“If you have to choose between agreement and conflict, take conflict every time. It always yields a better result.”
—Jeff Bezos
“It's the cracked ones that let light into the world. (Talent is likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.)”
—David Ogilvy
“The leader of the company has one principal responsibity: provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.”
—David Ogilvy
“The best leaders give their people permission to practice magic. They get rid of sad dogs who spread gloom.”
—David Ogilvy
“You fight against the tyranny of politeness by telling the truth.”
—David Ogilvy
“Making great work requires us to be brutally honest and totally dedicated to the truth.”
—David Ogilvy
“Don’t bow your head. Don’t know your place. Don’t sit back. Don’t give in. Don’t give up. Don’t win silvers. Don’t be so easily happy with yourself. Don’t be spineless. Don’t be gutless. Don’t be toadies. Don’t go gentle into that good night. Defy the gods.”
—David Ogilvy
"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."
-Len Dawson
"Change your thoughts and you change your world."
-Norman Vincent Peale
"Life is like wiping your ass with a hula hoop, its a never ending project!
-Mike Bokarae
“Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.”
-Bruce Barton
"If everybody is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction."
—Sam Walton
"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."
–Conrad Hilton
“Some people see things that are and ask, ‘Why?’ Some people dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’ Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that sh*t.”
—George Carlin
“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work 12 hours a day.”
—Robert Frost
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts."
- Winston Churchill
"Action is the foundational key to all success."
- Winston Churchill
"If you're going through hell, keep going."
- Winston Churchill
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
- Winston Churchill
"Never, never, never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense."
- Winston Churchill
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Winston Churchill
"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."
- Winston Churchill
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
- Winston Churchill
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
- Winston Churchill
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
- Winston Churchill
"Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision."
- Winston Churchill
"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."
- Winston Churchill
"The price of greatness is responsibility."
- Winston Churchill
"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
- Winston Churchill
"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential."
- Winston Churchill
"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."
- Winston Churchill
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair
"Here's to you and here's to me; Best of friends may we ever be; But if perchance we disagree then f**k you and here's to me."
- Famous toast
“A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel, or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it.”
- Alan Ladd, Shane (1953)
“Ehhh, good enough. -Mediocretes
‘Good’ and ‘enough’ are lacking well defined qualitative and quantitative parameters, respectively, so this gets us absolutely nowhere. –Semanticles
Well, technically, ‘Mediocretes’ and ‘Semanticles’ aren’t valid Greek names nor did the ancient Greeks have the concept of ‘ehhh’ as phonetic symbolism or onomatopoeia. -Pedanticles”
-Twitter thread
“Here’s to a long life and a merry one, a quick death and an easy one, a pretty girl and an honest one, a stiff drink and another one!”
-Unknown
“To friends and enemies, neighbors and lovers. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
-Ken Scott
“So never ever save old bottles of bourbon. They’re meant to be enjoyed with friends and family at the moment. It’s not about the whiskey. It’s about the lives you touch and the people you meet. And the whiskey is a by-product of a good relationship.”
-Freddie Johnson, 3rd Generation Buffalo Trace Employee
“True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job.”
-Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.
“People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
-Richard Grenier
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.”
-Colin Powell
“Flanders: But, Reverend, I need to know. Is God punishing me? Reverend Lovejoy: Oh, short answer, ‘yes’ with an ‘if.’ Long answer, ‘no’ with a ‘but.'”
-The Simpsons
“Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I am pleading with you with tears in my eyes: If you f*ck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
-General James “Mad Dog” Mattis
“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”
-Cesare Beccaria, “The Right to Arms and the American Philosophy of Freedom”
“Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.”
-William Barclay
“I believe that every good Jew, every good Christian, and every good Muslim, if you believe that love is the central value of the religion, you have to ask yourself, why is that? The reason is, we are not God; we might be wrong. Every one of us—I might be wrong about what I’ve been advocating here tonight. It’s only when you recognize the possibility that you might be wrong or, to use the language of Saint Paul, that we see through the glass darkly, that we know only in part, that you can give the other person some elbow room.”
-Bill Clinton
“Ever notice how the Democrat party, the party that fought the hardest to keep their slaves, the party that started the KKK and has supported its members even into the 21st century, the party of Jim Crow, the party of George Wallace, segregation and “standing in the schoolhouse door,” the same party that now claims to have exclusive rights to the fight against slavery and the fight for the people, is once again the party that does nothing more and nothing less than enslave the people by telling them what they will be permitted to say and what they will be forced to say, by trapping them in welfare schemes, by telling them what they must buy and what they will not be allowed to eat, by telling them whom they will serve, by telling them what they will and will not be allowed to tolerate, by telling them when and how and even if they will be permitted to defend themselves, and, ultimately, by telling them what they will believe? The Democrat party, under the veil of “progress,” is, always has been, and will always be the people’s biggest threat to liberty.”
-Greg Walrath
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
-James Madison (1794)
“Everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth.”
-Mike Tyson
“Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”
-Max Ehrmann
“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.”
-Confucius
“May you never go to hell, but always be on your way.”
-Traditional toast/insult
“There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“Welcome to Tennessee, patron state of shootin’ stuff.”
-Bobby Lee Swagger in “Shooter”
“Son, don’t be the best in town, just be the best ’til the best comes around.”
-Buddy Guy
“Taboos are the enemy of history and of truth.”
-Dinesh D’Souza
“Fight with a happy heart and strong spirit.”
-General James “Mad Dog” Mattis
“I’m going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.”
-General James “Mad Dog” Mattis
“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
-General James “Mad Dog” Mattis
“Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.”
-General James “Mad Dog” Mattis
“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
-Will Rogers
“I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“After all, where would we be without the knowledge that Democrats are pinko-communist flag-burners who want to tax churches and use the money to fund abortions so they can use the fetal stem cells to create pot-smoking lesbian ATF agents who will steal all the guns and invite the UN to take over America? Voters have to decide whether we’d be better off electing Republicans, those hateful, assault-weapon-wielding maniacs who believe that George Washington and Jesus Christ incorporated the nation after a Gettysburg reenactment and that the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that it isn’t administered quickly enough to secular humanist professors of Chicano studies.”
-P.J. O’Rourke
“Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.”
-Gen. George S Patton
“Suppose the Second Amendment said ‘A well educated electorate being necessary for self governance in a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed.’ Is there anyone who would suggest that means only registered voters have a right to read?”
-Robert Levy, Georgetown University Professor
“We sometimes think our duty is to make everyone safe. It’s to preserve liberty. It’s not to make a society that’s absolutely safe.”
-Idaho State Sen. Jim Rice
“When you go home tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today.”
-John Maxwell Edmonds, The Kohima Poem
“Shoot twice and go home.”
-A Swiss officer when asked by the German Kaiser what the 250,000-strong Swiss army would do if the Germans invaded with 500,000 men
“Si vis pacem, parabellum” (If you desire peace, prepare for war)
-Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus
“No one can make you look like a fool. They can only point out that you are.”
-Unknown
“Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.”
-Henry Ford
“Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you The vagabond who’s rapping at your door Is standing in the clothes that you once wore Strike another match, go start anew And it’s all over now, Baby Blue”
-Bob Dylan
“Truth becomes treason in an empire of lies.”
-Ron Paul
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
-William Pitt
“It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.”
-Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
“At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.”
-Italian proverb
“Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”
-Sir Robert Wilson
“The lessons we learn are written on the tombstones of others.”
-Reid Henrichs
“Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.”
-Bruce Barton
“ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ (Come and take them)”
-Leonidas I of Sparta to Xerxes I of Persia upon being commanded to surrender arms at Thermopylae
“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”
-John Adams
“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
-Mark Twain
“As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright moron.”
-H.L. Mencken
“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
-Nikos Kazantzakis
“What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from.”
-Marilyn vos Savant
“It is not the breaking of a man’s doors and the rummaging of his drawers that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right to personal security, personal liberty and private property, where that right has never been forfeited by his conviction of some public offense.”
-Justice Joseph P. Bradley
“We cannot allow our economic life to be controlled by that small group of men whose chief outlook upon the social welfare is tinctured by the fact that they can make huge profits from the lending of money”
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.”
-Albert Einstein when asked what was the speed of sound
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can defend.”
-Unknown
“Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.”
-Rene Descartes
“Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
-Patrick Henry
“I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”
-Clint Eastwood
“When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Avat victoria curam.” (Victory favors the prepared)
-Unknown
“No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
-James Madison
“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
-Patrick Henry
“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
-Alexander Hamilton
“That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms…”
-Samuel Adams
“And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms….The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined”
-Patrick Henry
“The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable . . . The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that is good”
-George Washington
“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”
-George Washington
“I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the PEOPLE under the pretense of taking care of them”
-Abraham Lincoln
“The powers delegated by the Constitution to the federal government are few and defined”
-James Madison
“It is the duty of the PATRIOT to protect HIS country from the government”
-Thomas Paine
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force like fire is a dangerous servant and a fearful master”
-George Washington
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal (as above) for 78 years. Did the ban make them “more” illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation. Will increased cosmetic measures make anyone safer? They, like all efforts at disarmament, will put the citizenry more at risk. Disarmament rests on the assumption that all people are good, and, basically, want the same things. But if all people were basically good, why would we, increasingly, pass more and more elaborate laws? The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.”
-David Mamet
“This irreconcilable conflict is between those who believe in the sanctity of individual freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state.”
-Ronald Reagan
“Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be a convenience store not a government agency.”
-Unknown