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There's nothing noble or selfless about politicians and there never has been. Putting it charitably, Profiles in Courage is a compendium of Democratic mythology, ghostwritten for an ambitious young Massachusetts Senator who never did a thing for himself if he could pay to have it done by others.

L. Neil Smith

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L. Neil Smith
Age: 75 †
Born: 1946
Born: May 12
Died: 2021
Died: August 27
Author
Novelist
Politician
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Denver
Colorado
Lester Neil Smith III
Others
Ambitious
Charitably
Young
Politicians
Profiles
Nothing
Putting
Massachusetts
Done
Noble
Senator
Thing
Democratic
Profile
Never
Politician
Selfless
Pay
Senators
Courage
Mythology
Compendium

More quotes by L. Neil Smith

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And yet, what is bravery but the capacity to reject our fears, ignore and supress them, then go on to do whatever it is we are afraid to do.
L. Neil Smith
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Politicians need human misery. ... Government's a disease masquerading as its own cure.
L. Neil Smith
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The Bill of Rights isn't about us, it's about them . It isn't a list of things we're permitted to do, it's a list of things they aren't allowed even to consider.
L. Neil Smith
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We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping.
L. Neil Smith
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As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be.
L. Neil Smith
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Choose your enemies carefully: you'll probably be known much better and far longer for who they were, than for anything else you ever managed to accomplish.
L. Neil Smith
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We're most likely to lose our rights when we allow ourselves to be persuaded to deprive others of theirs.
L. Neil Smith
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One thing about a police state, you can always find the police.
L. Neil Smith
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If conservatives really believed in individual liberty, as they endlessly claim and if they used both halves of their brains then they'd be libertarians. Instead, they sabotage themselves, and their cause, by constantly generating one spurious reason after another to deprive other people of their freedom.
L. Neil Smith
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Socialism is, among other things, the political habitat of low self-esteem, incompetence, self-loathing, and a willingness to steal - or have stolen for you what you are unable or unwilling to work for. Socialism is a philosophy fit only for slugs, leaches, and mosquitoes.
L. Neil Smith
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Money, first and foremost, is a medium of communication, conveying the information we call 'price'. Government control of the money supply is censorship, a violation of the First Amendment. Inflation is a lie.
L. Neil Smith
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As Al Franken has demonstrated, liberals give lousy talk radio.
L. Neil Smith
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The only hope we have is the Internet. We must strive to keep it free.
L. Neil Smith
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Just as liberalism is the main force that drives conservatism and maintains its popularity in some quarters, conservatism is the reason liberalism continues to enjoy the traction that it does in our poor civilization.
L. Neil Smith
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What happened in America in the 1860s was a war of secession, a war of independence, no different in principle from what happened in America in the 1770s and 1780s.
L. Neil Smith
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Thanks to guys like Boss Tweed, famous for saying, 'I don't give a damn who does the voting, as long as I do the nominating,' there hasn't been an honest election in the USA since sometime around the War Between the States.
L. Neil Smith
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Never Forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn't allow him to do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.
L. Neil Smith
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Know when to give up a lost cause. Anyone who needs to be persuaded to be free, doesn't deserve to be.
L. Neil Smith
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What I want to accomplish artistically amounts to nothing more than fulfilling the promise of the American Revolution.
L. Neil Smith
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I'm as radical as libertarians come.
L. Neil Smith