Firepower & Philosophy: 2009-07-12

7.16.2009

A Year and a Day

Posit by Bryan Reavis at 1:43 AM

All right, all right, so it's actually been only 10 months and 21 days, but still... It's been a rough year, one that has left me little time for recreation, much less the blog. But I am back and hopefully, firmly seated in the saddle. We shall see.

Quotes

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."

-Mohandas Gandhi

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

-Winston Churchill

"Political cartoons are the lowest form of communication human beings have devised."

-Anonymous /k/ommando

"I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave."

-H. L. Mencken

"The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20."

- Sam Cohen; inventor of the neutron bomb

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

-Robert Anson Heinlein