Quotes - Charlton Heston
Recently, actor Charlton Heston died. He will best be remembered for the famous movies he starred in. Also, he was a conservative thinker and a champion of wholesome American values.
In his later years, as president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), he defended the constitution’s 2nd amendment – representing our right to bear arms. Our nation’s founding fathers understood the value of a well armed citizenry as being a necessary foil against intrusive and oppressive government.
Charlton Heston was a ‘man’s man’ in a world of decreasing values, corruption, exploitation, illogical thinking, and control. In my opinion, as a perfect role model, he represents the expression of individual freedom and a quality of excellence that we all may aspire to.
Following are some of his quotes:
“I’ve played three presidents, three saints and two geniuses - and that’s probably enough for any man.”
“The trouble with movies as a business is that it’s an art, and the trouble with movies as art is that it’s a business.”
“Undeniably the American art form, too. And yet more and more, we see films made that diminish the American experience and example. And sometimes trash it completely.”
“Society mends its wounds. And that’s invariably true in all the tragedies, in the comedies as well. And certainly in the histories.”
“…You do not define the First Amendment. It defines you. And it is bigger than you. That’s how freedom works. It also demands you do your homework. Again and again, I hear gun owners say, how can we believe anything the anti-gun media says when they can’t even get the facts right? For too long, you have swallowed manufactured statistics and fabricated technical support from anti-gun organizations that wouldn’t know a semi- auto from a sharp stick. And it shows. You fall for it every time…“
“…I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can’t understand it, don’t like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That’s why the Second Amendment is America’s first freedom…”
“…Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder. Yet in essence, that is what you have asked our loved ones to do, through an ill-contrived and totally naive campaign against the Second Amendment…”
“…The Founders’ intent in framing the Second Amendment is perfectly clear and undeniable. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” Some anti-gun elitists declare this notion outdated. However, many constitutional scholars from this country’s most prestigious universities agree that the Founders’ intent is clear and irreversible: To “keep and bear arms” is a right for all law-abiding citizens…”
“…The First Amendment is crucial. Of course it is. So are all the others. And the Second Amendment is the one that guarantees that people can bear arms to protect themselves…”
“…There’s no such thing as a good gun. There’s no such thing as a bad gun. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a very dangerous thing. A gun in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad guys…”
“…He [President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete’s sake…”
“…Teddy Roosevelt hunted in the last century with a semiautomatic rifle. Most deer rifles are semiautomatic … it’s become a demonized phrase. The media distorts that and the public ill understands it…”
“…You know, the Bill of Rights guarantees every citizen the right to own and bear firearms. It doesn’t say anything about how many, how much you can pay for them. That’s in the Bill of Rights. That’s a sacred document in our country. There’s no other country in the world that has such document. And you know what it’s purpose is? To prevent the federal government from interfering with private citizens’ rights … If you will read what the Founding Fathers wrote when they were writing it — Jefferson, Mason, Madison, Patrick Henry, Tom Paine — every one of them wrote at great length that they were talking about the individual rights of individual citizens…”
“… Now his positions track the N.R.A.’s. Trigger locks? A ludicrous invention. If you can’t put it on a weapon without taking the bullets out, why put it on? A five-day waiting period? It’s hard for me to accept that a guy says, I’m going to kill that s.o.b., but, darn, I have this five-day waiting period. He probably still wants to kill him after five days. Ban Saturday-night specials? The black and Hispanic women who clean office buildings until 3 a.m. and then walk home – of course, they want a handgun in their purse. Limit purchases to one gun a month? It’s the camel’s nose in the tent. Look at Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin – every one of these monsters, on seizing power, their first act was to confiscate all firearms in private hands. …”
“…We have to pass on to America in the 21st century the same Bill of Rights that those wise, old, dead white guys that invented this country passed on to us…”
HESTON TAKING ON TIME WARNER’S PROMOTION OF
“COP KILLER” ALBUM
(Conversation between host Tony Snow and Charlton Heston)
SNOW: “You have one of the great voices in the entertainment world. A few years ago, you showed up at a Time Warner stockholders meeting and started reading the lyrics from a rap album and just froze everybody in their tracks.”
HESTON: “That was that terrible album by Ice T called ‘Cop Killer’. And I’m very proud of this, I really am. I owned some Time Warner stock and I went in and confronted their full board meeting and read the lyrics. I can’t repeat them on television.”
SNOW: “No, you can’t.”
HESTON: “And I shamed Time Warner, the largest entertainment conglomerate in the world, into firing Ice T and dropping the album. Now, he threatened to kill me. He hasn’t done that yet.”
SNOW: “I believe your quote was something like, `Let him try.’”
HESTON: “Well, maybe I scared him. And I haven’t gotten a job from Warner Brothers since or a good notice in Time, but I’m as proud of that as anything I’ve ever done.”
