Book & Review Forums: Common Sense
My Favorite Quotes
"A long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
I loved this statement. Our society is truly like this. Many things that are "standard" for society are assumed to be correct or right.
"Society is produced by our wants,"
We humans crave community and interaction with other humans. Thus, we now have online communities like this one to bring like minded people together.
Jeanine
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” ~ Aldo Leopold
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"that the ELECTED might never form to themselves an interest separate from the ELECTORS" Today our politicians, as my friend Dionne put it, "have so far removed themselves from the people they represent, that there is almost no connection between the two anymore."
"I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and the easier repaired when disordered" The more power we give the federal government, by making more and more complicated laws at the federal level, the farther our government gets from working for the people.
"the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies; some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine." I am afraid in our efforts to fix the government we only complicate it more.
Jeanine
by homestead -
And now today we have judges sitting in their elected judgment seats and saying that we should be more like Europe and other countries. Quoting European law rather then U.S. law in their higher courts. This I should think should be almost an act of treason. For it is as Paine said "their true glory laid in being as much UNLIKE them as possible"
by homestead -
"And here we cannot but observe that their motives were bad, viz. that they might be LIKE unto other nations, i.e. the Heathens, whereas their true glory laid in being as much UNLIKE them as possible."
by homestead -
"but as few or no records were extant in those days, and traditional history stuffed with fables, it was very easy, after the lapse of a few generations, to trump up some superstitious tale, conveniently timed,"
How true this is. I have heard it said "repeat a lie enough times and it becomes accepted as truth." Much of the social dogmas of today are just that. Lapsed a few generations, a trumped up superstitious tale, conveniently timed. There seems to be reason in "question everything."
by homestead -
"Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have no power to give away the right of posterity. And though they might say, "We choose you for OUR head," they could not, without manifest injustice to their children, say, "that your children and your children's children shall reign over OURS for ever." Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool."
I think today we don't look to our children's futures enough when it comes to policy. I think laws are made continually that erode the freedoms of men in America. And little do we stop to think that not only are we eroding our own rights but we are UNJUSTLY eroding the rights of our children.
by homestead
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