Ranger Rick is a voracious reader, a collector of snippets of wisdom and sayings, verses and phrases. I put forth these for your enjoyment, reflection, and satisfaction. If they happen to anger, cause consternation, or create disharmony in your life, I apologize. Regardless of the author of the phrase or statement, please read it twice before you discount the idea(s) put forth.
“The American people, the m
ost generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backward ourselves. Those who believe we can, have no business leading the nation.” — Ronald Reagan
“Freedom has a taste for those who fight and almost die that the protected never know.” — Vietnam POW
“….. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.” — Ronald Reagan
“If a man does only what is required of him, he is a slave. If a man does more than is required of him, he is a free man.” — Chinese Proverb
“If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating context of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels and or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands that feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” — Samuel Adams commenting on “Americans” loyal to the Crown
“… We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle. We’ve exploited the poor and called it a lottery. We’ve neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. In the name of choice, we have killed our unborn. In the name of right to life, we have killed abortionists.
“We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem. We have abused power and called it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it taxes. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. ….” — Pastor Joe White of Central Christian Church in Wichita, KN, addressing the Kansas House of Rep. in opening a prayer at a session in 1996.
“A mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” — William Arthur Ward
“History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.” — General Douglas MacArthur (a real leader and student of history)
“By 1940, the literacy figures for all states stood at 96 percent for whites – 80 percent for blacks. Notice for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were still literate. Six decades later, at the end of the 20th century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled, despite the fact that we spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago.” — Vin Suprynowicz
“Life is hard. It is even harder if you’re stupid.” — John Wayne
“We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did, but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.” — Thomas Sowell
“We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.” — Davy Crockett
“Democrats have spilled more oratory and convinced less voters than any party I know of, outside of Socialists. — Will Rogers
“Personally, I’m for foreign aid. And the sooner we get it, the better.” — Bob Hope
“If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock.” — Justice Arthur Goldberg
“Congress may be going home for the holidays soon. How can you beat a Christmas gift like that?” — Bob Hope
“Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating. Youngsters need good role models more than they need critics. It is one of a parent’s greatest responsibilities and opportunities. Too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.” — John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate more programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.” — Barry Goldwater
“Inches make a champion.” — Vince Lombardi
“Never mistake motion for action.” — Ernest Hemingway
“Evil cannot be accommodated. It must be defeated.” — Cal Thomas
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” — Sir Winston Churchill
“Time and money well spent in helping men do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.” — Henry Ford
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.” — George Washington Carver
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” — Alexis de Tocqueville
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” — Thomas Jefferson
“More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s ‘lost decade’ in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today.” — Two hundred economists in an open letter disseminated by the Cato Institute.
“We all know how we got into this economic mess. We spent too much, borrowed with abandon, and acted like the bills would never come due. So what’s the prescription for getting out? Spending more, borrowing more, and acting like the bills will never come due.” — Columnist Steve Chapman
“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” — Presbyterian clergyman William Boetcker (1873-1962)
“I still can’t help wondering how we can explain away what to me is the greatest miracle of all and which is recorded in history. No one denies there was such a man, that he lived and that he was put to death by crucifixion. Where… is the miracle I spoke of? Well consider this and let your imagination translate the story into our own time — possibly to your own home town. A young man whose father is a carpenter grows up working in his father’s shop. One day he puts down his tools and walks out of his father’s shop. He starts preaching on street corners and in the nearby countryside, walking from place to place, preaching all the while, even though he is not an ordained minister. He never gets farther than an area perhaps 100 miles wide at the most. He does this for three years. Then he is arrested, tried and convicted. There is no court of appeal, so he is executed at age 33 along with two common thieves. Those in charge of his execution roll dice to see who gets his clothing — the only possessions he has. His family cannot afford a burial place for him so he is interred in a borrowed tomb. End of story? No, this uneducated, property-less young man has, for 2,000 years, had a greater effect on the world than all the rulers, kings, emperors; all the conquerors, generals and admirals, all the scholars, scientists and philosophers who have ever lived — all of them put together. How do we explain that — unless He really was what He said He was?” — President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves; that we are underlings. People can fight a tyranny imposed by an outside force. People cannot fight a tyranny that we impose on ourselves.” — Cassius in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
“A socialist is somebody who doesn’t have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.” — Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), who, ironically, was a socialist