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Templar
Code
Be
without fear in the face of your enemies.
Stand
brave and upright that the Lord may love thee.
Speak
the truth always even if it means your death.
Protect
the helpless and do no wrong. “If there is a God,
He will have to beg my forgiveness.” “I won't be wronged.
I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these
things to other people, and I require the same from them.” "There is a cult of ignorance in the United
States, and there has always been. The strain of
anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way
through our political and cultural life; nurtured by the false
notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as
your knowledge." -Isaac Asimov “A Prince whose
character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is
unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” "I know not with what weapons World War III
will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and
stones." Albert Einstein, 1949 “It seems that for
most Christians the bible is kind of like a software license: they
just scroll to the bottom and click "I agree" without ever bothering
to actually read the entire text.” "I wonder if the Emperor Honorius watching
the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill truly realized that the
Roman Empire was about to fall. This is just another page in
history, isn't it? Will this be the end of *our* civilization? Turn
the page." - Captain Jean-Luc Picard. 'The Best of Both
Worlds' “Better a true enemy
than a false friend.” "You know it's very strange, I have
been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't
know what to do with the rest of my life." "We had to struggle with the old
enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation,
reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a
mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by
organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized
mob." ― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars
“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.” - Banksy “If you are for gun
control, then you are not against guns, because the guns will be
needed to disarm people. So it’s not that you are anti-gun. You’ll
need the police’s guns to take away other people’s guns. So you’re
very pro-gun, you just believe that only the Government (which is,
of course, so reliable, honest, moral, and virtuous…) should be
allowed to have guns. There is no such thing as gun control. There
is only centralizing gun ownership in the hands of a small,
political elite and their minions.” “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” “Our flag does not fly because the wind moves it. It flies with the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it” “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.” “Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.” “We are prisoners in the present, locked in the eternal transition between our past and our future.” On a scale of one to ‘invade Russia in the winter’, how bad is your idea? “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” “There comes a time, thief, when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father's love for his child.” “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” “Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.” "He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. “I’m thankful to all those who said ‘NO’. Because of them, I did it myself.” The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an aroma of jasmine. “I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead.” “Well then, I’ll take the withered petals and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.” The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself: “What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?” Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. “Let me make a short, opening, blanket comment. There are no good guns. There are no bad guns. Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody – except bad people.” Dear Christians: You see, I do not exist. I never have. Did it really make sense to you that I would create an entire universe with billions of billions of planets and wait about 13,700,000,000 years just so I could focus on a few Jews from Palestine about 2,000 years ago while ignoring the rest of the 200,000,000 people on the planet at the time? Did I make those few Jews or did those few Jews make me?" “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” "Written laws are like spider’s webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful" “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” “I would never invade the United States. There would be a gun behind every blade of grass.” “The supreme arrogance of religious thinking: “Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.” "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done 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 up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government... We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. - Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence) “I never told my religion nor scrutinize that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor wished to change another's creed. I have judged of others' religion by their lives, for it is from our lives and not from our words that our religion must be read. By the same test must the world judge me.” “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.” “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” “Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.” “Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.” "And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." "It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give happiness." "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." "Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one." "Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. 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 blindfolded fear." "We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate." "It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it." "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." "Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every Free State." "Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor." "I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology.” “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” “If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?” “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. If it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, then what difference is it to me?” “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” "A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, "I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man." “Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. “ “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. “ “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 others that have been tried from time to time.” “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.” “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.” “Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.” “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” "Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth?” “Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny. “ “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” “Time, like a ceaseless wind crying through the universe carries away the names and the deeds of conquers and commoners alike, and all that we are, all that remains, is in the hearts and memories of those that cared we came this way for a brief moment.” “God be between you and harm, in all the empty places you walk.” “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.” “The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.” “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” “At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” “There is one rule for industrialists and that is: make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.” “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” Gun Control: “The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to the police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.” "Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are real fighters and we are lucky to have them for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back." “He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.” “Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." “When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?" “There's kind of a toll you have to pay with a cat; if you don't pet her for 10 minutes she'll bother you for six hours.” “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole live believing that it is stupid.” “When I was 5 years old my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. In a Wonderland they lie, “A vast unmeasured count of years before you came “The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other: It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity; but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied, but written off as trash.” “It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. “Politics is the art by which politicians obtain campaign contributions from the rich and votes from the poor on the pretext of protecting each from the other,” "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” No trees were killed to send this email... however, a large number of electrons were terribly but only temporarily inconvenienced.
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