"Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion."

-overheard yesterday from a retired U.S. Army chopper pilot

"In Iraq our national security interests and our national values converge. Iraq is truly the test of a generation, for America and for our role in the world. Faced with similar challenges, previous generations of Americans have passed such tests with honor. It is now our turn to demonstrate that our power, ennobled by our principles, is the greatest force for good on earth today. Iraq's transformation into a secure democracy and a force for freedom in the greater Middle East is the calling of our age. We can succeed. We must succeed."

- Senator John McCain

via Andrew Sullivan

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

-Aristotle, via Rand Simberg

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

-George Orwell

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

-Ronald Reagan, "The Goldwater Speech", 1964

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may be always free.

-Ronald Reagan, D-Day Remembrance Speech, 6 June, 1984.

I have seen the rise and fall of Nazi tyranny, the subsequent cold war and the nuclear nightmare that for fifty years haunted the dreams of children everywhere. During that time my generation defeated totalitarianism. As a result, your world is poised for better tomorrows. What will you do on your journey?

-Ronald Reagan

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

-Ronald Reagan

In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

-Ronald Reagan

"One man in a thousand, Solomon says, will stick more close than a brother, but the thousandth man, will stand by your side, to the gallows foot and after."

-Rudyard Kipling, "The Thousandth Man"

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.

-Dr. Johnson

...I'll take the spirit, ingenuity and passion that can plant the American flag on the moon over pre-paid health care. I can buy health care. Thirty three years after watching the event as a ten year old boy, I'm still trying to go to the moon. (Some of us in the Mojave desert may still have few tricks up our sleeve on this one. We're still free to build airplanes and spacecraft from our garages and fly the g**damn things. Try and keep up with a nation that builds working spacecraft in the garage. As a hobby. Out of pocket. For FUN.)

-Bill Whittle, "Freedom", via GeekWithA.45 (emphasis added)

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States.

-George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism"

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

-Winston Churchill

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You win the war, by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country!

-Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.

-Robert A. Heinlein

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without conviction.

-G. K. Chesterton

Paranoia is just reality at a higher resolution.

-anon

"The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness."

-Robert A. Heinlein

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

-John Stuart Mill

You have enemies? Good! That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

-Winston Churchill

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

-Thomas Jefferson

". . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

-Abraham Lincoln, 19 November, 1863, The Gettysburg
Address

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

If a human is modest and satisfied, old age will not be heavy on him. If he is not, even youth will be a burden.

-Plato

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. But the temper and folly of our enemies may not leave this in our choice.

-Thomas Jefferson

Doubting God's existence is okay and perfectly acceptable within Christianity as long as the person doubting remains obedient and committed to the Christian path.

-Real Live Preacher

My favorite definition of Intellectual is: "A person whose education surpasses their intelligence."

-Arthur C. Clarke

The Clattering Train

Who is in charge of the clattering train?
The axles creak and the couplings strain;
And the pace is hot, and the points are near,
And sleep has deadened the driver's ear;
And the signals flash through the night in vain,
For Death is in charge of the clattering train.

-Author unknown, but quoted by Churchill in the excellent biopic, The Gathering Storm.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

-Mark Twain

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

-Winston Churchill, 29 October, 1941

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

-Patrick Henry

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Patriotism is easy to understand in America - it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.

-Calvin Coolidge

Anyone can see a forest fire. Skill lies in sniffing the first smoke.

-Robert A. Heinlein

Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.

-Aristotle

That's one small step for...man, one giant leap for mankind.

-Neil Armstrong, 20 July, 1969

For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

-Holy Bible, Romans 17:18-19

CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power!

-Arthur C. Clarke

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

-John Adams

I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.

-John F. Kerry, in an interview with the Harvard Crimson, 10 months after returning from Vietnam.

I don't believe in litmus tests, but I believe very strongly that the right to choose and the right to privacy are fundamental constitutional rights and I can't imagine supporting a Supreme Court nominee who doesn't share my view of the Constitution.

- John Kerry explains his Roe v Wade litmus test after explaining that he doesn't believe in litmus tests

I don't think anyone in the Congress is going to not give our troops ammunition, not give our troops the ability to be able to defend themselves. We're not going to cut and run and not do the job.

-John F. Kerry on CBS's Face the Nation, 14 Sep., 2003.This was 4 days before voting against the $87 billion needed to fund our military in Iraq.