"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority..... from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason."
-- Lord Acton - The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have...a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers."
-- John Adams"Posterity -- you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it."
-- John Quincy Adams
"Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that `if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' it is a very serious consideration...that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event."
-- Samuel Adams, speech in Boston, 1771.``The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.''
-- Samuel Adams, 1771.``If ye love wealth more than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men.''
-- Samuel Adams"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards."
--Samuel Adams
"Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful easily break through them."
-- Anacharsis - (Scythian philosopher - 600 B.C.)"The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt against the reality!"
-- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms."
-- Aristotle, "Politics"
"The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue...There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week."
-- Margot Asquith, My Impressions of America, ch. 17 (1922)
"Each of us has a natural right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property."
-- Frederic Bastiat"The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense."
-- Frederick Bastiat
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence."
-- Attributed to Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)
"I cannot agree with those who think of the Bill of Rights as an 18th century straitjacket, unsuited for this age. The evils it guards against are not only old, they are with us now, they exist today.
Experience all over the world has demonstrated, I fear, that the distance between stable, orderly government and one that has been taken over by force is not so great as we have assumed."
-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, 1960
"Modern liberals ... have a need to lie, and do so abundantly, since many Americans would not like their actual agenda."
-- Robert H. Bork
When the subject of constitutional rights was brought up by a member of the pro-gun contingent, L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley replied "Yes, I'm denying you your rights."
-- Mayor Tom Bradley at a "Save the Brady Bill" rally. Steve Comus Western Outdoor News 09-04-92
"Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty."
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Whitney v. California (1927)."Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)
"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values... Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."
-- Zbigniew Brizhinsky, Between Two Ages
"Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.... All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."
-- David Brower, Friends of the Earth
"...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances."
-- Harry Browne, 1996 USA presidential candidate, Libertarian Party
"Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other peoples' freedom and security."
-- William F. Buckley
"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting."
-- Charles Bukowski
"Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist."
-- Edmund Burke - (British statesman - 1756)"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."
-- Edmund Burke, letter, April 3, 1777, to the Sheriffs of Bristol"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion"
-- Edmund Burke
Ironically, on the 200th anniversary of our Bill of Rights, we find free speech under assault throughout the United States, including on some college campuses.
-- George Bush, 4-May-1991
"All bad precedents begin with justifiable measures."
-- Julius Caesar
"The object of a Constitution is to restrain the Government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals."
-- John C. Calhoun
Governments will always misuse the machinery of the law as far as the state of public opinion permits.
-- Emile Capouya
"We must be able to arrest people before they commit crimes. By registering guns and knowing who has them we can do that. ...If they have guns they are pretty likely to commit a crime."
-- Vermont State Senator Mary Ann Carlson
"An appeaser is someone who throws his children to the crocodile, in hopes the Crocodile will eat him last!"
-- Winston Churchill"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
-- Winston Churchill
"A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you."
-- Ramsey Clark
"You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself."
-- Arthur C. Clarke
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.."
-- President William Jefferson Clinton, USA TODAY 11 Mar 93"Thomas Jefferson understood the greater purpose of the liberty that our Founding Fathers sought during the creation of our Nation. Although it was against the British that the colonists fought for political rights, the true source of the rights of man was clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote that all humans are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . ." It was self-evident to him that denying these rights was wrong and that he and others must struggle to win what was theirs."
-- President William Jefferson Clinton, 5/1/93"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say."
-- U.S. President Bill Clinton (May 29, 1993)"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ..." "And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities."
-- President Bill Clinton, 3-22-94"There are a lot of brilliant people who believe that the nation state is fast becoming a relic of the past."
-- President Clinton in a speech in Seattle, Washington, November, 1997."We still will have the freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of movement, but we may have to have more discipline in doing it..."
-- President Bill Clinton refering to his Ominibus Counterterrorism Act on 60 Minutes."No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation."
-- Bill Clinton"I believe that this country's policies should be heavily biased in favor of non-discrimination."
-- President Bill Clinton
"Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection."
-- US Defense Secretary William S. Cohen
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
-- Oliver Cromwell, "Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth", upon dissolving Parliament
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
-- John Philpot Curran, 1790
"He who allows oppression shares the crime."
-- Ersamus Darwin
"Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that 'Freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license'; and they will define and define freedom out of existence."
-- Voltarine De Cleyre - (American radical poet - 19th century)
"Probably all laws are useless; for good men do not want laws at all, and bad men are made no better by them."
-- Demonax - (Roman philosopher c. 150 A.D.)
"The most desirable laws are those that are rarest, simplest, and most general; and I even think that it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we have."
-- Michel De Montaigne - Essays (1580)
"What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom reigning there, but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny...... It may, however, be foreseen even now, that when the Americans lose their republican institutions, they will speedily arrive at a despotic Government, without a long interval of limited monarchy."
-- Alexis Charles Clerel de Tocqueville - Democracy in America (1835)
"The tone and tendency of liberalism...is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress."
-- Benjamin Disraeli"Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
"The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it."
-- James A. Donald
"Today's Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress honored by tradition, is also revolution."
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas - (1954)"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air-however slight-lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
-- Justice William O. DouglasThe Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.
-- Justice William O. Douglas
" Find out just what the People will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
-- Frederick Douglass, civil rights activist, 1857.
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
-- Albert Einstein, My First Impression of the U.S.A., 1921"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."
-- Albert Einstein"All of us who are concerned for peace, reason and justice must be keenly aware how small influence reason and honest goodwill exert upon events in the political field."
-- Albert Einstein
"Without either the first or second amendment, we would have no liberty; the first allows us to find out what's happening, the second allows us to do something about it! The second will be taken away first, followed by the first and then the rest of our freedoms."
-- Andrew Ford
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."
-- President Gerald Ford - (1976)
"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part."
-- Benjamin Franklin"It is every American's right, and obligation, to read and interpret the Constitution for himself."
-- Benjamin Franklin."They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
"The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security."
-- Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, 1993"Caller ID, retaining caller ID by the Internet service providers would be another hopefully voluntary measure that we would help us, and we are in discussions with the providers to see if we can receive that kind of assistance."
-- FBI Director Louis Freeh, March 10, 1998
"The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has the right to deprive them of."
-- Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789.
"I do not want any patronage, as I do not give any. I am a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience, which is God."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but with tyrants, I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."
-- William Lloyd Garrison
"... casual drug users ought to be taken out and shot."
-- Daryl Gates, Los Angeles police chief
"I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor."
-- King George III of England
"Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
-- Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789.
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."
-- Barry Goldwater
"the truth is yes -- you do have these standby provisions, and the plans are here ... whereby you could, in the name of stopping terrorism ... evoke the military and arrest Americans and put them in detention camps."
-- Rep. Henry Gonzalez, D-TX
"Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it."
-- Germaine Greer"Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life."
-- Germaine Greer
"The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights."
-- Erwin Griswold - (Dean, Harvard Law School - 1960)
"You hear about constitutional rights, free speech, and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist!' You never hear a real American talk like that."
-- Mayor Frank Hague, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1938
"The Singapore government isn't interested in controlling information, but wants a gradual phase-in of services to protect ourselves. It's not to control, but to protect the citizens of Singapore. In our society, you can state your views, but they have to be correct."
-- Ernie Hai, coordinator of the Singapore Government Internet Project
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
-- Justice Learned Hand
"They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?"
-- Paul Harvey 8/31/94
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
-- Robert Heinlein
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined."
-- Patrick Henry"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."
-- Patrick Henry
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
-- Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment
"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
-- Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf - (1926)
"Fundamental, Bible believing people do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs, because we, the state, are preparing them for the year 2000, when America will be part of a one-world global society and their children will not fit in."
-- Peter Hoagland, Nebraska State Senator- 1983
"Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, 'to be free from freedom.'"
-- Eric Hoffer"To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility."
-- Eric Hoffer
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all."
-- Elbert Hubbard - (American writer - 1910)
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-- Hume
"In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time. The completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the orthodoxies drummed in by nightly courses of sleep-teaching - these things were coming all right, but not in my time, not even in the time of my grandchildren....Twenty-seven years later,...I feel a good deal less optimistic... In the West,...individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But...this freedom and even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane."
-- Aldous Huxley Brave New World Revisited 1958
"Be not afraid of the Pistols you have sent me. They may be necessary Implements of self Defense tho' I dare say I shall never have Occasion to use them It is a Satisfaction to have the means of Security at hand, if we are in no danger, as I never expect to be. Confide in my prudence and self regard for a proper use of them, and you need have no Apprehension."
-- James Iredell
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
-- Thomas Jefferson Letter to William Ludlow, 1824"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity."
-- Thomas Jefferson"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
-- Thomas Jefferson"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
-- Thomas Jefferson"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."
-- Thomas Jefferson"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
-- Lyndon Johnson
"I think that the free-enterprise system is absolutely too important to be left to the voluntary action of the marketplace."
-- Congressman Richard Kelly (R-Fla.)
"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."
-- John F. Kennedy (Life member of the NRA)"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
-- John F. Kennedy
"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)
"The damage to the Bill of Rights could be greater than that resulting from the drug war. Gun controls have always been associated with intrusive searchs and seizures in violation of probable cause. Judge David Shields of Chicago's firearms court observed: 'Constitutional search and seizure issues are probably more regularly argued in this court than anywhere in America.' As early as 1933, one quarter of all weapons arrests in Detroit were dismissed because of illegal searches. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the St. Louis police have conducted over 25,000 illegal searches under the theory that any Black driving a late-model car must have a handgun. The Chicago Police Department gives an officer a favorable notation in his record for confiscating a gun, even as the result of an illegal search. As a practical matter, one cannot comply with the Fourth Amendment probable cause requirement and also effectively enforce a gun prohibition. Former D.C. Court of Appeals judge Malcolm Wilkey thus bemoaned the fact that the exclusionary rule, 'has made unenforceable the gun control laws we now have and will make ineffective any stricter controls which may be devised.'"
-- David Kopel, Peril or Protection? The Risks And Benefits Of Handgun Prohibition.
"In a crisis and emergency situation, the free market may not be the best way to distribute resources. ... If there's a point in time where we have to take resources and make a judgment on an emergency basis, we will be prepared to do that."
-- John Koskinen, the chairman of President Clinton's Y2K council
"Any day you're free is a beautiful day."
-- ex-P.O.W. Air Force Col. Jim Lamar
"Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband -- it creeps up insidiously... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone."
-- Baron Lane
"And all the time - such is the tragic comedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."
-- C.S.Lewis
"It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest."
-- Abraham Lincoln"We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution."
-- Abraham Lincoln"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
-- Abraham Lincoln"Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."
-- Abraham Lincoln"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty; to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy."
-- Abraham Lincoln"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Freedom is hunting, feeding, danger; that, that is freedom --that it is which makes the veins to swell, the breast to heave and glow; aye, that is freedom, --that is pleasure --life!"
-- Marie Lovell
"They have rights who dare maintain them"
-- James Rusell Lowell
"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation."
-- Douglas MacArthur
"He is free who knows how to keep in his own hand the power to decide, at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power."
-- Salvador de Madariaga
"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation."
-- James Madison"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much ... to forget it."
-- James Madison.
"I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election... It adds up to a preconceived plan to distroy the economic and social independence of the United States!"
-- George W. Malone, U.S. Senator(Nevada) 1957
"There is no such thing as part freedom."
-- Nelson Mandela, 1991
"No man escapes when freedom fails, the best men rot in filthy jails, and those that cried appease, appease, are hanged by those they tried to please."
-- Horace Mann (1796-1859)
"Let's get this straight: because there's, say, a .00001% chance of me being killed or otherwise abused by the mob, the corner dope pusher, kiddie porn freaks, or religious-nut bombers, I'm supposed to sacrifice my privacy, freedom of speech, security, and other civil liberties? I think not."
-- Stanton McCandlish
"The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic."
-- H.L. Mencken"The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy."
-- H. L. Mencken
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
-- John Stuart Mill - On Liberty (1859)"I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized."
-- John Stuart Mill - On Liberty (1859)A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
-- John Stuart Mill, writing on the U.S. Civil War in 1862The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
-- John Stuart Mill"What ever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called."
-- John Stuart Mill
"You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him."
-- John Morley - On Compromise (1874)
"Because of the end of the cold war, and increasing political isolationist policies in the international arena, Americans are being pitted against one another. We must avoid the temptations to scapegoat vulnerable groups within our own borders--an idea fueled by elected officials who are looking to divide and conquer. If you villify enough groups frequently, then you create a climate where people feel justified in denying the targeted groups rights whether we are talking about members of militias or immigrants."
-- Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU National Office
"I want the state to take away people's guns. But I don't want the state to use methods against gun owners that I deplore when used against naughty children, sexual minorities, drug users, and unsightly drinkers. Since such reprehensible police practices are probably needed to make anti-gun laws effective, my proposal to ban all guns should probably be marked a failure before it is even tried."
-- Aryeh Neier, former director of the American Civil Liberties Union
"We do not have censorship. What we have is a limitation on what newspapers can report."
-- Louis Nel, Deputy Minister of Information for South Africa
"First the Nazis went after the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not object. Then they went after the Catholics, but I was not a Catholic, so I did not object. They they went after the Trade-Unionists, but I was not a Trade-Unionist, so I did not object. Then they came after me, and there was no one left to object."
-- Martin Niemoeller (Dachau, 1945)
"The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing."
-- Albert Jay Nock
"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent."
-- Charles Eliot Norton
"There are instances where it is in the best interests of the nation not to vote the will of the people."
-- Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, on why Congress gave itself a pay raise without voting on the record for the raise.
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
-- P. J. O'Rourke"There's only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
-- P. J. O'Rourke"Free societies often do what they should, usually by default. Freedom is, after all, a matter of letting other people alone, and that's best done by default."
-- P. J. O'Rourke"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license."
-- P. J. O'Rourke
"While the Pobble was in the water some unidentified creatures came and ate his toes off, and when he got home his aunt remarked: It's a fact the whole world knows, That Pobbles are happier without their toes, which is funny because it has a meaning, and one might even say a political significance. For the whole theory of authoritarian government is summed up in the statement that Pobbles are happier without their toes."
-- George Orwell
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
-- Thomas Paine"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
-- Thomas Paine"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."
-- Thomas Paine
"When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves."
-- George Pataki
"Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it."
-- Pericles
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
-- Wendell Phillips
"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all of these sick children well, by creating the international children of the future."
-- Dr. C.M. Pierce of Harvard University in a speech to teachers (1973)
"The imposition of stigma is the commonest form of violence used in democratic societies."
-- R. A. Pinker
"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt, Speech on the India Bill, Nov. 18, 1783.
"A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."
-- Plato - The Republic (c. 380 B.C.)
"As a free society matures it becomes more permissive, because the converse is too horrible to contemplate."
-- Joshua R. Poulson, 1986
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
-- Ayn Rand"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government- that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."
-- Ayn Rand
"Two visions of the world remain locked in dispute. The first believes all men are created equal by a loving God who has blessed us with freedom. Abraham Lincoln spoke for us: 'No man,' he said, 'is good enough to govern another without the other's consent.'
The second vision believes that religion is opium for the masses. It believes that eternal principles like truth, liberty, and democracy have no meaning beyond the whim of the state. And Lenin spoke for them: 'It is true, that liberty is precious,' he said, 'so precious that it must be rationed.'
Well, I'll take Lincoln's version over Lenin's - and so will citizens of the world if they're given free choice."
-- Ronald Reagan
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."
-- Ambrose Redmoon
"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
-- Thomas Brackett Reed
"Give me control over a man's economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional heroes, I'll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to."
-- Benjamine A. Rooge
"The Film, Video, and Publications Act also breached the Bill of Rights and it became law. Parliament is bigger than the Bill of Rights".
-- New Zealand (Howick) Member of Parliament Trevor Rogers
"Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"We can afford to differ on the currency, the tarrif and foreign policy; but we cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic to endure. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public office; it matters not how brilliant his capacity."
-- Theodore Roosevelt"No man is above the law, and no man is below it."
-- Theodore Roosevelt"A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
"I guess you will have to go to jail. If that is the result of not understanding the Income Tax Law, I will meet you there. We shall have a merry, merry time, for all our friends will be there. It will be an intellectual center, for no one understands the Income Tax Law except persons who have not sufficient intelligence to understand the questions that arise under it."
-- Senator Elihu Root of NY, 1913
"As soon as any man says of the affairs of State, 'What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up as lost."
-- Jean Rousseau - The Social Contract (1762)
"The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it."
-- Margaret Sanger, founder and patron saint of Planned Parenthood: Woman and the New Race
"Freedom can not be bought for nothing. If you hold her precious, you must hold all else of little value."
-- Lucius Seneca - Epistolae Morales (c. 60 A.D.)
"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness."
-- Eric Sevareid
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
-- George Bernard Shaw"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
-- George Bernhard Shaw
"One of these days the talking will be over and the citizenry of the United States will decide whether or not to remain free."
-- Dan W. Shoemaker
"You can be a free man under a dictatorship. It is sufficient if you struggle against it. He who thinks with his own head is a free man. He who struggles for what he believes to be right is a free man."
-- Ignazio Silone
"There is a legitimate public health interest in seeing these kids immunized that arguably overrides the privacy right."
-- Illinois state Rep. Ricca C. Slone
"We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all."
-- William Reece Smith, Jr.
"In the Supreme Court and elsewhere, blithe talk about "a living Constitution" conceals the fact that the constitution is in fact dying as it is being reinterpreted out of existence, whenever it stands in the way of the prevailing zeitgeist."
-- Thomas SowellFreedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
-- Thomas SowellWhat is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
-- Thomas Sowell
"If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state --to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying toward its support."
-- Herbert Spencer - Social Statics (1851)"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?"
-- Herbert Spencer
"The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts."
-- Baruch Spinoza - Ethics (1677)
"Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."
-- Joseph Stalin - 1934"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas."
-- Joseph Stalin
"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt."
-- Elizabeth Cody Stanton
"The State, it cannot be too often repeated, does nothing and can give nothing which it does not take from somebody. The Forgotten Man works and votes--generally he prays--but his chief business in life is to pay."
-- William Sumner - The Forgotten Man (1883)
"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise."
-- Cornelius Tacitus - Annals (c. 116 A.D.)"The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws."
-- Cornelius Tacitus
"Love work, hate domination, and do not let your name come to the attention of the ruling powers."
-- Talmud/Sayings of the Fathers
"Since when is 'public safety' the root password to the Constitution?"
-- C. D. Tavares
"The rights you have are the rights given to you by Committee. We will determine what rights you have and what rights you have not got."
-- J. Parnell Thomas, House Un-American Affairs Committee
"When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default, it can never be recovered."
-- Dorothy Thompson
"How does it become a man to act towards the American government today? I answer that he cannot, without disgrace, be associated with it."
--Henry David Thoreau, An Essay on Civil Disobedience
"War is an evil thing; but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse.... Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value.... To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side."
-- Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War (c. 413 B.C.)"The secret of freedom, courage."
-- Thucydides
"Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and opposed subjects."
-- Leo Tolstoy (1893)
"When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril."
-- Harry Truman
"This is America. You can do anything here."
-- Robert E. Turner ~
"I've always been a strong U.N. proponent.... Who was that guy who had the round table? Arthur? One for all, all for one."
-- Ted Turner CNN Interview with Larry King 1997
"These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."
-- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 29
"...[S]o long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."
-- Voltaire"The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force."
-- Voltaire
"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster."
-- Ludwig von Mises"The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty."
-- Ludwig von Mises"Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments."
-- Ludwig von Mises
"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."
-- Daniel Webster"No government is respectable which is not just.-Without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society."
-- Daniel Webster
"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
-- Noah Webster
"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."
-- General William Westmoreland
"To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States: Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, ... no nation, state, city, on this earth ever afterward assumes its liberty."
-- Walt Whitman - To the States
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
-- Oscar Wilde
"Don't ever think you know what's right for the other person. He might start thinking he knows what's right for you."
-- Paul Williams, `Das Energi'
"It has nothing to do with defending our country except to make it worth defending."
-- Robert Wilson
"There is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so pervasive that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
-- President Woodrow Wilson"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."
-- former US President Woodrow Wilson
"I love the Constitution and government of this land, but I hate the damned rascals that administer the government."
-- Brigham Young
"The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words."
-- From an article on the growth of federal regulations in the Oct. 24, 1995 issue of National Review"Stepping up the pressure on potential witnesses in the criminal investigation of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., federal agents have been making nighttime visits to the homes of some company employees in Florida, trying to persuade them to cooperate with the inquiry and provide evidence to the government."
-- New York Times, August 20, 1997"The American Civil Liberties Union said today that the freedom to bear arms must be sacrificed to the more important freedom of 'free and fearless debate on which our free society rests.'"
Associated Press, June 14, 1968"For the second straight year, the number of wiretaps by Clinton administration law enforcement agents weighed in at an all-time record level. Last year federal officials sought and received authorization to install listening devices 554 times as opposed to 450 in 1993, 340 in the last year of the Bush Administration, and 293 in the last year of the Reagan administration."
-- From the July 1995 Communications of the ACM, p. 10
"The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable."
-- U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977"The exports include thumbscrews and cattle prods, just routine items for the police."
-- Commerce Department spokesman on a regulation allowing the export of various products abroad"Information is voluntary. Failure to provide information could subject individual to be called on extended active duty when member might be eligible for assignment to Standby Reserve..."
-- Privacy Act Statement, U.S. Air Force Reserve, mid-1970's
"search certain premises where it is believed that there may be found contraband, prohibited articles, or other materials in violation of the Proclamation of the President of the United States. It includes such items as firearms, shortwave radio receiving sets, cameras, propaganda materials, printing presses, mimeography machines, membership and financial records of organizations or groups that have been declared subversive, or may hereafter be declared subversive by the Attorney General."
-- Master Search Warrant provision of the Internal Security Act of 1950 (still in force)"Enclosed for your review and comment is the draft Army regulation on civilian inmate labor utilization and establishment of prison camps on Army installations. The draft regulation is the compilation of all policy message (sic), Civilian Inmate Labor Oversight Committee policy decisions, and lessons learned to date. The new regulation will provide the following:
a. Policy for civilian inmate utilization on installations
b. Procedures for preparing requests to establish civilian inmate labor programs on installations
c. Procedures for preparing requests to establish civilian prison camps on installations."
-- memo from C. Dean Rhody, Director of Resource Management for the Department of the Army, July 27 1994
"Claim of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence is not ground for federal habeas relief."
-- US Supreme Court 1/93 (prisoner executed 5/93)"There is no reason to set these guilty findings aside merely because the verdicts cannot rationally be reconciled."
-- U.S. District Judge Walter Smith (3/9/94), reinstating charges of weapons violations of Branch Davidians at the behest of federal prosecutors.No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.
-- 16 Am. Jur. Sec. 177 late 2d, Sec 256Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.
-- Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436 p. 491