Category: Thought

Never do any enemy a small injury for they are like a snake which is half beaten and it will strike back the first chance it gets.

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513).

The greatest weakness of all weaknesses is to fear too much to appear weak.

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Politique tirée de l’Écriture sainte (Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture, 1709).

Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.

Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, no. 31.

The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.

William Henry Harrison, inaugural address (March 4, 1841); Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States from George Washington, 1789, to John F. Kennedy, 1961 (1961), p. 72. House Doc. 87–218.

Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means.

A scoundrel will be a scoundrel, even with two university degrees.

ἃ πάσχοντες ὑφʹ ἑτέρων ὀργίζεσθε, ταῦτα τοὺς ἄλλους μὴ ποιεῖτε.

What thou thyself hatest, do to no man.

Isocrates, Nicocles, or The Cyprians, 3.61.

In the last three years, the ruling class in the United States has been found out. They tipped their hand with outrageous deployments of grotesque power. They closed the schools without any real basis. They shut the churches. They imposed a deadly shot on unwilling takers who never needed them. They ruined millions of lives, traumatizing nearly everyone, and for a virus that for most people was not a medically significant threat

Jeffrey Tucker, “What Kind of Political Storm Is Coming?” The Epoch Times (September 19, 2023).

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Vol. III, p. 100.

“The conclusion I’ve come to is effectively that the means that these elites use are actually the ends that they seek….

“The means that they’re using — or attempting to use, or beginning to implement — are the ends being sought. They don’t want you driving cars; they don’t want you having an air conditioner; they don’t want you even burning logs in your backyard; now I read, today, they don’t want you to have pets. There’s just an insane amount of stuff. . . . we’re talking about a totalitarian order that’s being ushered in.”

Michael Rectenwald on the Part of the Problem podcast, September 16, 2023.