"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation."
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force, and like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
- George Washington
"It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it."
- Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981
"...That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."
- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
- Thomas Jefferson
"These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it Now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph."
- Thomas Paine, The Crisis - December, 1776
"A Republic, madam, if you can hold on to it!"
- Benjamin Franklin, responding to a lady in a crowd, who, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, called out, "Mr. Franklin! What kind of a government have you given us?!"
- Sept. 17, 1787
"Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it."
- Abraham Lincoln - April 6, 1859
"I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!"
- Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower - June 6, 1944
"No other terms than unconditional and immediate surrender. I propose to move immediately upon your works."
- Gen. Ulyses S. Grant to General Simon Bolivar Buckner at Fort Donelson, earning Grant the nickname, "Unconditional Surrender" Grant - Feb. 16, 1862
"I regret that I have but one life to give for my country."
- Nathan Hale, hung as a spy by the British at the age of twenty one - Sept. 21, 1776
"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. - May 31, 1944
"If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't."
- Admiral Hyman Rickover
"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 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 disputes 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 Heinlein, author
"First make sure you're right, then go ahead."
- Davy Crockett
"You can go to hell -- I'm going to Texas!"
- Davy Crockett, Frontiersman, U.S. Senator
"War is an
ugly thing but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of
moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much
worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he
cares about more than his personal safety; is a miserable creature who has
no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better
men than himself. "
"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in
France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with
growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our
island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we
shall
fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the
streets, we shall fight in the hills: we shall never surrender"
"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."
- Edmund Burke, British statesman and philosopher
”Veni, Vedi, Vici” - I came, I saw, I conquered.
- Gaius Julius Caesar, Roman emperor
