Common Defense Quotes

#1. Among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention that of providing for the common defense will merit particular regard. To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

George Washington

#2. If your basic premise about the fundamental purpose of our government is that it must provide for the common defense, then no other position is possible.

Don Nickles

#3. Said once, that the only real duties of government were to prevent crime and preserve contracts, to which I will add one thing since I find myself reluctantly in the twentieth century: and to provide for the common defense.

Harper Lee

#4. A common defense among obituary-fanciers such as myself is that the obit is not about death at all. It is about life. This is true since an article about the condition of deadness would make for turgid reading at best.

Tom Rachman

#5. Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes - the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defense against external invasion.

William Godwin

#6. Pain does not kill.

Serena Grey

#7. I'm curious about life, period.

Graham Nash

#8. One of the highest marks of citizenship is fighting for the common defense.

Richard Brookhiser

#9. Centrum Permanebit"
The Center Will Hold

Richelle Mead

#10. I don't want a "holy" life of prayer and contemplation. I want a life of strife, lust, striving, seeking, struggling, and debauchery.

Damien Echols

#11. I support development and deployment of a limited national missile defense. Few if any of our duties surpass our obligation to provide for the common defense of our nation.

Joe Lieberman

#12. If someone hates you so much that they try to hurt you, defending yourself is not being aggressive, it is doing what's necessary.

Charles F. Glassman

#13. The most common motives for homicide are moralistic: retaliation after an insult, escalation of a domestic quarrel, punishing an unfaithful or deserting romantic partner, and other acts of jealousy, revenge, and self-defense.

Steven Pinker

#14. My problems were not what ended Creed.

Scott Stapp

#15. You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.

Barbara Brown Taylor

#16. 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.

Thomas Paine

#17. Well, first let's say that the fundamental responsibility of any government is national security - in the preamble to the Constitution, provide for the common defense and insure domestic tranquility.

Angus King

#18. Fear is a healthy instinct, not a sign of weakness. It is a natural self-defense mechanism that is common to felines, wolves, hyenas, and most humans. Even fruit bats know fear, and I salute them for it. If you think the world is weird now, imagine how weird it would be if wild beasts had no fear.

Hunter S. Thompson

#19. It is a common failing of men. They see someone they consider beautiful and desirable and eligible, and they imagine that they love her. In fact, though, they love themselves reflected in her eyes.

Mary Balogh

#20. The most common emotional defense is avoidance (an ineffective coping skill for any stressor) as expressed through denial (e.g., "That wasn't really bad, I barely remember it").

Brian Luke Seaward

#21. This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.

Alexander Hamilton

#22. The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense.

Alexander Hamilton

#23. When all the girls were getting all made up and getting into all that girl stuff in junior high I was out playing softball or touch football with the guys.

Catherine Bell

#24. The mind of man has no defense To equal plain, old common sense. This homely virtue don't despise, If you would be happy as well as wise.

Don Herold

#25. As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#26. Jail is more commonly-suited to those less-commonly able to finance a defense (or to potentially pander the prosecution). The choices for council is either a retained lawyer or, by default, a public defender. In the later of these two, the common title in jail was 'public pretender'.

H. Kirk Rainer