Patrick McCarty > Patrick's Quotes

“Faith has to do with things that are not seen, and hope with things that are not in hand.”
― Thomas Aquinas

“Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.”
― Saint Thomas Aquinas

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”
― Gore Vidal, Screening History

“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”
― Gore Vidal

“Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to be
at war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror,
but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means.
It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.”
― Gore Vidal

“We have a nasty habit of flushing down the memory hole "the people who lost." Or demonizing them. Going back in time and painting Snidely Whiplash mustaches on their luckless countenances.”
― Bill Kauffman, Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin

“It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, Education: Free & Compulsory

“The most sanctified figure in American historiography is, by no accident, the Great Saint of centralizing "democracy" and the strong unitary nation-state: Abraham Lincoln. And so didn't Lincoln use force and violence, and on a massive scale, on behalf of the mystique of the sacred "Union," to prevent the South from seceding? Indeed he did, and on the foundation of mass murder and oppression, Lincoln crushed the South and outlawed the very notion of secession (based on the highly plausible ground that since the separate states voluntarily entered the Union they should be allowed to leave). But not only that: for Lincoln created the monstrous unitary nation-state from which individual and local liberties have never recovered.”
― Murray Rothbard

“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.”
― Russell Kirk

“It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation.”
― Russell Kirk

“The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.”
― Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

“Global environmentalists have said and written enough to leave no doubt that their goal is to destroy the prosperous economies of the world's richest nations.”
― Russell Kirk, Economics: Work and Prosperity in Christian Perspective

“Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
― Edmund Burke

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

“Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum. You don't want it back.”
― Robert A. Taft

“Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.”
― Grover Cleveland

“Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.”
― Grover Cleveland, State of the Union Addresses of Grover Cleveland

“I have tried so hard to do right.”
― Grover Cleveland

“A revolution in itself is not a blessing.”
― John C. Calhoun

“Friends and family argue and fight, but it means nothing. It's human nature. Love isn't perfectly patient or kind or sunny. Love is volatile and tempestuous and forgiving.”
― Alyssa Day, Atlantis Redeemed

“You can get all A's and still flunk life.”
― Walker Percy, The Second Coming

“I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?”
― Walker Percy

“Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.”
― Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

“A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.”
― Shelby Foote

“I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.”
― Shelby Foote

“Patriotism is the wholesome, constructive love of one’s land and people. Nationalism is the unhealthy love of one’s government, accompanied by the aggressive desire to put down others – which becomes in deracinated modern men a substitute for religious faith. Patriotism is an appropriate, indeed necessary, sentiment for people who wish to preserve their freedom; nationalism is not.”
― Clyde N. Wilson