Author Archives: Scott Alfter

A blast from the past. My first modem was an Applied Engineering DataLink 2400, an internal modem for the Apple II. My last was a USRobotics Sportster Voice 56K external modem (shipped with X2 support, was firmware-upgradable to V.90). I don’t think I ever had anything that supported V.92, as I switched to cable-modem broadband in 2000.

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In harsh or melancholy epochs free men may always take comfort from the grand lesson of history, that tyrannies cannot last except among servile races. The years which seem endless to those who endure them are but a flick of mischance in the journey.

Winston Churchill - A History of the English Speaking Peoples, vol. 2: The New World

I never thought I'd live to see the day when the right wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous twatty ones going around shaming everyone.

Johnny Rotten - https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1532899718401073152

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism...Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.

Theodore Roosevelt - 12 October 1915

The road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees.

Thomas Sowell

Everything woke turns to shit.

Donald Trump - rally in Cullman, AL, 21 August 2021

Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.

David Burge - https://x.com/iowahawkblog/status/332494589934047234?lang=en

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.

William F. Buckley

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

unknown, but often attributed to George Orwell

I have never viewed taxation as a means of rewarding one class of taxpayers or punishing another. If such a point of view ever controls our public policy, the traditions of freedom, justice, and equality of opportunity, which are the distinguishing characteristics of our American civilization, will have disappeared.…The man who seeks to perpetuate prejudice and class hatred is doing America an ill service.…[B]y arraying one class of taxpayers against another, he shows a complete misconception of those principles of equality on which the country was founded.

Andrew Mellon - Taxation: The People's Business

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken

We did not seek election and win in order to manage the decline of a great nation.

Margaret Thatcher

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Ronald Reagan - address to the annual meeting of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, 30 March 1961

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

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

Richard Feynman

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

Voltaire

The journalists of the United States are generally in a very humble position, with a scanty education and a vulgar turn of mind...the characteristics of the American journalist consist in an open and coarse appeal to the passions of the readers; he abandons principles to assail the characters of individuals, to track them in private life and disclose all their weaknesses and vices. Nothing could be more deplorable.

Alexis de Tocqueville

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.

Milton Friedman

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago, and a racist today.

Thomas Sowell

The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.

H. L. Mencken

If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court … the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.

Abraham Lincoln - first inaugural address, 1861

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 carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, 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 the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Benjamin Franklin

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.

Sarah Palin - speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die: but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

Winston Churchill - The River War

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

Chinese proverb

As democracy is perfected, the office of the 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 fool and complete narcissistic moron.

H. L. Mencken

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C. S. Lewis

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Thomas Sowell

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough for Love

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.

James Bovard

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Winston Churchill

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Winston Churchill

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

Winston Churchill

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Winston Churchill

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

unknown

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

George Washington

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

George Washington

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

George Washington

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Voltaire

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.

William Howard Taft

The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.

Theodore Roosevelt

The best social program is a productive job for anyone who's willing to work.

Ronald Reagan

The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.

Ronald Reagan

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

James Madison

One can make this generalization about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit; while you treat them well, they are yours. They would shed their blood for you, risk their property, their lives, their children, so long, as I said above, as danger is remote; but when you are in danger they turn against you.

Niccolo Machiavelli

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln

By government giveaway programs, individuals are often hurt far more than they are helped. The recipients of these programs become dependent on the government and their dignity is destroyed. Is it compassionate to enslave more and more people by making them a part of the government dependency cycle? I think compassion should be measured by how many people no longer need it. Helping people to become self-sufficient is much more compassionate than drugging them with the narcotic of welfare.

Rush Limbaugh

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Milton Friedman

When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union—like public housing in the United States—look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.

Milton Friedman

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem, and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

Dwight Eisenhower

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Dwight Eisenhower

One and God make a majority.

Frederick Douglass

Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.

Calvin Coolidge

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

Edmund Burke

Conservatives have excellent credentials to speak about human rights. By our efforts, and with precious little help from self-styled liberals, we were largely responsible for securing liberty for a substantial share of the world's population and defending it for most of the rest.

Margaret Thatcher

There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.

Thomas Sowell

Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.

Ronald Reagan

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

George Orwell

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital...if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today.

William Henry Harrison

The American republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Winston Churchill

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

Margaret Thatcher

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken - A Little Book in C Major

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Author Archives: Scott Alfter

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