“Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“There is no such thing as a good tax.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” - Henry Ford

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” - Milton Friedman

“Political correctness is tyranny with manners.” - Charlton Heston

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“Governments, wherein the will of every one has a just influence... has its evils,... the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. [I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude.] Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.” - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789

“It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1797

“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1820

“We are to guard against ourselves; not against ourselves as we are, but as we may be; for who can imagine what we may become under circumstances not now imaginable?” - Thomas Jefferson, 1822

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear” - Thomas Jefferson

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, whigs and tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.” - Thomas Jefferson

“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Our school troubles are not primarily the result of too easy course work or too much tolerance for violence. The big trouble lies instead in the company our children keep - or, more precisely, don’t keep. They no longer keep company with us, the grown-ups they are about to become. And the grown-ups they do encounter seem less and less worthy of their respect.” - Deborah Meier

“We need to surround kids with adults who know and care for our children, who have opinions and are accustomed to expressing them publicly, and who know how to reach reasonable collective decisions in the face of disagreement. That means increasing local decision making, and simultaneously decreasing the size and bureaucratic complexity of schools.” - Deborah Meier

“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” - Ronald Reagan

“One legislator accused me of having a nineteenth-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an eighteenth-century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law-abiding citizens should be one of the government’s primary concerns.” - Ronald Reagan

“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” - Ronald Reagan

“I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: A better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less than to live our own lives according to our values — at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.” - Ronald Reagan

“They tell us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where — because of our past excesses — it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. I don’t believe that. And, I don’t believe you do either. That is why I am seeking the presidency. I cannot and will not stand by and see this great country destroy itself. Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us our high standard of living, the result of thrift and hard work, is somehow selfish extravagance which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarcity. I don’t agree that our nation must resign itself to inevitable decline, yielding its proud position to other hands. I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world.” - Ronald Reagan

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.” - Ronald Reagan

“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.” - Ronald Reagan

“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” - Ronald Reagan

“The ten most dangerous words in the English language are ‘Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” - Ronald Reagan

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” - Henry David Thoreau