.

"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 next oblige it to control itself." - James Madison

"I find it simply fascinating how little is currently being written about the big bull market in gold. Where anything is written, it's almost a warning that 'gold is volatile,' that 'speculators are driving gold up,' or that 'the gold shorts are simply being squeezed.' Never a word about the Fed creating new inflationary oceans of liquidity, never a word about the dollar losing its purchasing power, never a word about real money rising against all other asset classes. Silence reigns regarding what could be the most significant bull markets in recent history." - Richard Russell

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine, December 19, 1776

"How rare is gold? If you could gather together all the gold mined in recorded history, melt it down, and pour it into one giant cube, it would measure only about eighteen yards across! That's all the gold owned by every government on earth, plus all the gold in private hands, all the gold in rings, necklaces, chains, and gold art. That's all the gold used in tooth fillings, in electronics, in coins and bars. It's everything that exists above ground now, or since man learned to extract the metal from the earth. All of it can fit into one block the size of a single house. It would weigh about 91,000 tons - less than the amount of steel made around the world in an hour. That's rare." - Daniel M. Kehrer

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." - Ronald Wilson Reagan 

"On the first day of every week each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper." - 1 Corinthians 16:2

"China is now a big buyer of gold and silver for their banks. Chinese television has been recommending that everyone should go to the bank to buy gold and silver. That’s 1.3 billion people getting propagandized. This is a major bullish factor for gold. Perhaps the bankers have met their match." - Howard J. Ruff

"Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are not ... they are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the U.S. for the benefit of themselves and their foreign and domestic swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. The sack of the United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will." - Congressman Charles McFadden

"The gold standard, in one form or another, will prevail long after the present rash of national fiats is forgotten or remembered only in currency museums."- Hans F. Sennholz

"Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me." - Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, The Matrix, 1999. (Screenplay by Larry and Andy Wachowski.)

"Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been scientifically determined to be the optimum level for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year, but to all that is left over from previous years. At the end of the first year, a dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the second year, the 95 cents is reduced again by 5%, leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20 years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar he saved over those years. By the time he has worked 45 years, the hidden tax will be 90%. The government will take virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime." - G. Edward Griffin

"Cynic is a word created by optimists to criticize realists." - Gregory Benford, In the Ocean of Night, 1972

"Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenly [places]. Wherefore take up the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil [one]. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints." - Ephesians 6:11-18

"A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body." - Benjamin Franklin

"You might just as well. . . read the Bible to buffaloes as to those fellows who follow [slavery]; but they have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied in Sharp's rifle." - Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (after whom, Sharps repeating rifles were nicknamed "Beecher's Bibles")

"Once the shooting starts, a plan is just a guess in a party dress." - Michael Yon

"The modern mind dislikes gold because it blurts out unpleasant truths." - Joseph Schumpeter

"It is not what you do not know that will hurt you the most. It is what you think you know, but it just ain’t so!" - Mark Twain

"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that "violence never solves anything" I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms." - Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

"For what glory [is it], if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer [for it], ye take it patiently, this [is] acceptable with God.

For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps." - 1 Peter 2:20-21 (KJV)

"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." - Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England

"The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital." - Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno

"How can we think that setting up the Fed as monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform? The words ‘fox’ and ‘henhouse’ come to mind." - Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin

"Every man who goes into the Indian country should be armed with a rifle and revolver, and he should never, either in camp or out of it, lose sight of them. When not on the march, they should be placed in such a position that they can be seized at an instant's warning; and when moving about outside the camp, the revolver should invariably be worn in the belt, as the person does not know at what moment he may have use for it. - Randolph B. Marcy, Captain, U.S. Army, The Prairie Traveler, 1859

"When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners. As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occasions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well. I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time." - John J. Chapman, Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900

"The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them!" - Sergeant Alvin York

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." - Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, on November 4, 1775

"If you become involved in a crisis situation, you will not rise to the occasion but, rather, default to your level of training." - A phrase first coined by firefighters, but now commonly used by shooting instructors

“In addition to some of the obvious reasons why you don’t want to cut yourself when operating a saw, blood on a bare tool steel blade can cause serious and near-immediate rusting, and good tools deserve better treatment than that. “ - H. J. Halterman, Along the Way, August 2009

"The fact of the matter was that Venice was utterly demoralized. It was so long since she had been obliged to make a serious military effort that she had lost the will that makes such efforts possible. Peace, the pursuit of pleasure, the love of luxury, the whole spirit of dolce far niente (softness for nothing) has sapped her strength. She was old and tired; she was also spoilt." - John Julius Norwich's description of once mighty Venice's surrender to Napoleon

"Nature is cruel and dynamic. It is a daily massacre for the lame and the newborn. Vicious spasms of violence red in tooth and claw tempered by turns of weather that can kill and nourish in the same pastoral event. Most importantly, nature is capricious in the most practical sense: the complexity is so immense as to be almost incomprehensible to human cognition. Complexity theory has tried to capture the distillate of what appears to be random phenomenon but is actually a spontaneous order much like economic market forces. Which brings us to the cruelest joke of all on the Greens: they can’t possibly know what they are talking about." - Bill Buppert

If liberty is not maintained with regard to education, there is no use trying to maintain it in any other sphere. If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else…. No we do not want a federal Department of Education; and we do not want, in any form whatever, the slavery that a federal department of Education would bring.” - J. Gresham Machen in Education, Christianity, and the State

For this is what the LORD says -
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
"Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine. - Isaiah 43:1

"Modern military planners often talk in terms of “threat spirals” when a given threat escalates and inspires a defensive countermeasure. Ideally you should anticipate your opponent’s next escalation and take countermeasures, insulating yourself from the future threat." - James Wesley, Rawles, discussing recent trends in home invasion robberies in
"How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times"

"Learn the crucial skills for self-sufficiency and self-defense. Once you’ve mastered them, share them with others. Future generations need to learn these skills. Raise your children to be God-fearing, practical, and thrifty. That will be a lasting legacy." - James Wesley, Rawles,
"How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times"

"If you are serious about preparedness, then it is time to get out of your armchair and start training and preparing. It will take time. It will take some sweat. It will take money. But once you’ve prepared, you can sleep well, knowing that you’ve done your best to protect and provide for your family, regardless of what the future brings. Don’t get stuck in the rut of simply studying preparedness. Unless the shelves in your pantry and garage are filling with supplies, and unless you are growing muscles and calluses, you are not preparing." - James Wesley, Rawles,
"How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times"

"There is no substitute for mass. Mass stops bullets. Mass stops gamma radiation. Mass stops (or at least slows down) bad guys from entering a home and depriving its residents of life and property. Sandbags are cheap, so buy plenty of them. When planning your retreat house, think: medieval castle." - James Wesley, Rawles,
"How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times"

"The foundational morality of the civilized world is best summarized in the Ten Commandments. Moral relativism and secular humanism are slippery slopes. The terminal moraine at the base of these slopes is a rubble pile consisting of either despotism and pillage, or anarchy and the depths of depravity. I believe that it takes both faith and friends to survive perilous times." - James Wesley, Rawles,
"How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times"

"It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. [It is] better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes." - Psalm 118:8-9 (KJV)

"While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny."- Rev. Nicholas Collin (1745-1831) Fayetteville Gazette (N.C.), October 12, 1789

"The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as "free education" is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education - just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office - and cannot possibly be separated from political control." – Frank Chodorov (1887-1966), Why Free Schools Are Not Free

“The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world. The first step – in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach men to shoot!” - Theodore Roosevelt

"This first stage of the inflationary process may last for many years. While it lasts, the prices of many goods and services are not yet adjusted to the altered money relation. There are still people in the country who have not yet become aware of the fact that they are confronted with a price revolution which will finally result in a considerable rise of all prices, although the extent of this rise will not be the same in the various commodities and services. These people still believe that prices one day will drop. Waiting for this day, they restrict their purchases and concomitantly increase their cash holdings. As long as such ideas are still held by public opinion, it is not yet too late for the government to abandon its inflationary policy.

But then, finally, the masses wake up. They become suddenly aware of the fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly. A breakdown occurs. The crack-up boom appears. Everybody is anxious to swap his money against 'real' goods, no matter whether he needs them or not, no matter how much money he has to pay for them. Within a very short time, within a few weeks or even days, the things which were used as money are no longer used as media of exchange. They become scrap paper. Nobody wants to give away anything against them.

It was this that happened with the Continental currency in America in 1781, with the French mandats territoriaux in 1796, and with the German mark in 1923. It will happen again whenever the same conditions appear. If a thing has to be used as a medium of exchange, public opinion must not believe that the quantity of this thing will increase beyond all bounds. Inflation is a policy that cannot last." - Ludwig von Mises

"Better prepare for confrontation than hope that the enemy will not come;
Better ensure one’s defense is impenetrable than hope that the enemy will not attack." - Sun-Tzu The Art of War, 6th Century, B.C.

"Freedoms assumed become freedoms forgotten, freedoms forgotten will become freedoms lost." – Dr. Ergun Caner, President of Liberty Theological Seminary

"Work as if you were to live 100 Years, Pray as if you were to die To-morrow." - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757

"Human freedom is not a gift of man. It is an achievement by man; and as it was gained by vigilance and struggle so it may be lost in indifference and supineness." - Harry F. Byrd

“Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.” - George Washington, Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior #56

"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival." - W. Edwards Deming

“Every disaster response is local. It’s up to us to take care of our people.” - Mike Manning, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank

"Why did she have to go
So young I just don't know why
Things happen half the time
Without reason without rhyme

Lovely, sweet young woman
Daughter, wife and mother
Makes no sense to me
I just have to believe

She flew up to Heaven on the wings of angels
By the clouds and stars and passed where no one sees
And she walks with Jesus and her loved ones waiting
And I know she's smiling saying
Don't worry 'bout me." - Alan Jackson, from Sissy's Song

"Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn't let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians." - from the novel Hope by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith

"But what do you mean by the American Revolution?
Do we mean the American war?
The revolution was effected before the war commenced.
The revolution was in the minds and heart of the people." - John Adams

"It will not be quick and it will not be easy. Our adversaries are not one or two terrorist leaders, or even a single terrorist organization or network. It's a broad network of individuals and organizations that are determined to terrorize and, in so doing, to deny us the very essence of what we are: free people. They don't live in Antarctica. They work, they train and they plan in countries. They're benefiting from the support of governments. They're benefiting from the support of non-governmental organizations that are either actively supporting them with money, intelligence and weapons or allowing them to function on their territory and tolerating if not encouraging their activities. In either case, it has to stop.

We'll have to deal with the [terror] networks. One of the ways to do that is to drain the swamp they live in. And that means dealing not only with the terrorists, but those who harbor terrorists. This will take a long, sustained effort. It will require the support of the American people as well as our friends and allies around the world." - Donald Rumsfeld, press briefing on September 18, 2001

"When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it.
When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on.
When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends.
And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he doesn't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you." -Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.... The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John Maynard Keynes

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." - Patrick Henry

"When in doubt, overbuild." - Eric Flint, 1635: The Cannon Law

"Trust in the LORD, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
Delight yourself also in the LORD,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass.
He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light,
And your justice as the noonday." - Psalm 37:3-6

"A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality." - Winston Churchill

"...if the debt should once more be swelled to a formidable size... we shall be committed to the English career of debt, corruption and rottenness, closing with revolution." - Thomas Jefferson

"If you're not shootin', you should be loadin'. If you're not loadin', you should be movin', if you're not movin', someone's gonna cut your head off and put it on a stick." - Clint Smith, Director of Thunder Ranch

"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious.But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague." - Marcus Tullius Cicero

"They didn't have rounds for the Buhnder, but we're ammoed up pretty good. Got a discount too, on account of my intimidating manner." - Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Firefly Episode 12, "The Message". Screenplay by Joss Whedon and Tim Minear

"You gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?" - Clint Eastwood in the title role of The Outlaw Josey Wales, (1976). Screenplay by Phillip Kaufman and Sonia Chernus, based on the novel Gone to Texas by Asa Earl Carter, under the pen name Forrest Carter. (He also authored The Education of Little Tree.)

"It is written, 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord,
Every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God." - Romans 14:11

"Now if just a small portion of American bank depositors hear that the FDIC had to tap into the US Treasury for funds, and these depositors feel their banked money is at risk and want to withdraw some of it, the mother of all bank runs could ensue. This could create the day of reckoning that many have predicted. A short banking holiday would have to be declared and who knows what happens from there – troops in the streets, issuance of new currency, martial law? Don’t think those in the Federal government haven’t made plans for such an occurrence." - Bill Sardi

"...the Last Contango in Washington will be different from all previous crises. It will be elemental, devastating, and apocalyptic. It will destroy virtually all paper wealth and render virtually all physical capital idle. It will involve hordes of unemployed people roaming the streets, caring for no law and order, pillaging homes and institutions. It will destroy our freedoms. It may destroy our civilization unless we take protective action." - Antal Fekete

"Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash." - General George S. Patton

"They made up their minds
And they started packing
They left before the sun came up that day
An exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going
Without ever knowing the way?

They drank up the wine
And they got to talking
They now had more important things to say

And when the car broke down
They started walking

Where were they going without ever knowing the way?"

The Way, by Fastball, (1991)

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." - James Madison

"In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies." - Stephen Leacock

"The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:
And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?
Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning:
And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil." - Joel 2:1-32 (KJV)

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." - Parkinson's Law, coined by C. Northcote Parkinson, circa 1957

"Remember, God provides the best camouflage several hours out of every 24." - General David M. Shoup

"Fear not, but trust in Providence, Wherever thou may'st be." - Thomas Haynes Bayly

"Our whole way of life today is dedicated to the removal of risk. Cradle to grave we are supported, insulated, and isolated from the risks of life- and if we fall, our government stands ready with Band-Aids of every size." - Shirley Temple Black

"A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune." - Horace

"He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough." - Proverbs 28:19 (KJV)

"The LORD will perfect [that which] concerneth me: thy mercy, O LORD, [endureth] for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands." - Psalm 138:8 (KJV)

"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not, they are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord." - Lamentations 3: 21-26

"Consider it pure joy, my brethren, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." - James 1:2-4

"It's amazing that people can't see the theft [of their buying power through currency inflation], and even that so many will argue in favor of deflation, meaning that "the dollar is getting stronger" when that has never taken place over the long run in the last 95 years." - Jason Hommel

"When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure;
when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home."
- Thornton Wilder

"My father sent my mother a revolver as a gift, which for her was the symbol of what any young girl wants in a marriage, this was for her the means to stay alive, to kill herself or to die fighting." - Assaela Bielski, as quoted in the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec.

"I told a reporter here a while back--young girl, seemed nice enough, she was just tryin' to be a reporter. She said: 'Sheriff how come you let crime get so out of hand in your county?' Sounded like a fair question. Anyway I told her, I said: Any time you quit hearing 'Sir' and 'Ma'am' the end is pretty much in sight." - Tommy Lee Jones as Terrell County Texas Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, from the movie No Country for Old Men, 2005 (originally written by Cormack McCarthy)

"Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established." - Proverbs 16:3 (KJV)

"How quiet, calm, and solemn, not at all like when I was running," thought Prince Andrei, "not at like when we were running, shouting, and fighting; not at all like when the Frenchman and the artillerist, with angry and frightened faces, were pulling at the swab - it's quite different the way the clouds creep across this lofty, infinite sky. How is it I haven't seen this lofty sky before? And how happy I am that I've finally come to know it. Yes! everything is empty, everything is a deception, except this infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing except that. But there is not even that, there is nothing except silence, tranquility. And thank God!..." - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace Volume 1, Part Three, Chapter XVII

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." - Mark Twain

"Naturally the advance planning that we did on this thing belongs on the credit side of the ledger. So also does the venture into night flying, although in the final analysis the only real effect it had on this operation was to hold us in the area for one more night. Had we found the U-505 at night, there would have been no possibility of capture—that boarding idea was improbable enough in broad daylight, it was impossible at night.

This whole operation is an example of the fact that a military commander controls events only up to a certain point. He can anticipate certain things, perhaps even set the stage for them to happen, and can be ready to cash in on them if they do happen. But whether they will happen or not depends on many things over which he has no control. One is what goes on in the other commander’s mind and another is what goes on in his own. Both of these mental processes are subject to influence from above, or by Divine sufferance, from below. I am not trying to say that we have no control over our destiny on this earth. But I do say that in many things we control it only up to a certain point. Beyond that point nebulous things which occur inside men's brains decide the issue. In this particular instance, I speak from firsthand experience when I say the stuff that ran through my mind for a week or so was all wrong, but the final result was very good....

The only moral I can see to all this is to plan your operations carefully, get the best advice you can from experts, fix it so that if certain things happen, you will not be caught flat-footed, and then, rely on the motto we have stamped on all our pennies—'In God We Trust.'” - From Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea, by Rear Admiral Daniel V Gallery . In June of 1944, Gallery’s Naval Task Group Task Group 22.3 boarded and captured the German submarine U-505, the first capture of an enemy man-of-war at sea since 1915, taken as a Prize of War and still on public display, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

"Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized: In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher, 1788-1860)

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk [therein].

Also I set watchmen over you, [saying], Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken.

Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what [is] among them.

Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, [even] the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it.

- Jeremiah 6:16-18 (KJV)

"If you could borrow $4 trillion at 6% interest, your interest payments alone would be $240 billion per year, $548 million per day, $761,000 per second." - Martin Weiss (author of The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide)

"The president has got to stop promising renewed growth. While this would affect the perceived "standard-of-living" as measured in things like shopping mall sales and vehicle miles driven, it would not necessarily mean diminished "quality-of-life." It would mean different ways-of-life for a lot of people -- for instance, young adults who had expected lifetime employment as corporate executives but who, instead, find themselves ten years from now working at farming. We have an awful lot to get real about." - James H. Kunstler (author of The Long Emergency)

“Oh, I have lost some of the fights I’ve been in, some sudden little dustups for which I wasn’t well-prepared and a couple of larger ones in which I was mostly just involved as a bit player. If you really want to win you can always be certain to pick in advance a much weaker opponent and crush him, but that’s bullying. Or you can take on someone who outclasses you and really deserves a good beating, and wait for a chance when he’s not in his best shape, though you may have a long wait.

But I’ve never lost a scrap with an opponent whose pants were on fire, while he was swatting at angry hornets buzzing around his mouth and eyes, and while rattlesnakes nipped at his ankles. The trick is to be ready for the hornets, snakes and assorted secondary fires yourself.

By the way: this also applies to political fights on a national scale as much as it does to one in the parking lot behind the local roadhouse....” - H.J. Halterman, Along the Way, 2009

"Grown men do not need leaders." - Edward Abbey

"The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged." - General George Washington, then commanding the Continental Army, 26 July 1777

"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard

"Behold, a people shall come from the north, and a great nation, and many kings shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. They shall hold the bow and the lance: they [are] cruel, and will not shew mercy: their voice shall roar like the sea, and they shall ride upon horses, [every one] put in array, like a man to the battle, against thee, O daughter of Babylon." - Jeremiah 50: 41-42 (KJV)

"Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision." - Dick Armey

Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;
But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:
I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;
When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:
For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:
They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.
Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.
For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.
But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil. - Proverbs 1:24-33 (KJV)

"Without a rifle you are nothing, worthless; you are waiting for death, any minute, any second." - Aron Bielski, as quoted in the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec

"Windage and elevation, Mrs. Langdon. Windage and elevation..." - John Wayne as Col. John Henry Thomas, The Undefeated. Screenplay by James Lee Barrett. (The Other Ryan, over at TSLRF reminded me of this movie, which I had almost forgotten.)

"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is the least to be cheap and is never free of cost." - Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

"Never stand when you can kneel, never kneel when you can sit, and never sit when you can get down prone. Take your time, and make each shot count, son." - Donald Robert Rawles, (JWR's father), instruction on shooting positions, circa 1975

"You’ve got a fast car,
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision,
Leave tonight, Or live and die this way." - Tracy Chapman, from her song "Fast Car", 1991

"You can say ‘stop’ or ‘alto’ or use any other word you think will work, but I’ve found that a large bore muzzle pointed at someone’s head is pretty much the universal language." - Clint Smith, founder of Thunder Ranch

"Good luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Bad luck is when lack of preparation meets adversity." - Coach Darrel Royal

" ...vaults of the central banks and return to the pockets and purses of private individuals, for gold is the only really sound money with intrinsic value. The desire to return to gold is understandable, and we hope to see it realized some day, although the argument in favor of the gold standard is not always stated in a valid way. The distinctive function of gold money does not consist in its intrinsic value or in the constancy of that value, which fluctuates even in the absence of government intervention. The excellence of metallic money in free circulation consists in the fact that it renders impossible the abuse of power of the government to dispose of the possessions of its citizens by means of its monetary policy and thus serves as the solid foundation of economic liberty within each country and of free trade between one country and another. - Faustino Ballve, Essentials of Economics, 1958

"That mythical island, whose inhabitants earned a precarious living by taking in each other's washing." - Lewis Carroll

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd." - Bertrand Russell

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember those who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a person but the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way. " - Victor Frankl

"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!" - Samuel Adams

"Of all the wonderful things government says, that's always been just about my favorite [government spending creates jobs]. As opposed to if you get to keep the money. Because what you'll do is go out and bury it in your yard, anything to prevent that money from creating jobs. They never stop saying it. They say it with a straight face and we in the press will write that down. We will say, 'This is expected to create x number of jobs.' On the other hand, we never say that the money we removed from another part of the economy will kill some jobs." - Dave Barry

“My soul finds rest in God alone; for my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress; I will never be shaken.” - Psalm 62:1-2

"Welcome to a depression. Not such a bad thing, really. Just a period of adjustment...a time for fixing, re-organizing, downsizing, and mending. There's a time to every purpose under heaven. This is the time to take stock and shape up.

But wait again. It doesn't feel like a depression. Where are the soup lines? Where are the Okies packing up and moving to California? Where are Ziegfield Girls, the Civilian Conservation Corps and Eleanor Roosevelt? How come this depression's not in black and white?

Well...because this is a 21st century depression. This depression is in living color...and it comes to a world that is much richer than the world of the 1930s. Besides, it is just 1930...not 1932. Give it time." - Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning

"History is not merely what happened; it is what happened in the context of what might have happened. Therefore it must incorporate, as a necessary element, the alternatives, the might-have-beens." - Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regis Professor of Modern History; Oxford University, valedictory address 20 May 1980; quoted in History Today, Vol. 2, Issue 7, July 1982, p. 88

“Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.” - Advice of Sherlock Holmes to his close friend Dr. Watson, circa 1889, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in The Hound of the Baskervilles

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.” - Mark Twain, in a letter, 1908

"Be not deaf to the sound that warns!
Be not gull'd by a despot's plea!
Are figs of thistles or grapes of thorns?
How should a despot set men free?
Form! form! Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen form!" - Afred Tennyson, "The War"

"Thus the men of democratic times require to be free in order to procure more readily those physical enjoyments for which they are always longing. It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste they conceive for these same enjoyments makes them surrender to the first master who appears. The passion for worldly welfare then defeats itself and, without their perceiving it, throws the object of their desires to a greater distance. There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and will lose all self-restraint at the sight of the new possessions that they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all. It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. The discharge of political duties appears to them to be a troublesome impediment which diverts them from their occupations and business. If they are required to elect representatives, to support the government by personal service, to meet on public business, they think they have no time, they cannot waste their precious hours in useless engagements; such ideal amusements are unsuited to serious men who are engaged with the more important interests of life. These people think they are following the principle of self-interest, but the idea they entertain of that principle is a very crude one; and the better to look after what they call their own business, they neglect their chief business, which is to remain their own masters....By such a nation [a wealthy, self-absorbed one] the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual. When the bulk of the community are engrossed by private concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting the upper hand in public affairs. At such times it is not rare to see on the great stage of the world, as we see in our theaters, a multitude represented by a few players, who alone speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd; they alone are in action, while all others are stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change the laws and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country; and then men wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless hands a great people may fall." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America , Vol. 2, 140–4

“ ‘Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, “How do we rob you?” In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.’ ” - Malachi 3:8-10

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country" - Benjamin Franklin

"Inflation is a special concern over the next decade given the pending avalanche of government debt about to be unloaded on world financial markets. The need to finance very large fiscal deficits during the coming years could lead to political pressure on central banks to print money to buy much of the newly issued debt." - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, from commentary in The Financial Times, June 26, 2009

"The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B." - James Yorke

"...the Constitution does not repose in the Congress the power to bail out individuals or private industry: Bailouts violate the Equal Protection doctrine because the Congress can’t fairly pick and choose who to bail out and who to let expire; they violate the General Welfare Clause because they benefit only a small group and not the general public; they violate the Due Process Clause because they interfere with contracts already entered into... Worse still, Congress lacks the power to let someone else decide how to spend the peoples’ money. "- Judge Andrew Napolitano, November 25, 2008

"The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations which create the paper money can not be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business; and when these issues have been pushed on from day to day, until public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given, suddenly curtail their issues, and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium, which is felt by the whole community. The banks by this means save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public." - President Andrew Jackson, Excerpt from his farewell speech on March 4, 1837

"The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail" - Isaiah, 58:11, NKJV

"Never in the history of the world have we faced so much complexity combined with so much incompetence in understanding its properties." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)

"There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous." - Cormac McCarthy (author of the disaster novel The Road )

"How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?" - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, December 5, 1996

"And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave." - Nathan Fillion as Captain Mal Reynolds, Serenity , 2005. (Screenplay by Joss Whedon)

"Economists were created to make weather forecasters look good." - Rupert Murdoch

“He doubted whether they could survive the winter, even though they piled broken furniture into the fireplace. Some accident would quite likely overtake them, or pneumonia might strike them down. They were like the highly bred spaniels and pekinese who at the end of their leashes had once walked along the city streets. Milt and Ann, too, were city-dwellers, and when the city died, they would hardly survive without it. They would pay the penalty which in the history of the world, he knew, had always been inflicted upon organisms which specialized too highly.” - George Stewart Earth Abides , (1948), a classic pandemic novel

“[The fallout in subprime mortgages is] going to be painful to some lenders, but it is largely contained." - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, March 13, 2007

'There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears." - Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. - Will Rogers

"Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind, you'll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible." - Sir Douglas Bader, (1910-1982), The legendary British fighter pilot who lost both legs in a flying accident, but went on to fly as a fighter pilot in World War II.

"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." - Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's Notebooks

"The proliferation of state concealed carry laws has evidently reduced the rate of violent street crime to a considerable extent. When the goblins do not know who is armed and who is not, their professional enthusiasm declines. Now that Britain has made sure (insofar as any law can so insure) that everybody is disarmed, the streets are given back to the bad kid with the baseball bat. We hope they are satisfied." - Jeff Cooper, Cooper's Commentaries

"No one realized how bad the economy was. The projections, in fact, turned out to be worse. But we took the mainstream model as to what we thought -- and everyone else thought -- the unemployment rate would be." - Vice President Joseph Biden, June 14, 2009 (Backing away from the BHO Administration's estimate that "stimulus" funds could "create or save" 3.5 million jobs, instead now promising just 600,000 by the end of the summer.)

"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." - James 5:16

"The Sierra Club's unofficial motto is: 'Take only pictures; leave only footprints.' But my motto is: Take only safe shots; leave only large gut piles." - James Wesley, Rawles

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." - Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

"I have long had a tendency to tie marksmanship to morality. The essence of good marksmanship is self-control, and self-control is the essence of good citizenship.
It is too easy to say that a good shot is automatically a good man, but it would be equally incorrect to ignore the connection." - Jeff Cooper, Cooper's Commentaries Volume 9, No. 4 22/73

"...compared warfare to a grand ballet, where every minute, every second, is carefully choreographed and orchestrated, but when the conductor raises the baton for the first note, two homicidal maniacs jump out of the orchestra pit onto the stage with bayonets and begin chasing the ballerinas - that is warfare. Much the same is true for disaster planning. Nevertheless, because you went through the planning process, you understand the key challenges, the key questions, and the critical issues regarding your specific business - and that is what will give you the flexibility to adapt in a crisis." - General Norman Schwarzkopf

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." - Edwin H. Chapin

"Every collectivist movement rides in on a Trojan Horse of 'emergency'. It was a tactic of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini." - Herbert Hoover, Memoirs: The Great Depression (1951)

"Today, prayer is still a powerful force in America, and our faith in God is a mighty source of strength. Our Pledge of Allegiance states that we are 'one nation under God,' and our currency bears the motto, 'In God we Trust.' The morality and values such faith implies are deeply embedded in our national character. Our country embraces those principles by design, and we abandon them at our peril." - President Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The economics of disaster commence when the holders of money wealth revolt. It is as simple as that. The government has little or nothing to say or do about it…They do not fly flags or demonstrate in the streets to express their revolt; they simply get rid of their money…The duller the holders of money wealth are, the longer the government can go on storing up inflation but, by the same token, the more cataclysmic must the eventual dam burst be. The Germans [of the early 1920s] were among the dullest and most disciplined of all holders of money wealth, and this alone permitted the government to build up so huge a pool of unrealized inflation before the burst." - Jens O. Parsson, Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations

"Beware of Geeks bearing clipboards." - James Wesley, Rawles (In response to a question posed by a consulting client about building permits and zoning bureaucrats)

"Do not move unless it is advantageous.
Do not execute unless it is effective.
Do not challenge unless it is critical." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain

"Once again, recall the story of banks hiding explosive risks in their portfolios. It is not a good idea to trust corporations with matters such as rare events because the performance of these executives is not observable on a short-term basis, and they will game the system by showing good performance so they can get their yearly bonus. The Achilles’ heel of capitalism is that if you make corporations compete, it is sometimes the one that is most exposed to the negative Black Swan that will appear to be the most fit for survival." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)

"The best things in history are accomplished by people who get tired of being shoved around." - Robert A. Heinlein

"Today, prayer is still a powerful force in America, and our faith in God is a mighty source of strength. Our Pledge of Allegiance states that we are 'one nation under God,' and our currency bears the motto, 'In God we Trust.' The morality and values such faith implies are deeply embedded in our national character. Our country embraces those principles by design, and we abandon them at our peril." - Ronald Reagan

"Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty." - Samuel Johnson

"Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law." - William McKinley

"A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes," remarked Crook, with some impatience; "and a Conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for it."
"But who won't allow you," put in the priest in a low voice, "to own your own soot." - G.K. Chesterton, in his novel 'The Innocence and Wisdom of Father Brown'

"In a pandemic, if it's worldwide, you realize in the first five minutes of studying it that you're on your own" - Bob Kennedy

"Today, prayer is still a powerful force in America, and our faith in God is a mighty source of strength. Our Pledge of Allegiance states that we are 'one nation under God,' and our currency bears the motto, 'In God we Trust.' The morality and values such faith implies are deeply embedded in our national character. Our country embraces those principles by design, and we abandon them at our peril." - President Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Once each May, amid the quiet hills and rolling lanes and breeze-brushed trees of Arlington National Cemetery, far above the majestic Potomac and the monuments and memorials of our Nation's Capital just beyond, the graves of America's military dead are decorated with the beautiful flag that in life these brave souls followed and loved. This scene is repeated across our land and around the world, wherever our defenders rest. Let us hold it our sacred duty and our inestimable privilege on this day to decorate these graves ourselves -- with a fervent prayer and a pledge of true allegiance to the cause of liberty, peace, and country for which America's own have ever served and sacrificed. ... Our pledge and our prayer this day are those of free men and free women who know that all we hold dear must constantly be built up, fostered, revered and guarded vigilantly from those in every age who seek its destruction. We know, as have our Nation's defenders down through the years, that there can never be peace without its essential elements of liberty, justice and independence. Those true and only building blocks of peace were the lone and lasting cause and hope and prayer that lighted the way of those whom we honor and remember this Memorial Day. To keep faith with our hallowed dead, let us be sure, and very sure, today and every day of our lives, that we keep their cause, their hope, their prayer, forever our country's own." - President Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Surely, The Lord God does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets." - Amos 3:7 (NKJV)

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -President Theodore Roosevelt

"The difference between truth and fiction: fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain

"Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives." - Ulysses S Grant

"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value -- zero." - Voltaire (François Marie Arouet, 1694-1778)

"All who profess Christianity believe in a Savior, and that by and though Him we must be saved." - Andrew Jackson

"Whole nations depends on technology. Stop the wheels for two days and you'd have riots. No place is more than two meals from a revolution. Think of Los Angeles or New York with no electricity. Or a longer view, fertilizer plants stop. Or a longer view yet, no new technology for ten years. What happens to our standard of living?... Yet the damned fools won't pay ten minutes' attention a day to science and technology. How many people know what they're doing? Where do these carpets come from? The clothes you're wearing? What do carburetors do? Where do sesame seeds come from? Do you know? Does one voter out of thirty? They won't spend ten minutes a day thinking about the technology that keeps them alive." - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain

"Procrastination is attitude's national assassin. There is nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task." - William James

"All over the world, interest rates have been cut and budgets padded. France's deficit is running at 8% of GDP. England is running a deficit of more than 12% of GDP. And the U.S. is mobilizing as if it had been attacked by Martians. On the credit side, the feds have cut rates more than ever before, for a monetary boost equivalent to 18% of GDP, according to Grant. As to spending, $13 trillion has been pledged...an amount equivalent to a full year's annual output of the United States of America. This response is three times more (adjusted to today's dollars) than the U.S. spent to fight WWII. It is 12 times more (relative to GDP) than the total committed to fight the Great Depression." - Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning. May 4, 2009

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams

"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows." - Epictetus (c.55-c.135)

"Governments and central banks are going to lose the war on gold because they refuse to fight gold by the one technique that can give them victory: stop printing money." - Dr. Gary North.

"Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn’t blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won’t cheat, then you know he never will." - John D. MacDonald

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - G.K. Chesterton

"Why should taxpayers who live in apartments, perhaps because they did not feel that they could afford to buy a house, be forced to subsidize other people who could not afford to buy a house, but who went ahead and bought one anyway?" - Thomas Sowell

"In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When... ...the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." - Sir Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The 'learned' usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hoffer

"Properly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a return to nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home." - G.K. Chesterton.

O praise the Lord, all ye nations; praise Him, all ye people. For His merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord. - Psalm 117

"We believe fear of infection will lead to drastically altered behaviour. It may be that swine flu does not tip the human fear scale sufficiently, but if it did, with the economy already in tatters, the results could be catastrophic,...” - Rob Carnell, ING's Chief Economist, April 29, 2009

"Amateurs talk about strategy, dilettantes talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics." - Attributed to various American military officers, but most frequently to General Omar Bradley

"For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane." - Neal Stephenson

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now." - Unattributed American Proverb

"Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility." - G. M. Trevelyan

"If, [when] evil cometh upon us, [as] the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we stand before this house, and in thy presence, (for thy name [is] in this house,) and cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help." - From Jehoshaphat's prayer, 2 Chronicle 20:9 (KJV)

"Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit." - Jeremiah 17:5-8

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. No one can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us." - Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, 1922

Here we live in a country that has a fabulous constitution and all these guarantees, a contract between the citizens and the government - nobody knows what's in it. It's one of the best kept secrets. And so, if you don't know what your rights are, how can you stand up for them? And furthermore, if you don't know what is in that document, how can you care if someone is shredding it?" - Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993), as quoted by Spin Magazine, July 1991

"The bulls will buy stocks believing that we have another bull market on our hands. After having lost 50% of their money since 2007, they'll lose another 20% - 30% when this rally collapses.

The bears, meanwhile, are convinced that there is worse to come. They think the stimulus spending programs will cause inflation. So they're buying gold and commodity stocks sure that when inflation comes, it will cause mining and oil stocks to soar. Maybe it will eventually. But the first big move will probably be down. They, too, will lose big.

That could be the Big Surprise of this depression. It will kill the stock market bulls when the bear market rally collapses... then it will kill the stock market bears when the mining and commodity stocks collapse... and then it will wipe out the middle-class savers when inflation increases and the dollar collapses." - Bill Bonner, writing in the Fleet Street Invest newsletter

"The strength of a Nation derives from the integrity of the home." - Kong Zi (Confucius).

"The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose." - James Earl Jones

"The wise man does at once what the fool does finally." - Baltasar Gracian, (1601-1658)

"With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people." - Friedrich A. Hayek

"Icelanders discovered that trading bits of paper isn’t a productive enterprise. A handful of guys, who fancied themselves as financial experts, were taking out tens of billions of dollars in short term loans from abroad. They were then re-lending this money to themselves and their friends to buy assets, such as soccer teams, cars, homes, etc. Since the entire world’s assets were rising; thanks to people of like mentality paying crazy prices for everything, the Icelanders appeared to be making money. One non-Icelandic fund manager said that its like, “You have a dog and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now, we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks with a billion dollars in new assets. They created fake capital by trading assets amongst themselves at inflated values.” Doesn't that sound like the rest of the world's financial geniuses?" - Don Stott of Colorado Gold, posted in the Whiskey and Gunpowder e-newsletter

"The wavelike movement affecting the economic system, the recurrence of periods of boom which are followed by periods of depression, is the unavoidable outcome of the attempts, repeated again and again, to lower the gross market rate of interest by means of credit expansion. There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 1949

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue." - Thomas Paine

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!" - P.J. O'Rourke

"Those, who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people." - Aristotle 384–322 BC

Joshua S. found a link on the "Kyoto Box" stove.

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From Cheryl: New Food Crisis Looms

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I found a good piece on edible and useful Cattail plants.

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Beginning at Sunrise, Easter morning, the folks at Everlasting Seeds are offering a 20% discount on all products except the Medicinal Garden, just for SurvivalBlog readers. You’ll have to use this link to get the Special price. The sale ends at sundown on Saturday, April 18th

And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,
And then proclaim: "My God, how great Thou art!"

- Excerpt from the Hymn How Great Thou Art, based on the poem O Store Gud, written by Carl Gustav Boberg, in 1885. Translated from the Swedish by Stuart K. Hine.

"There is no education like adversity." - British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli

"We adults are survivors by definition; our first priority now is to make our next generation expert at pulling through.' - Dean Ing, Pulling Through

"It is sometimes said that some complicated task is as difficult as herding cats. Actually, that’s not necessarily all that hard, if you’ve got a laser pointer to give the cats a mischievous little red dot to chase after." - H. J. Halterman, Along the Way, March 2009

"Baruch Atah A-donai E-loheinu Melech Ha`olam Oseh Ma`aseh Breishit." ("Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the Universe who makes the works of Creation.") - From the Birkat Hachamah recitation, April 8, 2009 (14 Nisan 5769). A mitzvah recitation made just once every 28 years.

"From November 1929 to April 1930, the Dow Jones rallied 48%. This rally however was followed by an 85% drop from the April 1929 highs to the July 1932 lows." - Simon Maierhofer in
Is Cash King Or Should You Jump On The Rally Bandwagon?

"It is upon a reckless people: squalid in their demeanor, stupid and arrogant in their politics, economics and military matters; sleazy in their popular culture the savage judgment of history will be rendered. The verdict will be guilty. The penalty will be death, for the people, the institutions and culture which so openly mocks all that is just and true and good about the American Republic. Like Rome, we have replaced Republic with Empire and, like Rome, we will pay the economic price for our folly." - Doug McIntosh, "The Economic Farce is Ending", June 5, 2005

"...and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation [even] to that same time:

and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame [and] everlasting contempt.

And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." - Daniel 12:1-3 (KJV)

"[I] may have been on the losing side. I'm still not convinced it was the wrong side." - Nathan Fillion as Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly

"Call on God, but row away from the rocks." - Hunter S. Thompson

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army." - General. George Washington, to his troops before the battle of Long Island, New York

"Manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietam" ["This hand of mine, hostile to tyrants, seeks peace by the sword, but only under liberty"] - Algernon Sidney's "Book of Mottoes", circa 1659. (Also the original but unofficial Massachusetts state motto.)

Lazar: Halt, who goes there?
Zus Bielski: We go here, Lazar. You only say 'halt, who goes there?' when you don't know who goes there. We go there.
Lazar: Oh. Sorry, Zus. - Defiance (2008) Screenplay by Clayton Frohman and Edward Zwick, based on the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others." - Ayn Rand, (author of Atlas Shrugged )

"If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat." - 2 Thessalonians 3:10(b)

"The closest I ever got to the outdoors was the Ralph Lauren section at Neiman Marcus." - Alicia Coppola as Mimi Clark, Jericho

"The net effect of the failures in banking is that a lot of people have less money than they expected they would have a year ago. This is bad enough, given our habits and practices of modern life. But what happens when farming collapses? The prospect for that is closer than most of us might realize. The way we produce our food has been organized at a scale that has ruinous consequences, not least its addiction to capital. Now that banking is in collapse, capital will be extremely scarce. Nobody in the cities reads farm news, or listens to farm reports on the radio. Guess what, though: we are entering the planting season. It will be interesting to learn how many farmers “out there” in the Cheez Doodle belt are not able to secure loans for this year’s crop." - James H. Kunstler Peak Oil: What's Next?

"These derivatives are the root of the credit crunch. Why? Unlike all other property paper, derivatives are not required by law to be recorded, continually tracked and tied to the assets they represent.
Nobody knows precisely how many there are, where they are, and who is finally accountable for them. Thus, there is widespread fear that potential borrowers and recipients of capital with too many
nonperforming derivatives will be unable to repay their loans. As trust in property paper breaks down it sets off a chain reaction, paralyzing credit and investment, which shrinks transactions and leads to a
catastrophic drop in employment and in the value of everyone's property." - Hernando de Soto

"Know how to use them so well, that you are able defend yourself at two a.m. as you are at two p.m."- Octavia E. Butler Parable of the Sower

"It is the conservative laissez- fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, 'Limit yourself'; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian." - Murray Rothbard

"It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." - President Barack Hussein Obama, describing conservative rural residents, in a presidential campaign fundraising speech in Pennsylvania, April 6, 2008

And David spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day [that] the LORD had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul:

And he said, The LORD [is] my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer,

The God of my rock; in him will I trust: [he is] my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence.

I will call on the LORD, [who is] worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies. - 2 Samuel 22:2-4 (KJV)

"Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts inevitably bring about right results" - James Allen

"I got things under control, that's why people call me an extremist. I'm autonomous. I understand that I declare my independence every day." - Ted Nugent

"How come when I put my AmEx bill on my VISA, it's stupid, but when the government does it, it's stimulus?" - Tamara K., View From The Porch Blog

"Morals—all correct moral rules—derive from the instinct to survive; moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.... Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics—you name it—is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be." - Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers 1959

"Pangloss is admired, and Cassandra is despised and ignored. But as the Trojans were to learn to their sorrow, Cassandra was right, and had she been heeded, the toil of appropriate preparation for the coming adversity would have been insignificant measured against the devastation that followed a brief season of blissful and ignorant optimism." - Ernest Partridge: Perilous Optimism

"Money is a mirror of civilization. Throughout history, whenever we find good, reliable noninflated money, we almost always find a strong, healthy civilization. Whenever we find unreliable, inflated money, we almost always find a civilization in decay." - Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? by Richard J. Maybury, Karl Hess, Kathryn Daniels, and Jane A. Williams

“Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say on the Lord." - Psalm 27:14

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” - Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale, Stockdale's Paradox

"It is good to keep in mind that the screw that tightens the mechanism is also the one that loosens it." - From a Japanese air rifle manual, circa 1971

"No one was psychologically prepared for hard times when they hit, because, according to the tenets of positive thinking, even to think of trouble is to bring it on. Americans did not start out as deluded optimists. The original ethos, at least of white Protestant settlers and their descendants, was a grim Calvinism that offered wealth only through hard work and savings, and even then made no promises at all. You might work hard and still fail; you certainly wouldn’t get anywhere by adjusting your attitude or dreamily 'visualizing' success." - Barbara Ehrenreich

"A government by representatives, elected by the people at short periods, was our object; and our maxim at that day was, 'Where annual election ends, tyranny begins.'" - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Adams, February 26, 1800

"We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land nor, perhaps, the sun and stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. The chart is the Constitution." - Daniel Webster

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and all that is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." - Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address

"By this we have come to know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives in behalf of our brothers. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother having need, and shuts off his compassion towards him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth." - 1 John 3:16-18

"A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool:--an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that." - Alan Ladd as Shane - Shane, 1953. (Screenplay by A.B. Guthie, Jr. and Jack Sher)

"You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but only for a limited period of time. Why should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" - President Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The difference in energy between a .22 Long Rifle cartridge and a .223 Remington is like the difference between a viola and and a bass fiddle. By the way, a viola is a bass fiddle, after taxes." - James Wesley, Rawles

"Until they realize that their agenda is destroying the life savings of millions of Americans, then all I can give you is caution... I'm not saying Mr. President go stare at the Bloomberg quote machine and come to your senses. I just want some sign that Obama realizes the market is totally falling apart and that his agenda has a big hand in that happening. I don't know about you but I felt it everywhere I went this weekend... A young kid took me aside. He said I was right when I said we've elected a Leninist... I felt the total lack of control we all feel right now, the, "It's out of my hands but where's the authority?" The, "Hey it's amateur hour at our darkest moment." - Jim Kramer, CNBC's host of the Mad Money show

"For what, after all, is the stimulus package attempting to stimulate? A restrained life of living within our means? No. It's stimulating consumption. All the big talk of get the credit markets moving again, banks healthy again, balance sheets strong again comes down to this: we need little Susie [Homemaker] to get a loan for a really cool new car she can live without, drive it to a shopping mall to buy cr*p she doesn't need with a credit card she shouldn't have, and return to a home mortgaged at a price higher than she can afford. That way, when she can't keep up with all of it, she'll have to fall back on other credit cards, and bank balance sheets will be strong again. Great!" - Jason Kelly

"When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual -- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker -- and that every device they employ aims at turning man into a manipulatable "animated instrument," which is Aristotle's definition of a slave." - Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change (1963)

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." - 2 Chronicles 7:14 (KJV)

"It's time [for the Federal government] to stop bribing me with my own money." - Rep. Dan Itse of New Hampshire, author of New Hampshire's sadly moribund state sovereignty bill, HR 645.

"When they call the roll in Congress, our Congressmen don't know whether to answer present, or guilty." - Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, Manzanillo, Cuba 1898 (to a Hearst newspaper reporter)

"We are in a period of price discovery. Many shares, businesses, and credits are on offer. Typically, people are reluctant to make bids until they have a clearer idea of what these things are worth. What are they worth now that we’re in a post-Bubble world? No one knows. And no one seems in a hurry to find out." - Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning

"He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that hath no authority for that purpose, when he might preserve it by defense, incurs the Guilt of self murder since God hath enjoined him to seek the continuance of his life, and Nature itself teaches every creature to defend itself." - From a 1747 sermon given in Philadelphia, as quoted by C. Asbury in The Right to Keep and Bear Arms in America: The Origins and Application of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, (an unpublished doctoral thesis in history, available at University of Michigan Graduate Library), pp. 39-40

Wir versaufen unser Oma ihr klein Hauschen,
Ihr klein Hauschen,
Wir versaufen unser Oma ihr klein Hauschen,
Und die erste und die zweite Hypothek!
- Popular drinking song in the Weimar Republic of Germany, 1922 referring to the runaway inflation of the period

Loosely translated:
We are drinking up our granny’s little house,
Her little house,
We are drinking up our granny’s little house,
And the first and second mortgage!

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation." - John Adams

Then Daniel went to his house, and made the decision known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, that they might seek mercies from the God of heaven concerning this secret, so that Daniel and his companions might not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

Then the secret was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. So Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said:

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
For wisdom and might are His.
And He changes the times and the seasons;
He removes kings and raises up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise
And knowledge to those who have understanding.
He reveals deep and secret things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
And light dwells with Him.
“I thank You and praise You,
O God of my fathers;
You have given me wisdom and might,
And have now made known to me what we asked of You,
For You have made known to us the king’s demand.” - Daniel 2:17-23 (KJV)

"Abilene is a town of an armed citizenry. This tends to make relations both peaceful and respectful." - James Butler ("Wild Bill") Hickok, while City Marshal of Abilene, in an interview with an eastern newspaper reporter. (Until Hickok's reply, the reporter had thought Wild Bill himself was the reason.that Abilene was so peaceful for the locals)

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." - Mother Teresa

"The very first, most important rule of gunfighting is this: have a gun. If you do not have a gun, do not come to the gunfight." - Mark Moritz

"I am so firmly determined, however, to test the constancy of your mind that, drawing from the teachings of great men, I shall give you also a lesson: Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: 'Is this the condition that I feared?' It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace the soldier performs manoeuvres, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable toil. If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes. Such is the course which those men I have followed who, in their imitation of poverty, have every month come almost to want, that they might never recoil from what they had so often rehearsed." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4 BC – AD 65, Epistles, Volume I.

"There are certain things that are true no matter how much someone may deny them. In the economic realm, for instance, you cannot legislate the poor into independence by legislating the wealthy out of it. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. Government cannot give to people what it does not first take away from people. And that which one man received without working for, another man must work for without receiving." - Kenneth W. Sollitt

"The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock. Or it will not work because too much damage has already been done, and we will see continued financial deterioration, causing further economic deterioration, with the risk of a feedback loop. We don't think this is the more likely outcome, but as each week and month passes, there is a growing danger of vicious circle as confidence erodes.

This will lead to political instability. We are already seeing countries on the periphery of Europe under severe stress. Some leaders are now at record levels of unpopularity. There is a risk of domestic unrest, starting with strikes because people are feeling disenfranchised. What happens if there is a meltdown in a country like Pakistan, which is a nuclear power? People react when they have their backs to the wall. We're already seeing doubts emerge about the sovereign debts of developed AAA-rated countries, which is not something you can ignore." - Tom Fitzpatrick, CitiBank's chief technical strategist, as quoted by The London Telegraph in November 2008

"It will not be enemies at the gates who overwhelm the American empire. It will be the army of politically armed economic dependents inside the gates. Granny will bring it down. If you want a mental picture image of the end of American empire, imagine a man dressed in uniform, holding an automatic rifle, being pelted mercilessly by an old lady who is beating him over the head with her handbag." - Dr. Gary North

"You've got to understand that we had a big ranch but we only got money once or twice a year out of it. The money wasn't very free. All the money you got was in gold coin. I remember I was nearly fifteen or sixteen years old before I saw much paper money. It was all gold and silver. They didn't have any greenbacks that I remember. My dad would take the wool and mutton to sell, and he'd come back with some tobacco sacks full of twenty-dollar gold pieces. He used to drive three or four-hundred head of sheep down to Cloverdale. They only brought about $2 a head. A big four horse load of wool taken over to Ukiah would pay for the groceries and clothes for the next winter. That was the big trip of the year, when I was a boy. That was when the money came in. That was the way that we used to get paid for things. Gold and silver coins. As kids, they used to let us play with the gold coins now and again. That was quite a celebration." - Ernest E. Rawles (JWR's grandfather)

"With the planned fiscal stimulus (taxing future generations), the National Debt will reach 100 percent of GDP during the Obama administration. When Argentina’s economy collapsed in 1998, their National Debt as a percentage of GDP was 65 percent. The Great Deniers say we are not Argentina. They say we are safe because the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency of the world. This is like jumping off a 20 story building and as you pass the 10th floor someone yells out the window asking how you are doing. You answer, 'Good, so far'." - James Quinn

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." - Seneca 5 BC - 65 AD

"Time and the laws of trade will restore things to an equilibrium if legislatures do not rashly interfere in the natural course of events." - New York Evening Post, June 15, 1819, as quoted in The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies, Murray N. Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007, pp 31–32.

"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." - Niccolò Machiavelli

"Thus says the LORD:
'Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the LORD.

For he shall be like a shrub in the desert,
And shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness,
In a salt land which is not inhabited.

"Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
And whose hope is the LORD.

For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit." - Jeremiah 17:5-8

"Why had they been so anxious to believe that any government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and so emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity? Had they not known that power delegated to government becomes the club of tyrants? They must have known. They had their own history to remember, and that history of five thousand years. Yet, they had willingly and knowingly, with all this knowledge, declared themselves unfit to manage their own affairs and had placed their lives, which belonged to God only, in the hands of sinister men who had long plotted to enslave them, by wars, by "directives," by "emergencies." In the name of the American people, the American people had been made captive." - Taylor Caldwell, from her novel The Devil's Advocate, 1964

"Listen, this whole [heat and air conditioning] system of yours could be on fire, and I couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap [to put the fire out] without filling out a 27-B Stroke 6 [form.] Blo**y paperwork!" - Robert DeNiro as Harry Tuttle, in Brazil.1985. (Screenplay by Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, and Charles McKeown)

"When we reflect that the eyes of the virtuous all over the earth are turned with anxiety on us as the only depositories of the sacred fire of liberty, and that our falling into anarchy would decide forever the destinies of mankind and seal the political heresy that man is incapable of self-government, the only contest between divided friends should be who will dare farthest into the ranks of the common enemy." - Thomas Jefferson to John Hollins, 1811. ME 13:58

"There are two kinds of fool. One says, ‘This is old, and therefore good.’ And one says, ‘This is new, and therefore better’" - John Brunner

"I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest a continued one throughout the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table, I am still devoted to the garden." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles E. Peale, 1811.

"Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigor three hours a day will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe." - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"It was good to be back in the wilderness again, where everything seems as peace. I was alone -- just me and the animals. It was a great feeling -- free once more to plan and do as I pleased. Beyond was all around me. My dream was a dream no longer. I suppose I was here because this was something I had to do -- not just dream about it but do it. I suppose too I was here to test myself -- not that I had never done it before but this time it was to be a more thorough and lasting examination. What was I capable of that I didn't know yet? Could I really enjoy my own company for an entire year? And was I equal to everything this wild land could throw at me? I had seen its moods in late spring, summer, and early fall but what about the winter? Would I love the isolation then, with its bone-stabbing cold, its ghostly silence? At age 51, I intended to find out." - Richard Proenneke, Alone in the Wilderness documentary

"I figured out when I was a little kid that it was better to be a pessimist than an optimist. You see, when you’re an optimist, the best that happens is that things go as you planned, and half the time you’re bitterly disappointed. But when you’re a pessimist, the worst that ever happens is that things to exactly the way you were prepared for them to go, and half the time you’re pleasantly surprised." - Massad Ayoob , January 1, 2009

"One aspect of the red state versus blue state dynamic of the country which is often overlooked, is that while the Blue States have come out on top politically, the red states are much more self-sufficient in resources and infrastructure. In a time of crisis this underlying dynamic would become painfully obvious, as overpopulated and undersupplied states in the North and Midwest began demanding resources from politically disenfranchised states in the South and West where most of the agricultural and energy resources are located. When the force of the federal government is turned to massive redistribution of wealth and resources, those who are on the losing end of that redistribution are going to be very disgruntled. When a central government which you feel does not represent you comes to take the food from the mouths of your children and give it to someone else, suddenly concepts like secession and civil war seem more appealing than they might under ideal conditions." - Dave Nalle

"If you board the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the other direction." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Hoplophobia is a mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them." - The Late Col. Jeff Cooper, To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth

"Americans who are in the bottom 10th of income distribution live better today than kings lived in 1800. They have better health care, cheaper entertainment, cheaper books, longer life expectancy, air conditioning, central heating, and much more. This has come as a result of the private property system, the future-orientation of a broad mass of savers, and the willingness of entrepreneurs to invest their time and money to meet the wants of consumers in the future." - Dr. Gary North

"It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD."

- Lamentations 3:22-26 (King James Version)

"The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger,
since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently;
but he is willing, in great crises to give even his life--
knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live." - Aristotle (B.C. 384-322)

"You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?" - Robert Louis Stevenson

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." - Margaret Thatcher

Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.

Galileo: No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.

- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for re-election and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once." - Alex Kosinski, US Federal Appeals Court Judge

“Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States , an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms? - James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.

"[There is] treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up." - Proverbs 21:20 (KJV)

"Expecting a carjacker, a rapist or a drug pusher to care that his possession or use of a gun is unlawful is like expecting a terrorist to care that his car bomb is taking up two car [parking] spaces." - Joseph T. Chew

"Many citizens are questioning the numerous disconnects between the futures markets in precious metals and commodities and the realities of global supply and demand. As the saying goes: keep an eye on the referee. Maybe this match/game isn't quite as fair as it's advertised." - Charles Hugh Smith

"What we as a nation have done recently is eat the seeds and kill off the game which is necessary to regenerate surplus in the future. We have consumed our future surplus. This is essentially why the Coming Depression will not end in 2009 or 2012--we as a nation have consumed our future surplus via stupendous deficits and the stupendous interest payments which must be paid out of future surpluses." - Charles Hugh Smith

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." - Lou Holtz

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson

"Gold is money, and nothing else." - J.P. Morgan, testifying under oath to Congress before the Pujo Commission, 1913

"A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing." - Proverbs 20:4

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." - John Adams (1735-1826)

"Determine what is best for the government, and know that is what the powers are working to make happen. [Monetary] inflation is what is ‘best’ for a government with enormous debt'. - Ayn Rand

"With the exception only of the period during which the gold standard was in effect, virtually all governments throughout history have used their exclusive power to issue money, as a method to defraud and plunder the people." - Friedrich von Hayek

"The typical individual is addicted to low quality leisure. He watches prime time television. He reads very little. He does not subscribe to economic newsletters or spend much time on financial web sites. He does not think about the distant future, which he defines as anything beyond this month’s paycheck." - Dr. Gary North

"Because of the unprecedented fragility of our intertwined power grid and complex transportation system, the technological West is highly vulnerable to sabotage and chaos." - Camille Paglia

"There was no court in Holland which would enforce payment. The question was raised in Amsterdam, but the judges unanimously refused to interfere, on the ground that debts contracted in gambling were no debts in law. Thus the matter rested. To find a remedy was beyond the power of the government. Those who were unlucky enough to have had stores of tulips on hand at the time of the sudden reaction were left to bear their ruin as philosophically as they could; those who had made profits were allowed to keep them; but the commerce of the country suffered a severe shock, from which it was many years ere it recovered." - Charles Mackay, LL.D., describing the Tulipomania, in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, first published London,1841.

"America’s most precious metals are Gold, Silver, and Blued Steel." - Frank in Maine (a SurvivalBlog reader)

"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence." - 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v. Moylan, 1969

"For more than six hundred years-- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215--there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such law." - Lysander Spooner, The Right of Juries

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." - Harry S. Truman, August 8, 1950

"While 2008 will probably be best known as the year that global stock markets had their values cut in half, it was really much, much more. It was a year in which every major asset class - stocks, real estate, commodities, even high-yield bonds - suffered significant double-digit percentage losses, resulting in the destruction of over $30 trillion of paper wealth. To blame this on subprime mortgages alone would be to dismiss an era of leveraging that encompassed derivative structures of all types, embodying a belief that economic growth was always and everywhere a certainty and that asset prices never go down." - Bill Gross

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." - Edmund Burke, 1770