Jeff Cooper Quotes

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose.

The class of people we wish to deprive of guns, then, is the very class with the most inelastic demand for them—criminals—whereas the people most likely to comply with gun control laws don’t value guns in the first place.

Very rarely do firearms restrictions affect criminals. They really only affect law-abiding citizens.

I won't do anything bad, and I resent very deeply bad people who haven't got the ability, who try to interfere with the kind of work I'm trying to do because nobody's going to benefit from it.

Good and decent people must be protected and persuaded by gentle means, but the rabble must be led by terror.

Honest people will respect us for our merit: the public, for our luck.

The criminal law is no use to decent people.

Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and underrated.

Abandon cleverness, discard profit, and thieves and robbers will disappear.

I think most people are decent people. I don't know if they could stand the pressure he's under, but most people aspire to be decent people.

I am honest; I try to be truthful. I like people and wish us well. We are not always deserving of our own best wishes.

The biggest difference between people is between those who are trying to do the right thing - whether or not they succeed - and those for whom the only question is how much they can get away with.

Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.

You want to make a difference in your world? Live a holy life: Be faithful to your spouse. Be the one at the office who refuses to cheat. Be the neighbor who acts neighbors. Be the employee who does the work and doesn't complain. Pay your bills. Do your part and enjoy life. Don't speak one message and live another. People are watching the way we act more than they are listening to what we say.

Only those few people who practice it believe in goodness.

The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.

Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us and they succeeded [on 9/11]....We're trying to protect ourselves with more weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn't make so many people in the world want to kill us.

The superhero shows and movies are always having the spotlight on the superheroes themselves. It's never about the people who are living in that world and then trying to go about their life without the superheroes involved. It's about what that actuality would be like.

Do what you know is right, but try not to get caught.

It is easy to be popular. It is not easy to be just.

If religion does not make us better people, it will make us very much worse. And of all the bad men who have lived, the religious "bad man" is the worst of all.

Person-to-person, most people are honest.

Most people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.

The Founders warned that a free society depends on a virtuous and moral people. The current crisis reflects that their concerns were justified.

I now have faith in those who say they represent a faith. Whereas before I was like, 'Do not give me a lecture on how to live my life when I know I'm a pretty decent human being. I might not go to church every day, but I know I do the right thing or try to. You're going to church and you're still sleeping around on your wife and spending everyone's money. How are you better than I am?' So I've finally met people that walk the walk and it's made me happy, really happy.