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|  Edward Abbey | A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. | |
| Bruce Ackerman | There is simply no escaping the fact that the fate of the Constitution is in our hands -- as voters, representatives, justices. If we allow ourselves to abuse the tradition of higher lawmaking, the very idea that the Constitution can be viewed as the culminating expression of a mobilized citizenry will disintegrate. After all, the American Republic is no more eternal than the Roman -- and it will come to an end when American citizens betray their Constitution’s fundamental ideals and aspirations so thoroughly that existing institutions merely parody the public meanings they formerly conveyed | |
| Lord Acton | Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being. | |
| Lord Acton | Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. | |
| Lord Acton | At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.... | |
| Lord Acton | Freedom degenerates unless it has to struggle in its own
defence. | |
| Abigail Adams | We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them. | |
| Abigail Adams | I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life....Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe. | |
| Henry Brooks Adams | Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself. | |
| John Adams | Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it. | |
| John Adams | Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice. | |
| John Adams | Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws. He is obliged, consequently, to contribute his share to the expense of this protection; and to give his personal service, or an equivalent, when necessary. But no part of the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people. In fine, the people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent. | |
| John Adams | A question arises whether all the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, shall be left in this body? I think a people cannot be long free, nor ever happy, whose government is in one Assembly. | |
| John Adams | But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations…This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution. | |
| John Adams | We hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest. | |
| John Adams | When I went home to my family in May, 1770, from the town meeting in Boston, which was the first I had ever attended, and where I had been chosen in my absence, without any solicitation, one of their representatives, I said to my wife, "I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning, that you may prepare your mind for your fate." She burst into tears, but instantly cried out in a transport of magnanimity, "Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined." These were times, my friend, in Boston, which tried women's souls as well as men's. | |
| John Adams | Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it. | |
| John Adams | It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. | |
| John Adams | The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. | |
| John Adams | Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. | |
| John Quincy 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 | The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy. | |
| John Quincy Adams | Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost. | |
| Samuel Adams | 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 them 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 to be cheated out of them
by the artifices of false and designing men. | |
| Samuel Adams | If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin. | |
| Samuel Adams | Governors have no Right to seek and take what they please; by this, instead of being content with the Station assigned them, that of honorable Servants of the Society, they would soon become Absolute Masters, Despots,and Tyrants. Hence, as a private Man has a Right to say what Wages he will give in his private Affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their Substance for the Administration of public Affairs. | |
| Samuel Adams | It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds. | |
| Samuel Adams | Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all? | |
| Samuel Adams | And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions. | |
| Samuel Adams | All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should. | |
| Aeschylus | Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might. | |
| Aesop | The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction. | |
| Aesop | The gods help them that help themselves. | |
| Publius Terentius Afer | Charity begins at home. | |
| African Proverb | Don't look where you fall, but where you slipped. | |
| Herbert Sebastien Agar | The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear. | |
| J. Tucker Alford | It is precisely this clinging to victimhood as a means of demonstrating one’s virtue and advancing one’s well-being that has led us into a society in which welfare and quotas are “civil rights,” government handouts are “entitlements,” and payment to girls having babies out of wedlock are “compassionate,” while hard-working, ambitious people are “greedy,” punishment of crime is “oppression,” and an independent thinker who stands for courage and self-reliance is dismissed as an “Uncle Tom.” | |
| Dante Alighieri | Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips, but few in their mind. | |
| Dante Alighieri | Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds. | |
| Florence Ellinwood Allen | Liberty cannot be caged into a charter or handed on ready-made to the next generation. Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times. Whether or not we establish freedom rests with ourselves. | |
| James Allen | Our life is what our thoughts make it. A man will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and others will alter towards him. | |
| American Civil Liberties Union | Liberty is always unfinished business. | |
| American Library Association | We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. | |
| Amnesty International | The USA was founded in the name of democracy, equality and individual freedom, but is failing to deliver the fundamental promise of protecting rights for all. | |
| Walter Truett Anderson | Our lives improve only when we take chances -- and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves. | |
| Marcus Aurelius Antoninus | The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer. | |
| Marcus Aurelius Antoninus | A man should be upright, not be kept upright. | |
| Saint Thomas Aquinas | Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. | |
| Saint Thomas Aquinas | The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing. | |
| Jann Arden | The first step to truly living a good and fearless life, is accepting responsibility for your actions. Accepting what part you had in any situation. Difficult, to say the least, but liberating. | |
| Hannah Arendt | No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny. | |
| Hannah Arendt | The main characteristic of any event is that it has not been foreseen. We don’t know the future but everybody acts into the future. Nobody knows what he is doing because the future is being done, action is being done by a “we” and not an “I.” Only if I were the only one acting could I foretell the consequences of what I’m doing. What actually happens is entirely contingent, and contingency is indeed one of the biggest factors in all history. Nobody knows what is going to happen because so much depends on an enormous number of variables, on simple hazard. On the other hand if you look at history retrospectively, then, even though it was contingent, you can tell a story that makes sense…. Jewish history, for example, in fact had its ups and downs, its, enmities and its friendships, as every history of all people has. The notion that there is one unilinear history is of course false. But if you look at it after the experience of Auschwitz it looks as though all of history -- or at least history since the Middle Ages -- had no other aim than Auschwitz…. This, is the real problem of every philosophy of history how is it possible that in retrospect it always looks as though it couldn’t have happened otherwise? | |
| Pietro Aretino | I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself. | |
| Aristotle | If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. | |
| Aristotle | Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil -- and if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty. | |
| Aristotle | To the size of the state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and implements, for none of these
retain their facility when they are too large. | |
| Richard Armey | Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision. | |
| Matthew Arnold | But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok'd souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will. | |
| Augustine of Hippo | Put no faith in salvation through the political order. | |
| Sir Francis Bacon | A just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war. | |
| Sir Francis Bacon | It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty,
or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self. | |
| Michael Badnarik | How bad do things have to get before you do something? Do they have to take away all your property? Do they have to license every activity that you want to engage in? Do they have to start throwing you on cattle cars before you say “now wait a minute, I don’t think this is a good idea.” How long is it going to be before you finally resist and say “No, I will not comply. Period!” Ask yourself now because sooner or later you are going to come to that line, and when they cross it, you’re going to say well now cross this line; ok now cross that line; ok now cross this line. Pretty soon you’re in a corner. Sooner or later you’ve got to stand your ground whether anybody else does or not. That is what liberty is all about. | |
| Mikhail A. Bakunin | Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him. | |
| James Baldwin | Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch. | |
| Doug Bandow | The history of the welfare state is the history of public enterprise pushing out private organization. The impact was largely unintentional, but natural and inevitable. Higher taxes left individuals with less money to give; government’s assumption of responsibility for providing welfare shriveled the perceived duty of individuals to respond to their neighbors’ needs; and the availability of public programs gave recipients an alternative to private assistance, one which did not challenge recipients to reform their destructive behavior. | |
| Tallulah Bankhead | Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. | |
| Tallulah Bankhead | I'm a foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, "I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right. | |
| Bertrand Barere de Vieuzac | The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants. | |
| Joel Barlow | [Individual disarmament] palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind; an habitual disuse of physical force totally destroys the moral; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression. | |
| William Barr | In the past, when societies are threatened by moral chaos, the overall social costs of licentiousness and irresponsible personal conduct becomes so high that society ultimately recoils and reevaluates the path they are on. But today – in the face of all the increasing pathologies – instead of addressing the underlying cause, we have the State in the role of Alleviator of Bad Consequences. We call on the State to mitigate the social costs of personal misconduct and irresponsibility. So the reaction to growing illegitimacy is not sexual responsibility, but abortion. The reaction to drug addiction is safe injection sites. The solution to the breakdown of the family is for the State to set itself up as the ersatz husband for single mothers and the ersatz father to their children. The call comes for more and more social programs to deal with the wreckage. While we think we are solving problems, we are underwriting them. We start with an untrammeled freedom and we end up as dependents of a coercive state on whom we depend. | |
| John Barrymore | A man must pay the fiddler. In my case it so happened that a whole symphony orchestra often had to be subsidized. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | When law and morality contradict each other,
the citizen has the cruel alternative
of either losing his moral sense
or losing his respect for the law. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | Society is composed of men, and every man is a FREE agent. Since man is free, he can choose; since he can choose, he can err; since he can err, he can suffer. I go further: He must err and he must suffer; for his starting point is ignorance, and in his ignorance he sees before him an infinite number of unknown roads, all of which save one lead to error. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. | |
| O. A. Battista | One of the hardest things to teach a child is that the truth is more important than the consequences. | |
| Charles Austin Beard | 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. | |
| Cesare Beccaria | The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons. | |
| Cesare Beccaria | False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. | |
| Cesare Beccaria | A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, who dares say to reason, 'Be thou a slave;' who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it. | |
| Cesare Beccaria | False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty... and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree. | |
| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher | Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them. | |
| Ezra Taft Benson | If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers – normally good Americans, but Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free, Americans who have been lulled away into a false security. | |
| Isaiah Berlin | Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an unalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human. | |
| Ambrose Bierce | Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. | |
| Justice Hugo L. Black | The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges’ views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. | |
| Justice Hugo L. Black | An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment. | |
| Leon Blum | A free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought. | |
| William Boetcker | You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.\\
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.\\
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.\\
You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.\\
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.\\
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.\\
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.\\
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.\\
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.\\
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. | |
| Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux | Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return. | |
| Curtis Bok | In the whole history of law and order, the biggest step was taken by primitive man when...the tribe sat in a circle and allowed only one man to speak at a time. An accused who is shouted down has no rights whatever. | |
| Napoleon Bonaparte | If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. | |
| Napoleon Bonaparte | I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest. | |
| Neal Boortz | Government schools will teach children that government is wonderful. | |
| Neal Boortz | I can’t think of anything that would do more toward putting us back on the road to liberty and personal responsibility than for the average American, and for the news media, to come to the understanding that we are not a democracy, nor were we supposed to be. | |
| Neal Boortz | You have to ask yourself, 'Who owns me? Do I own myself or am I just another piece of government property?' | |
| James Bovard | To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power. To distrust government is simply to trust humanity - to trust in the ability of average people to peacefully, productively coexist without some official policing their every move. The State is merely another human institution - less creative than Microsoft, less reliable than Federal Express, less responsible than the average farmer husbanding his land, and less prudent than the average citizen spending his own paycheck. | |
| Chester Bowles | Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. | |
| Berton Braley | I honestly believe that sound commercialism is the best test of true value in art. People work hard for their money and if they won’t part with it for your product the chances are that your product hasn’t sufficient value. An artist or writer hasn’t any monopoly .... If the public response to his artistry is lacking, he’d do well to spend more time analyzing what’s the matter with his work, and less time figuring what’s the matter with the public. | |
| Justice Louis D. Brandeis | The most important political office is that of private citizen. | |
| Tom Braun | If you think we are free today, you know nothing about tyranny and even less about freedom. | |
| Bertolt Brecht | Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment.
Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk. | |
| H. Jackson Brown, Jr. | Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. | |
| Harry Browne | The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it. | |
| Harry Browne | Being a politician means never having to say you're sorry. You don't have to say, 'I never should have voted to subsidize that ridiculous Enron project in India.' ... After all, they're greedy businessmen and you're a selfless public servant. | |
| Harry Browne | We should never define libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals and conservatives, nor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times. | |
| James Buchanan | What is right and what is practicable are two different things. | |
| Buddha | All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. | |
| Buddha | Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others. | |
| Buddha | | |
| Buddha | There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. | |
| Buddha | Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world. | |
| Edmund Burke | To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil. | |
| Edmund Burke | When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. | |
| Edmund Burke | It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare. | |
| Edmund Burke | The greater the power the more dangerous the abuse. | |
| Edmund Burke | It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. | |
| Edmund Burke | Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. | |
| George Burns | Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair. | |
| Sir Richard Francis Burton | Do what thy manhood bids thee do, From none but self expect applause: He noblest lives and noblest dies Who makes and keeps his self-made laws. | |
| Barbara Bush | Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens at the White House, but what happens inside your house. | |
| Nicholas Murray Butler | The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously. | |
| Samuel Butler | The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. | |
| Robert Byrne | The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose. | |
| Lord Byron | Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? | |
| Lord Byron | Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. | |
| Lord Byron | My time has been passed viciously and agreeably; at thirty-one so few years months days hours or minutes remain that "Carpe Diem" is not enough. I have been obliged to crop even the seconds -- for who can trust to tomorrow? | |
| Lord Byron | I wish men to be free, as much from mobs as kings,—from
you as me. | |
| C. Arthur Campbell | When we regard a man as morally responsible for an act, we regard him as a legitimate object of moral praise or blame in respect of it. But it seems plain that a man cannot be a legitimate object of moral praise or blame for an act unless in willing the act he is in some important sense a ‘free’ agent. Evidently free will in some sense, therefore, is a precondition of moral responsibility. | |
| Albert Camus | Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne...Oh no! It's a...long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting. | |
| Albert Camus | Integrity has no need of rules. | |
| Albert Camus | Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all. | |
| Albert Camus | The aim of art, the aim of a life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. | |
| Andrew Carnegie | I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. They never pauperize. They reach the aspiring and open to these chief treasures of the world -- those stored up in books. A taste for reading drives out lower tastes. | |
| Andrew Carnegie | All honor's wounds are self-inflicted. | |
| Dale Carnegie | Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain -- and most fools do. | |
| David Carr | I was taught when I was a young reporter that it's news when we say it is. I think that's still true -- it's news when 'we' say it is. It's just who 'we' is has changed. Members of the public, people with modems, people with cell phones are now producers, editors. They can push and push and push on a story until it ends up being acknowledged by everyone. | |
| Dr. Ben Carson | My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn’t want to be on welfare. She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that. … But, one thing that she provided us was a tremendous example of what hard work is like. | |
| Jimmy Carter | The law is not the private property of lawyers, nor is justice the exclusive province of judges and juries. In the final analysis, true justice is not a matter of courts and law books, but of a commitment in each of us to liberty and mutual respect. | |
| Cato | By Liberty I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private Actions and Property. | |
| Neil Cavuto | It's about food. It’s about your home. It’s about your life. The government is worried about all of the above. All I’m saying is you should be worried they’re worried. Here’s why: They’re telling you that you can’t take care of yourself. You can’t be trusted with what you put in your mouth or what you sign on the mortgage dotted line. So they’ll tell you what to put in your mouth and they’ll save you from what you signed on that dotted line. Does anyone see a trend here? Personal responsibility has now become government responsibility. | |
| Zechariah Chafee, Jr. | Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins. | |
| John Chancellor | Now the 21st century approaches and with it the inevitability of change. We must wonder if the American people will find renewal and rejuvenation within themselves, will discover again their capacity for innovation and adaptation. If not, alas, the nation's future will be shaped by sightless forces of history over which Americans will have no control. | |
| Edwin Hubbel Chapin | No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions. | |
| E. H. Chapin | At the bottom of a good deal of bravery... lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they cannot face public opinion. | |
| John Jay Chapman | Attack another’s rights and you destroy your own. | |
| Pierre Teilhard de Chardin | Our duty, as men and women is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation. | |
| Gilbert Keith Chesterton | When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress. | |
| Gilbert Keith Chesterton | He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative. | |
| Gilbert Keith Chesterton | The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog. | |
| Gilbert Keith Chesterton | But there is another strong objection which I, one of the laziest of all the children of Adam, have against the Leisure State. Those who think it could be done argue that a vast machinery using electricity, water-power, petrol, and so on, might reduce the work imposed on each of us to a minimum. It might, but it would also reduce our control to a minimum. We should ourselves become parts of a machine, even if the machine only used those parts once a week. The machine would be our master, for the machine would produce our food, and most of us could have no notion of how it was really being produced. | |
| Lydia M. Child | Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do. | |
| Chinese Proverb | Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one. | |
| Chinese Proverb | Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | If you have 10,000 regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | The price of greatness is responsibility. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: 'We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls.' | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. | |
| Marcus Tullius Cicero | We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free. | |
| Marcus Tullius Cicero | A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures? | |
| Claire Joly, Marie Latourelle, Maryse Martin, and Karen Selick | Les femmes sont tout à fait compétentes pour assurer leur légitime défense, pourvu que la loi ne les transforme pas en criminelles si elles emploient des moyens efficaces à cette fin." "Women are quite able to see to their own defence, as long as the law does not transform them into criminals if they take effective measures to do so. | |
| Henry Clay | An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters. | |
| Grover Cleveland | I can find no warrant for such appropriation in the Constitution. | |
| Grover Cleveland | Honor lies in honest toil. | |
| Grover Cleveland | A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil. | |
| William Kingdon Clifford | All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land. | |
| Bill Clinton | 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, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. | |
| Bill Clinton | 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. | |
| Bill Clinton | You can't say you love your country and hate your government. | |
| Hartley Coleridge | But what is Freedom? Rightly understood,
A universal licence to be good. | |
| Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor. | |
| Samuel Taylor Coleridge | A people are free in proportion as they form their own opinions. | |
| R. G. Collingwood | Perfect Freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work, and in that work does what he wants to do. | |
| Charles Caleb Colton | Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others. | |
| Charles Caleb Colton | Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed. | |
| Confucius | He who will not economize will have to agonize. | |
| Confucius | If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself. | |
| Confucius | Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Let me do and I understand. | |
| Confucius | If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything. | |
| Joseph Conrad | You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. | |
| Benjamin Constant | First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a citizen of the United States of America understand today by the word 'liberty'. For each of them it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death nor maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is the right of everyone to express their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to dispose of property, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone's right to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the religion which they or their associates prefer, or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is more compatible with their inclinations or whims. Finally, it is everyone's right to exercise some influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed. Now compare this liberty with that of the ancients. The latter consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community. | |
| Alistair Cooke | As for the rage to believe that we have found the secret of liberty in general permissiveness from the cradle on, this seems to me a disastrous sentimentality, which, whatever liberties it sets loose, loosens also the cement that alone can bind society into a stable compound -- a code of obeyed taboos. I can only recall the saying of a wise Frenchman that `liberty is the luxury of self-discipline.' Historically, those peoples that did not discipline themselves had discipline thrust on them from the outside. That is why the normal cycle in the life and death of great nations has been first a powerful tyranny broken by revolt, the enjoyment of liberty, the abuse of liberty -- and back to tyranny again. As I see it, in this country -- a land of the most persistent idealism and the blandest cynicism -- the race is on between its decadence and its vitality. | |
| Thomas Cooley | The right is general.
It may be supposed from the phraseology of this provision
that the right to keep and bear arms
was only guaranteed to the militia;
but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent.
The militia, as has been explained elsewhere,
consists of those persons who, under the law,
are liable to the performance of military duty,
and are officered and enrolled for service
when called upon. . . .
[I]f the right were limited to those enrolled,
the purpose of the guarantee might be defeated altogether
by the action or the neglect to act
of the government it was meant to hold in check.
The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is,
that the people, from whom the militia must be taken,
shall have the right to keep and bear arms,
and they need no permission or regulation of law
for that purpose. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.... If the foundation is firm, the superstructure will stand. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in
some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts....
Self-government means self-reliance. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | A wholesome regard for the memory of the great men of long ago is the best assurance to a people of a continuation of great men to come, who shall be able to instruct, to lead, and to inspire. A people who worship at the shrine of true greatness will themselves be truly great. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest. | |
| James Fenimore Cooper | Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a free man. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner. | |
| Richard Cowan | One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could. | |
| William Cowper | To follow foolish precedents, and wink\\
With both our eyes, is easier than to think. | |
| Patrick Cox | The holier-than-thou activists who blame the population for not spending more money on their personal crusades are worse than aggravating. They encourage the repudiation of personal responsibility by spreading the lie that support of a government program fulfills individual moral duty. | |
| Tench Coxe | The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. | |
| Benedetto Croce | Morality, and the ideal of freedom which is the political expression of morality, are not the property of a given party or group, but a value that is fundamentally and universally human... No people will be truly free till all are free. | |
| Davy Crockett | I leave this rule for others when I'm dead, Be always sure you're right -- then go ahead. | |
| Davy Crockett | I want people to be able to get what they need to live: enough food, a place to live, and an education for their children. Government does not provide these as well as private charities and businesses. | |
| John Philpot Curran | It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions 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. | |
| Dalai Lama | If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. | |
| Alma Daniel | It is up to you to decide whether or not you’re ready to be free, really free.
This pertains to your relationship as well as your activities in the world.
You are limitless, if you choose that! Your freedom comes from letting go.
Freedom means empowerment to be, do, go, feel, whatever your heart tells you.
Only you have kept yourself from having this freedom out of some
misunderstanding of what your responsibilities really are.
Your responsibilities are to your Self. Serve that truly, fully, and you serve All. | |
| Myra Janco Daniels | Every private citizen has a public responsibility. | |
| Dante | The hottest places in hell
are reserved for those
who in a period of moral crisis
maintain their neutrality. | |
| Clarence S. Darrow | The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom. | |
| Clarence S. Darrow | You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free. | |
| Clarence S. Darrow | The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along. | |
| Elmer Davis | The Republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it ...
This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave. | |
| Elmer Davis | The republic was not established by cowards, and cowards will not preserve it. | |
| Voltairine de Cleyre | ...So 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. | |
| Charles De Gaulle | I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. | |
| Bertrand de Jouvenel | A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves. | |
| Bertrand de Jouvenel | A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves. | |
| François Duc de La Rochefoucauld | Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence. | |
| François Duc de La Rochefoucauld | A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire. | |
| Salvador De Madariaga | He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands 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 | 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. | |
| Joseph de Maistre | Every nation gets the government it deserves. | |
| Charles de Montesquieu | The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded. | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries. | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave. | |
| Graceanne A. Decandido | If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas – and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do – it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas. | |
| Declaration of Independence | But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. | |
| Don Demetrick | The sentiment that modern day ordinary Canadians do not need firearms for protection is pleasant but unrealistic. To discourage responsible deserving Canadians from possessing firearms for lawful self-defence and other legitimate purposes is to risk sacrificing them at the altar of political correctness. | |
| W. Edwards Deming | It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and THEN do your best. | |
| Demosthenes | There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust. | |
| Daniel Dennett | There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear. | |
| Max DePree | We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are. | |
| Alan Dershowitz | If we move away from the American tradition of lawyers defending those with whom they vehemently disagree -- as we temporarily did during the McCarthy period -- we weaken our commitment to the rule of law... So beware of an approach which limits advocacy to that which is approved by the standards of political correctness. | |
| John F. Di Leo | Our Founders warned us that all republics have eventually fallen into tyranny -- the only difference being the relative timeline of each republic's descent. ... From the summer of 1787 when our Framers deliberated over their magnificent Constitution, we have recognized that the clear statement and equal application of the Law is among the most critical duties of any government. If we allow ourselves to lose this, we may as well be back in ancient Rome, subject to the whim of every petty tyrant in the taxing bureau or the zoning board. For it doesn't matter whether the regulator's foot is shod in a jack boot or a Roman sandal; if he can hold you down with that boot upon your neck, then we are no longer in the America that our Founding Fathers intended for us. | |
| John G. Diefenbaker | Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. | |
| Frederick Douglass | Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. | |
| Frederick Douglass | Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. | |
| Frederick Douglass | He who would be free must strike the first blow. | |
| Frederick Douglass | What shall be done with the four million slaves if they are emancipated? ... Primarily, it is a question less for man than for God -- less for human intellect than for the laws of nature to solve. It assumes that nature has erred; that the law of liberty is a mistake; that freedom, though a natural want of the human soul, can only be enjoyed at the expense of human welfare, and that men are better off in slavery than they would or could be in freedom; that slavery is the natural order of human relations, and that liberty is an experiment. What shall be done with them? Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone. | |
| Frederick Douglass | To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave. | |
| Frederick Douglass | I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class. | |
| Frederick Douglass | We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting, and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put. | |
| Frederick Douglass | The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. | |
| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! -- and that! -- and that! -- and that! | |
| W. E. B. Du Bois | The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression. | |
| John Foster Dulles | Of all the tasks of government, the most basic is to protect its citizens from violence. | |
| Wayne Dunn | The fact that most people think that being selfish means harming one's fellow man, that pursuing one's own self-interest equates to behaving brutally or irrationally, is, as Ms. Rand noted, a "psychological confession" on their part. In fact it is against one's own long-term self-interest to behave irrationally or trample others. Such actions are the exact opposite of selfish -- they're self-destructive. | |
| John J. Dunphy | The concept of a Supreme Being who childishly demands to be constantly
placated by prayers and sacrifice and dispenses justice like some corrupt
petty judge whose decisions may be swayed by a bit of well-timed flattery
should be relegated to the trash bin of history, along with the belief in a
flat earth and the notion that diseases are caused by demonic possession.
Ironically, the case for the involuntary retirement of God may have been
best stated by one Saul or Paul of Tarsus, a first-century tentmaker and
Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, who wrote, 'When I was a child, I spake
as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became
a man, I put away childish things' (I Corinthians 13:11). Those words are
no less relevant today than they were two thousand years ago. | |
| John J. Dunphy | How wonderful the world might be if only we gave to each other all the
love we claim to give to God, a thought which has been expressed time and
time again, yet it still manages to resound with a poignance that is almost
painful. Such a world can be ours, sisters and brothers. Let us work
together to achieve it. | |
| Will Durant | In my youth, I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order. | |
| Friedrich Durrenmatt | The freedom of each individual can only be the freedom of all. | |
| Thomas A. Edison | There is no expedient to which the average person will not go to avoid the hard work of thinking. | |
| Hans L. Eicholz | Government of the self was the original basis for republican
government, reflecting the view that civil society was much
more than politics. Society was made up of men and women
who gave order to their lives by entering into associations
on a voluntary basis, quite apart from government, for all
the various reasons of fellowship, philanthrophy,
faith and commerce. | |
| Albert Einstein | Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. | |
| Albert Einstein | It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs. | |
| Albert Einstein | 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 | The highest destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule. | |
| Albert Einstein | As the circle of knowledge expands, so does the Sphere of darkness that encompasses it. | |
| Albert Einstein | How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot. | |
| Albert Einstein | 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 constitutional rights secure. | |
| Albert Einstein | He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. | |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | Here in America we are descended in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. | |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law. | |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them. | |
| W. Vaughn Ellsworth | Pity the poor, wretched, timid soul, too faint hearted to resist his oppressors.
He sings the songs of the damned, 'I cannot resist, I have too much to lose,
they might take my property or confiscate my earnings,
what would my family do, how would they survive?'
He hides behind pretended family responsibility, failing to see that
the most glorious legacy that we can bequeath to our posterity is liberty! | |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson | Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State. | |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson | In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better. | |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson | Good men must not obey the laws too well. | |
| Thomas I. Emerson | It is frequently said that speech that is intentionally provocative and therefore invites physical retaliation can be punished or suppressed. Yet, plainly no such general proposition can be sustained. Quite the contrary…. The provocative nature of the communication does not make it any the less expression. Indeed, the whole theory of free expression contemplates that expression will in many circumstances be provocative and arouse hostility. The audience, just as the speaker, has an obligation to maintain physical restraint. | |
| Epictetus | Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else. | |
| Epictetus | No one is free who is not master of himself. | |
| Epictetus | He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action are not impeded, whose desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into that which he would avoid. | |
| Lou Erickson | We will all be better citizens when voting records of our Congressmen are followed as carefully as scores of pro-football games. | |
| Grant D. Fairley | When dealing with a legal matter - always remember that you are your own best advocate. No one will care as much about the case as you do. Use lawyers but remember - you must take primary responsibility for a successful outcome. | |
| William Faulkner | We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. | |
| Brock Fiant | Most people know more about their congressmen via smear campaigns than they know about their own neighbor via conversations, and a lot of people know more about Britney Spears via tabloids than they know about their own congressmen via voting booklets. Does anyone else see the problem here? | |
| Henry Fielding | When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough; I've done my duty, and I've done no more. | |
| Ronald Firbank | The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain. | |
| Martin H. Fischer | A man may be born a jackass; but it is his business if he makes himself a double one. | |
| F. Scott Fitzgerald | Either you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you. | |
| Anne Frank | How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. | |
| Viktor Frankl | The last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Moderation in all things -- including moderation. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | ... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ... | |
| Benjamin Franklin | It is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? — On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependance on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in
their manners. ... Six days shalt thou labor, though one of
the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be
looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase,
and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances
will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring
them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing
all your estates among them. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Printers are educated in the Belief, that when Men differ in Opinion, both sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Public; and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter: Hence [printers] cheerfully serve all contending Writers that pay them well, without regarding on which side they are of the Question in Dispute. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Trusting too much to others' care is the ruin of many; for, as the almanac says, in the affairs of this world men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it; but a man's own care is profitable; for, saith Poor Dick, learning is to the studious, and riches to the careful, as well as power to the bold, and Heaven to the virtuous. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only honest Way; wherein Man receives a real Increase of the Seed thrown into the Ground, in a kind of continual Miracle wrought by the Hand of God in his favour, as a Reward for his innocent Life, and virtuous Industry. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Your creditor has authority at his pleasure to deprive you of your liberty, by confining you in gaol for life, or to sell you for a servant, if you should not be able to pay him! When you have got your bargain, you may, perhaps, think little of payment; but creditors, Poor Richard tells us, have better memories than debtors, and in another place says, creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times. The day comes round before you are aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it. Or if you bear your debt in mind, the term which at first seemed so long, will, as it lessens, appear extreamly short. Time will seem to have added wings to his heels as well as shoulders. | |
| Viktor Frankyl | Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West coast. | |
| Freeman’s Journal | The freemen of America will remember, that it is very easy to change a free government into an arbitrary, despotic, or military one: but it is very difficult, almost impossible to reverse the matter -- very difficult to regain freedom once lost. | |
| Sigmund Freud | Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. | |
| David D. Friedman | The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations. | |
| Milton Friedman | Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. | |
| Milton Friedman | Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system. | |
| Milton Friedman | A society that puts equality...ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. | |
| Milton Friedman | The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up. | |
| Erich Fromm | If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it. | |
| Erich Fromm | The member of a primitive clan might express his identity in the formula “I am we”; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an “individual,” existing apart from his group. | |
| James Anthony Froude | English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on
the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised
democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour
of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family,
each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its
self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own
affairs and think its own thoughts. | |
| Thomas Fuller | 'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it. | |
| Rick Gaber | Those who complain the most about the quality of the people in power are the ones who put all that power there in the first place. Well, what kind of people did they expect it all to attract, anyway? Sheesh! | |
| Rocco Galati | 19 terrorists in 6 weeks have been able to command 300 million North Americans to do away with the entirety of their civil liberties that took 700 years to advance from the Magna Carta onward. The terrorists have already won the political and ideological war with one terrorist act. It is mindboggling that we are that weak as a society. | |
| John Kenneth Galbraith | When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | Good government is the most dangerous government, because it deprives people of the need to look after themselves. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | Men ... should do their actual living and working in communities ... small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal responsibilities, federated into larger units in such a way that the temptation to abuse great power should not arise. The larger (structurally) a democracy grows, the less becomes the rule of the people and the smaller is the say of individuals and localised groups in dealing with their own destinies. Moreover, love and affection, are essentially personal relationships. Consequently, it is only in small groups that Charity, in the Pauline sense of the word, can manifest itself. Needless to say, the smallness of the group, in no way guarantees the emergence of Charity. In a large undifferentiated group, the possibility does not even exist, for the simple reason that most of its members cannot, in the nature of things, have personal relations with one another. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. ... Freedom and slavery are mental states. Therefore, the first thing to say to yourself: 'I shall no longer accept the role of a slave. I shall not obey orders as such but shall disobey them when they are in conflict with my conscience'. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. | |
| James A. Garfield | Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained. | |
| Robbie Gass | Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it. | |
| William Jay Gaynor | My dear sir, let me tell you that every citizen has full legal right to arrest anyone whom he sees committing any criminal offense, big or little. The law of England and of this country has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen. You have the same right to make an arrest for an offense committed in your presence that any policeman has. But we cannot all be bothering with making arrests, so we employ a certain number of our fellow citizens for that purpose and put blue clothes and brass buttons on them. But their clothes and their buttons add nothing whatever to their right to make arrests without warrant. They still have only the same right which the law gives to all of us. Be so good as to look at section 183 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and be convinced of your powers, and then sail right in as hard and as fast as you want to, being careful, however, only to arrest guilty persons, for otherwise your victims will turn around and sue you for damages for false arrest. Policemen have to face the same risk. | |
| David Lloyd George | Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired. | |
| Anne Louise Germaine de Stael | Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty. | |
| Edward Gibbon | In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all - security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. | |
| Khalil Gibran | If it’s a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed. | |
| John C. Gifford | One man can completely change
the character of a country,
and the industry of its people,
by dropping a single seed
in fertile soil. | |
| Charlotte Perkins Gilman | The one predominant duty is to find one's work and do it. | |
| William Godwin | Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | The moment men obtain perfect freedom, that moment they erect a stage for the manifestation of their faults. The strong characters begin to go wrong by excess of energy; the weak by remissness of action. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Lose this day loitering
'Twill be the same old story,
Tomorrow and the next,
Even more dilatory.
Whatever you would do,
Or dream of doing, begin it!
Boldness has power, genius, and magic in it.
Begin it now. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | The best of all government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking; always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. | |
| Emma Goldman | There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another… All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. | |
| Barry Goldwater | Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue. | |
| Barry Goldwater | I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution ... or have failed their purpose ... or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should be attacked for neglecting my constituents' 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty, and in that cause I am doing the very best I can. | |
| Barry Goldwater | I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. | |
| John Goodwin | Freedom of conscience is a natural right, both antecedent and superior to all human laws and institutions whatever; a right which laws never gave and a right which laws can never take away. | |
| Ann Gray | Ponder the capriciousness of human nature,
which allows momentary appetites and fleeting attitudes
to set the courses for entire lives and future responsibilities. | |
| Horace Greeley | I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. | |
| Paul Greenberg | For the average American family, filling out a tax form has become like attacking a puzzle to which, often enough, there is no right answer. But we're all supposed to swear, on penalty of perjury, that we've done our best to find it. | |
| Germaine Greer | Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life. | |
| Wayne Gretzky | You miss 100% of the shots you never take. | |
| G. Edward Griffin | To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism. | |
| Edison Haines | With every civil right there has to be a corresponding civil obligation. | |
| Edward Everett Hale | I am only one. But still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | Responsibility, in order to be reasonable, must be limited to objects within the power of the responsible party, and in order to be effectual, must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude,
that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast,
with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace;
and, that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility,
is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its
authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people,
whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have
formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the
Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | [I]t is a truth which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger, when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. | |
| Judge Learned Hand | I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no courts to save it. | |
| Sydney J. Harris | We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice -- that is, until we have stopped saying, "It got lost," and say, "I lost it. | |
| William Havard | The greatest Glory of a free-born People, Is to transmit that Freedom to their Children. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest. | |
| Henry Hazlitt | The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity. | |
| Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel | When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | The human race divides itself politically into those who want to be controlled, and those who have no such desire. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | The whole principle is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | Love your country, but never trust its government. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute, get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed. | |
| Ammon Hennacy | Oh, judge, your damn laws: the good people don't need them and the bad people don't follow them so what good are they? | |
| Ammon Hennacy | An anarchist is anyone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do. | |
| Ammon Hennacy | Force is the weapon of the weak. | |
| Patrick Henry | It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. ... Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things, which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? 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. Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. ... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! | |
| Patrick Henry | Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect
every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will
preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force,
you are inevitably ruined. | |
| Patrick Henry | Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! | |
| Patrick Henry | Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing
degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own
defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our
own possession and under our own direction, and having them under
the management of Congress? If our defence be the_real_object of
having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more
propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? | |
| Patrick Henry | Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! | |
| Heraclitus | The people must fight for their laws as for their walls. | |
| Auberon Herbert | If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves. | |
| Auberon Herbert | It is not laissez-faire that has failed. That would be an ill day for men. What has failed is the courage to see what is true and speak it to the people, to point to the true remedies. | |
| L. M. Heroux | Make sure what you risk is yours to lose. | |
| Charlton Heston | As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated. | |
| Charlton Heston | Here's my credo. There are no good guns, There are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good man is no threat to anyone, except bad people. | |
| Charlton Heston | Political correctness is simply tyranny with manners. | |
| W. G. Hill | The threat of people acting in their own enlightened and rational self-interest strikes bureaucrats, politicians and social workers as ominous and dangerous. | |
| Hindu Saying | Pitiful is the one who, fearing failure, makes no beginning. | |
| Hippocrates | Idleness and lack of occupation tend -- nay are dragged -- towards evil. | |
| Sergei Hoff | Do we desire to be cradled, and then carried throughout life to our graves by this partisan propelled bureaucratic monstrosity? ...as individuals of sovereign dignity, are we now so terrified, bewildered, and impotent that our main purpose is to seek asylum from the potential hazards of freedom? Have we no faith in our natural strengths and abilities? | |
| Eric Hoffer | Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power. | |
| Eric Hoffer | One realizes that one of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does. | |
| Eric Hoffer | The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor. | |
| Eric Hoffer | People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have not" type of self. | |
| Eric Hoffer | 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. | |
| Abbie Hoffman | Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. | |
| Laura Hollis | [T]he greatest problem facing the United States today is not racism; it is the disappearance of the can-do attitude that built the country, ... We’ve lost the sense of individual responsibility for our problems, and that’s bad enough. But what’s worse, we’re losing faith in our ability to solve our problems. This acquired sense of helplessness is catastrophic, and it has paralyzed large swaths of the American public – rural, urban and suburban. … Encouraging dependence upon government not only creates generations of helpless people; it inures them to government’s ineffectiveness. | |
| Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. | The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. | |
| Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. | Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. | |
| Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. | Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man.
It involves the necessity for perpetual choice
which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. | |
| J. Edgar Hoover | Truth telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: every single one was a liar. | |
| Hans-Hermann Hoppe | If the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds ... its policies would most definitely reflect the ‘legitimate concerns’ of children to have ‘adequate’ and ‘equal’ access to ‘free’ french fries, lemonade and videos. | |
| Horace | Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself. | |
| Horace | Carpe Diem. (Seize the day.) | |
| Horace | “Painters and poets,” you say, “have always had an equal license in bold invention.” We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves and in turn we give it to others. | |
| David Horowitz | In Washington, of course, evading responsibility is an art form, so it is not always easy to tell who's responsible for which mess. | |
| Elbert Hubbard | Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of a field in hope that the cow will back up to them. | |
| Victor Hugo | Liberation is not deliverance. | |
| David Hume | It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. | |
| Suzanna Gratia Hupp | How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of. | |
| Aldous Huxley | Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty. | |
| Aldous Huxley | Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power. | |
| Hypatia of Alexandria | Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. | |
| I Ching | Mistrust the people and they become untrustworthy. | |
| Henrik Ibsen | A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. | |
| Indian Proverb | The most beautiful things in the universe are the starry heavens above us and the feeling of duty within us. | |
| Indian Saying | When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die the world cries and you rejoice. | |
| William Ralph Inge | It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own. | |
| William Ralph Inge | Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due. | |
| Robert G. Ingersoll | Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself. | |
| Robert G. Ingersoll | I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. | |
| Robert G. Ingersoll | There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments - there are only consequences. | |
| Robert G. Ingersoll | Courage without conscience is a wild beast. | |
| Isaiah | Loose the bands of wickedness, undo the bundles that oppress, let those who are broken go free, and break asunder every burden. Share your bread with the hungry, welcome into your house the afflicted and homeless; when you see a naked man, clothe him, and do not turn your back on your own flesh. Then your light will arise like the dawn, and your wound will quickly be healed. Your justice shall go before you, the glory of the Lord will closely follow you | |
| Andrew Jackson | The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger. | |
| Justice Robert H. Jackson | The priceless heritage of our society is the
unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think
as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism,
and we have no claim to it. | |
| Justice Robert H. Jackson | It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. | |
| Justice Robert H. Jackson | There is no such thing as an achieved liberty: like electricity, there can be no substantial storage and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out. | |
| Jeff Jacoby | The First Amendment says nothing about a right not to be offended.
The risk of finding someone else's speech offensive
is the price each of us pays for our own free speech.
Free people don't run to court -- or to the principal --
when they encounter a message they don't like.
They answer it with one of their own. | |
| Susan Jacoby | Too many Americans have twisted the sensible right to pursue happiness into the delusion that we are entitled to a guarantee of happiness. If we don't get exactly what we want, we assume someone must be violating our rights. We're no longer willing to write off some of life's disappointments to simple bad luck. | |
| Cyril James | A free man is as jealous of his responsibilities as he is of his liberties. | |
| Helmuth James | Today, not a numerous, but an active part of the German people are beginning to realize, not that they have been led astray, not that bad times await them, not that the war may end in defeat, but that what is happening is sin and that they are personally responsible for each terrible deed that has been committed -- naturally, not in the earthly sense, but as Christians. | |
| Japanese Proverb | If you believe everything you read, you better not read. | |
| John Jay | The people are Sovereign. ... at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects... with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | We are all doubtless bound to contribute a certain portion of our income to the support of charitable and other useful public institutions. But it is a part of our duty also to apply our contributions in the most effectual way we can to secure this object. The question then is whether this will not be better done by each of us appropriating our whole contribution to the institutions within our reach, under our own eye, and over which we can exercise some useful control? Or would it be better that each should divide the sum he can spare among all the institutions of his State or the United States? Reason and the interest of these institutions themselves, certainly decide in favor of the former practice. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | [The People] are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | The patriot, like the Christian, must learn to bear revilings and persecutions as a part of his duty; and in proportion as the trial is severe, firmness under it becomes more requisite and praiseworthy. It requires, indeed, self-command. But that will be fortified in proportion as the calls for its exercise are repeated. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him; every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him; and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing ... this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to
one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly
the functions in which he is competent ...\\
- To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the
nation, and its foreign and federal relations ...\\
- The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and
administration of what concerns the State generally.\\
- The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests
within itself.\\
It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great
national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the
administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone
what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money. Nor should our assembly [the Virginia Legislature] be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin [Great Britain], will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | [I]f we can but prevent the government
from wasting the labours of the people,
under the pretence of taking care of them,
they must become happy. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us ... | |
| Thomas Jefferson | History, in general, only informs us what bad government is. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.... If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | The policy of American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Laws provide against injury from others, but not from ourselves. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice. | |
| Jesus of Nazareth | What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? | |
| Jesus of Nazareth | Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment. | |
| Jesus of Nazareth | Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
For everyone that asketh receiveth;
and he that seeketh findeth;
and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. | |
| Kimberly Johnson | Never ruin an apology with an excuse. | |
| Dr. Samuel Johnson | Courage is the first of all the virtues because if you haven't courage, you may not have the opportunity to use any of the others. | |
| David Starr Jordan | Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it. | |
| Walter H. Judd | People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote -- a very different thing. | |
| Juvenal | Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; for the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things -- bread and circuses. | |
| Juvenal | Quis costodiet ipsos custodies? (Who will watch the watchers?) | |
| Immanuel Kant | It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably. | |
| Peter Alan Kasler | It is, therefore, a fact of law and of practical necessity that individuals are responsible for their own personal safety, and that of their loved ones. Police protection must be recognized for what it is: only an auxiliary general deterrent. | |
| Irving Kaufman | Simply according artistic works the same protection as nonartistic works may not be sufficient to protect creativity. After all, the very essence of artistic expression is invention and artists necessarily draw on their own experience. But if the rules of liability are unclear, artists will not be able to know how much disguise is sufficient to protect their claims from the claims of those who may see themselves in the portrayals. | |
| Helen Keller | I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. | |
| David Kelley | To say "I have to" is to speak the language of compulsion, duty, authority -- the language of injunctions imposed on us from without. Objectivism is not a duty ethic, but an ethic of values, the ultimate value being one's own life and happiness. The language of values is "I want" and "I will": I want this, and I will do what it takes to get it. | |
| Walt Kelly | We have met the enemy and he is us. | |
| Thomas Kempis | Activate yourself to duty by remembering your position, who you are, and what you have obliged yourself to be. | |
| Florynce Kennedy | Freedom is like taking a bath -- you have to keep doing it every day! | |
| John F. Kennedy | Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. | |
| John F. Kennedy | And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. | |
| John F. Kennedy | A man does what he must -- in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers -- and this is the basis of all human morality. | |
| John F. Kennedy | We must use time as a tool, not as a crutch. | |
| Robert F. Kennedy | The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use -- of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public. | |
| Alan Keyes | Character is the accumulated confidence that individual men and women acquire from years of doing the right thing, over and over again, even when they don't feel like it. People with character understand that their lives are filled with events and choices that are significant, above all, not because of the short term success or failure of the search for money or position, but because the choices we make are actually making us into one kind of person, or another. Our life of choices is a life-long labor to make ourselves into a person who has begun to respond adequately to the awesome gift we received from God when He made us in His image. | |
| Alan Keyes | ...[A] prohibition on moral judgments against various sexual behaviors is a violation of the freedom, even of the religious liberty, of those who view such behavior as wrong. If we don't have a right to act according to our religious belief by forming judgments according to those beliefs about human conduct and behavior, then, exactly what does the free exercise of religion mean? Can the free exercise of religion really mean simply that I have the right to believe that God has ordained certain things to be right or wrong but that I can't act accordingly? Surely free exercise means the freedom to act according to belief. And, yet, if we are not allowed to act according to belief when it comes to fundamental moral precepts, then what will be the moral implications of religion? None at all. But if we accept an understanding of religious liberty that doesn't permit us to discriminate the wheat from the chaff in our own actions and those of others, haven't we in fact permitted the government to dictate to us a uniform approach to religion? And, isn't that dictation of uniformity in religion exactly what the First Amendment intended to forbid? | |
| Omar Khayyam | The moving finger writes; and having writ moves on. Nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it. | |
| Omar Khayyam | Indeed the Idols I have loved so long,\\
have done my credit in this World much wrong;\\
have drowned my Glory in a shallow Cup,\\
and sold my Reputation for a Song. | |
| Matt Kibbe | The Rules for Liberty\\\\
1) Don’t hurt people: Free people just want to be left alone, not hassled or harmed by someone else with an agenda or designs over their life and property.\\
2) Don’t take people’s stuff: America’s founders fought to ensure property rights and our individual right to the fruits of our labors.\\
3) Take responsibility: Liberty takes responsibility. Don’t sit around waiting for someone else to solve your problems.\\
4) Work for it: For every action there is an equal reaction. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded.\\
5) Mind your own business: Free people live and let live.\\
6) Fight the power: Thanks to the Internet and the decentralization of knowledge, there are more opportunities than ever to take a stand against corrupt authority. | |
| Soren Kierkegaard | People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | I have a dream that one day ... the sons of former slave owners
will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws, but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | A man who won't die for something is not fit to live. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!' | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | The nation is sick; trouble is in the land, confusion all around...But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.' | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | The group consisting of mother, father and child is the main educational agency of mankind. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?\\
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?\\
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?\\
But conscience asks the question, is it right?\\
And there comes a time when one must take a position\\
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular,\\
but one must take it because it is right. | |
| Rudyard Kipling | The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. | |
| Henry Kissinger | We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing. | |
| Shawn E. Klein | Politically, true individualism means recognizing that one has a right to his own life and happiness. But it also means uniting with other citizens to preserve and defend the institutions that protect that right. | |
| Shawn E. Klein | The foundation of individualism lies in one's moral right to pursue one's own happiness. This pursuit requires a large amount of independence, initiative, and self-responsibility. But true individualism entails cooperating with others through trade, which facilitates the pursuit of each party's happiness, and which is carried out not just on the level of goods but on the level of knowledge and friendship. Trade is essential for life; it provides one with many of the goods and values one needs. Creating an environment where trade flourishes is of great importance and great interest for the individualist. | |
| Jeanne Knutson | In their tendencies toward tolerance, openmindedness, faith in people and lack of authoritarianism, selfactualizers do appear to possess psychic strengths which allow them to work well in situations marked by a diversity of viewpoints. | |
| Charles Koch | Instead of fostering a system that enables people to help themselves, America is now saddled with a system that destroys value, raises costs, hinders innovation and relegates millions of citizens to a life of poverty, dependency and hopelessness. This is what happens when elected officials believe that people’s lives are better run by politicians and regulators than by the people themselves. Those in power fail to see that more government means less liberty, and liberty is the essence of what it means to be American. Love of liberty is the American ideal. | |
| Charles Koch | A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value. In a truly free society, any business that disrespects its customers will fail, and deserves to do so. The same should be true of any government that disrespects its citizens. The central belief and fatal conceit of the current administration is that you are incapable of running your own life, but those in power are capable of running it for you. This is the essence of big government and collectivism. | |
| Charles Koch | Far from trying to rig the system, I have spent decades opposing cronyism and all political favors, including mandates, subsidies and protective tariffs -- even when we benefit from them. I believe that cronyism is nothing more than welfare for the rich and powerful, and should be abolished. | |
| Karen Kwiatkowski | Farce, gross incompetence, and tragedy is the hallmark of big centralized government, wherever it develops. Big centralized government has developed in the United States year after year since the 1930s, and it has both solidified and metastasized since 9-11. Today, we live at the will and by the grace of a dystopian and grasping government. There is not an exceptional amount of time left before this government collapses, but before it does, we the people will suffer far more than we have suffered to date. Banking collapses, mortgage fraud at the highest levels, government bailouts, currency printing, and inflation in food and energy are just a foretaste of the future, led by the same Washington public-private cartel we have suffered for decades. . . .<br><br>
I believe our government -- outdated, unrestrained by the Constitution and soon to default on every debt it has taken on in our name -- cannot long endure. But unlike those who run and benefit from our modern American nationalism, corporatism and socialism, I do not fear average Americans seeking self-government, rule of law and liberty.<br><br>
That's why on Sept. 11, I will not be celebrating America's undeclared wars on countries that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks 10 years ago. I will not be attending remembrances of victims of that day, because those remembrances refuse to count American liberty, rule of law and freedom of trade and movement uppermost on that list of the sacrificed. I will not attend any program offered by a religious or political organization that seeks to ride a federal government bandwagon to confirm some imperative of war against Islam halfway around the world, or that seeks to promote the false concept of a culture war as somehow God's intent for America.<br><br>
On this 10-year anniversary, I intend to go about my business as usual, and say a prayer of gratitude for the small freedoms I have left. In the afternoon, I'll be in Charlottesville, Va., learning about local apprenticeship and crafts demonstrations. In the evening, I'll check the livestock and gather the eggs. I won't allow what I personally experienced that day in the Pentagon, nor the subsequent government drumbeats for war, waving the Sept. 11 banner, to diminish my awareness of the meaning of liberty.<br><br>
The real battle for Americans today is a battle to reassert our independence from an overbearing and unsustainable state. Today, we can all celebrate that there are fundamental cracks in the federal state's veneer, and we can be grateful for the options we still have in our own lives to live free, to practice charity and faith, creativity and productivity and to rediscover our own power as individuals and communities. | |
| Robert M. Lafollette, Sr. | The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men. | |
| Christine Lagarde | All stakeholders must participate in the gains and losses of any particular situation. | |
| Richard Lamm | Let me offer you, metaphorically, two magic wands that have sweeping powers to change society. With one wand you could wipe out all racism and discrimination from the hearts and minds of white America. The other wand you could wave across the ghettos and barrios of America and infuse the inhabitants with Japanese or Jewish values, respect for learning and ambition. ... I suggest that the best wand for society and for those who live in the ghettos and barrios would be the second wand. | |
| Rose Wilder Lane | Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been too much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is. | |
| Frances Moore Lappé | [O]ur greatest contributions to the cause of freedom and development overseas is not what we do over there, but what we do right here at home. | |
| James Larkin | The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise. | |
| Benedict D. LaRosa | Since independence in the fourteenth century, the Swiss have been required to keep and bear arms, and since 1515, have had a policy of armed neutrality. Its form of government is similar to the one set up by our Founders -- a weak central government exercising few, defined powers having to do mostly with external affairs and limited authority over internal matters at the canton (state) and local levels. | |
| Latin Proverb | Suum cuique
[To each his own, to each according to his merits.] | |
| D. H. Lawrence | Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves. | |
| Bruce Lee | Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential. | |
| Harper Lee | The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. | |
| Richard Henry Lee | It is true, the yeomanry of the country possess the lands, the weight of property, possess arms, and are too strong a body of men to be openly offended—and, therefore, it is urged, they will take care of themselves, that men who shall govern will not dare pay any disrespect to their opinions. It is easily perceived, that if they have not their proper negative upon passing laws in congress, or on the passage of laws relative to taxes and armies, they may in twenty or thirty years be by means imperceptible to them, totally deprived of that boasted weight and strength: This may be done in great measure by congress. | |
| Richard Henry Lee | Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repose. If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American legislators of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens. | |
| Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | [M]y work, which I've done for a long time,
was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy,
but chiefly from a craving after knowledge,
which I notice resides in me more than in most other men.
And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable,
I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper,
so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof. | |
| John Leo | You can't run a society or cope with its problems if people are not held accountable for what they do. | |
| Pope Leo XIII | It is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order, for a larger and higher organisation, to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies. | |
| Max Lerner | The Seven Deadly Sins of the Press:\\
\\
- Concentrated Power of the Big Press. \\
- Passing of competition and the coming of monopoly. \\
- Governmental control of the press. \\
- Timidity, especially in the face of group and corporate pressures. \\
- Big Business mentality. \\
- Clannishness among the newspaper publishers that has prevented them from criticizing each other. \\
- Social blindness. | |
| Bernard H. Levin | If we expected self-reliance of family groups, if we expected hardiness and resilience and initiative on the part of individuals, and if we rewarded initiative instead of dependence on government, we would not only ameliorate many of the family-related social problems we see at present, but we would also reduce our vulnerability to terrorism. People who are hardy, resilient, and self reliant are a lot harder to terrorize. | |
| C. S. Lewis | War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. | |
| C. S. Lewis | A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself. | |
| Georg Christoph Lichtenberg | One's first step in wisdom is to question everything -- and one's last is to come to terms with everything. | |
| G. Gordon Liddy | A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man; a debt he proposes to pay off with your money. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it 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 | As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.
This expresses my idea of democracy. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step over the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a Thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | The people are the masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who
would pervert it! | |
| Anne Morrow Lindbergh | The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. | |
| Walter Lippmann | When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions. | |
| Walter Lippmann | While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes that right important. | |
| Walter Lippmann | The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth. | |
| Walter Lippmann | We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say. | |
| John Locke | The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. | |
| John Locke | If the innocent honest Man must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors. | |
| John Locke | Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other. | |
| John Locke | The Care therefore of every man's Soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself. But what if he neglect the Care of his Soul? I answer, What if he neglects the Care of his Health, or of his Estate, which things are nearlier related to the Government of the Magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express Law, That such an one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the Goods and Health of Subjects be not injured by the Fraud and Violence of others; they do not guard them from the Negligence or Ill-husbandry of the Possessors themselves. | |
| John Locke | [F]or nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver 100 pounds to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy him, who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100 pounds that way. | |
| John Locke | [E]very Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property. | |
| Henry Cabot Lodge | Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin. | |
| Russell Long | Democracy is like a raft. It won't sink, but you'll always have your feet wet. | |
| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. | |
| James Russell Lowell | And I honor the man \\ who is willing to sink \\ Half his present repute \\ for the freedom to think \\ And, when he has thought, \\ be his cause strong or weak \\ Will risk t’ other half \\ for the freedom to speak. | |
| James Russell Lowell | True freedom is to share \\ All the chains our brothers wear \\ And, with heart and hand, to be \\ Earnest to make others free. | |
| James Russell Lowell | And I honor the man who is willing to sink\\
half his present repute for the freedom to think,\\
and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,\\
Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak. | |
| John Lubbock | If we are ever in doubt about what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done. | |
| F. J. Lucas | Within seven centuries, [the ancient Greeks] invented for itself, epic, elegy, lyric, tragedy, novel, democratic government, political and economic science, history, geography, philosophy, physics and biology; and made revolutionary advances in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, oratory, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, anatomy, engineering, law and war... a stupendous feat for whose most brilliant state Attica was the size of Hertfordshire, with a free population (including children) of perhaps 160,000. | |
| Mary Lyon | There is nothing in the universe that I fear, but that I shall not know all my duty, or shall fail to do it. | |
| Lord George Lyttleton | To argue against any breach of liberty from the ill use that may be made of it, is to argue against liberty itself, since all is capable of being abused. | |
| General Douglas MacArthur | No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation. | |
| Thomas Babington Macaulay | And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best? | |
| Thomas Babington Macaulay | Many politicians... are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool... who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. | |
| Antonio Machado | There is no way; we make the road by walking it. | |
| Niccolo Machiavelli | Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing, they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they are allowed to grow so that everyone can recognize them, there is no longer any remedy to be found. | |
| Niccolo Machiavelli | Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals. | |
| Sir James MacKintosh | It is not because we have been free, but because we have a right to be free, that we ought to demand freedom. Justice and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age. | |
| Archibald MacLeish | Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. | |
| James Madison | A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a
people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves
with the power which knowledge gives. | |
| James Madison | [A]ll power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty and the right of acquiring property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purpose of its institution. | |
| James Madison | The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace. | |
| James Madison | The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;
a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country;
but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms
shall be compelled to render military service in person. | |
| James Madison | In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. | |
| James Madison | As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another. | |
| 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 freeman 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. | |
| James Madison | If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. | |
| James Madison | When we are considering the advantages that may result from an easy mode of naturalization, we ought also to consider the cautions necessary to guard against abuses. It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours. But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of … I should be exceedingly sorry, sir, that our rule of naturalization excluded a single person of good fame that really meant to incorporate himself into our society; on the other hand, I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege, but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States. | |
| James Madison | It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect. | |
| James Madison | It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect. | |
| Bill Maher | We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities. | |
| Michelle Malkin | What our country deserves from everyone who enjoys its fruits and freedoms is a little more gratitude -- and a lot less greed. | |
| Morris Mandel | Always put off until tomorrow what you shouldn't do at all. | |
| Nelson Mandela | I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended. | |
| Nelson Mandela | Once a person is determined to help themselves, there is nothing that can stop them. | |
| Alf Mapp, Jr. | No age is unique in producing privileged persons who can happily dichotomize condemnation of their society and enjoyment of its fruits. The eighteenth century had its landau liberals as the nineteenth would have its carriage Communists. | |
| Peyton Conway March | There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else. | |
| Jose Marti y Perez | To change masters is not to be free. | |
| Luther Martin | By the power to lay and collect imposts Congress may impose duties on any or every article of commerce imported into these states to what amount they please. By the power to lay excises, a power very odious in its nature, since it authorizes officers to examine into your private concerns, the Congress may impose duties on every article of use or consumption: On the food that we eat, on the liquors we drink, on the clothes that we wear, the glass which enlighten our houses, or the hearths necessary for our warmth and comfort. By the power to lay and collect taxes, they may proceed to direct taxation on every individual either by a capitation tax on their heads or an assessment on their property. By this part of the section, therefore, the government has a power to tax to what amount they choose and thus to sluice the people at every vein as long as they have a drop of blood left. | |
| Rollo May | Human freedom involves the capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. | |
| Benjamin E. Mays | We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose this battle. | |
| Donald S. McAlvaney | In every declining civilization there is a small "remnant" of people who adhere to the right against the wrong; who recognize the difference between good and evil and who will take an active stand for the former and against the latter; who can still think and discern and who will courageously take a stand against the political, social, moral, and spiritual rot or decay of their day. | |
| Barry McCaffrey | The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration. | |
| Neil A. McDonald | Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. | |
| Bob McEwen | In the 1950’s [America was] the richest nation, the richest city on earth was Detroit. They voted for change and so now it is the poorest city in America. At the same time, the nation of South Korea, of all the nations on earth, was third from the bottom. Virtually the poorest nation on earth. It is now tenth from the top. If you understand the principle, the greater freedom, the greater the wealth, you can then put any nation [on this chart]. Now you can go to Tagusagopos, you can go to Buenos Aires, you can go to Cairo, you can go to Philadelphia and all you need to know is what percentage of the Gross Domestic Product is controlled by government, and the greater the government, the greater the poverty, and that’s all politics is about. Every day politicians say, “I can make a better decision for you than you can for yourself, and let me take your money away from you and make it on your behalf” and thus make the nation poorer. | |
| Al McGuire | I think the world is run by 'C' students. | |
| Peter McWilliams | The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people. | |
| Mencius | The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute -- he simply speaks and does what is right. | |
| H. L. Mencken | The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. | |
| H. L. Mencken | Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. | |
| H. L. Mencken | It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. | |
| H. L. Mencken | Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. | |
| H. L. Mencken | The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. | |
| H. L. Mencken | All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow. | |
| Angela Merkel | We can't constantly explain to our voters that taxpayers have to be on the hook for certain risks, rather than those who make a lot of money taking those risks. | |
| Javier Milei | I did not come here to guide lambs. I came here to awaken lions. | |
| John Stuart Mill | The only freedom deserving 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. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. | |
| John Stuart Mill | The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. | |
| John Stuart Mill | War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. | |
| John Stuart Mill | The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. | |
| John Stuart Mill | A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands -- even for beneficial purposes -- will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished. | |
| John Stuart Mill | But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about 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. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. | |
| Edna St. Vincent Millay | Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry. Let us renew our faith and pledge to Man, his right to be Himself, and free. | |
| Henry Miller | No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore our belief in our own guidance. | |
| John Milton | Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work. | |
| John Milton | When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained that wise men look for. | |
| John Milton | Nations grow corrupt, love bondage more than liberty; bondage with ease than strenuous liberty. | |
| The Mishnah | Say not, when I have leisure I will study; you may not have leisure. | |
| Richard Mitchell | Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars. | |
| James Monroe | How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism. | |
| Mary Wortley Montagu | I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations. | |
| Charles Edward Montague | A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie. | |
| Maria Montessori | Discipline must come through liberty... We do not consider an individual disciplined when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined. | |
| James Montgomery | We fought the Revolutionary War for no taxation without representation, it seems to me that we are much worse off today, because we are heavily taxed, and only the king's corporations control this Country, together with mob rule, of the special interests. | |
| Dwight Lyman Moody | I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met. | |
| Christopher Darlington Morley | There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it. | |
| John Viscount Morley | The means prepare the end, and the end is what the means have made of it. | |
| Lance Morrow | The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance -- a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms -- A Nation of Finger Pointers. | |
| Lance Morrow | Zealotry of either kind -- the puritan's need to regiment others or the victim's passion for blaming everyone except himself -- tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candlesnuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment. | |
| Edward R. Murrow | We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. | |
| Edward R. Murrow | We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular. | |
| Benito Mussolini | Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power. | |
| Ralph Nader | There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship. | |
| W. A. Nance | No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him. | |
| Ogden Nash | Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for. | |
| National Press Club | In Defense Of Freedom ... (more) | |
| Huey P. Newton | Before 1776 America was a British colony. The British Government had certain laws and rules that the colonized Americans rejected as not being in their best interests. In spite of the British conviction that Americans had no right to establish their own laws to promote the general welfare of the people living here in America, the colonized immigrant felt he had no choice but to raise the gun to defend his welfare. Simultaneously he made certain laws to ensure his protection from external and internal aggressions, from other governments, and his own agencies. One such form of protection was the Declaration of Independence, which states: '... whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.' Now these same colonized White people, these bondsmen, paupers, and thieves deny the colonized Black man not only the right to abolish this oppressive system, but to even speak of abolishing it. | |
| Reverend Martin Niemoeller | In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me. | |
| Reverend Martin Niemoeller | When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out. | |
| Friedrich Nietzsche | Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves. | |
| Friedrich Nietzsche | Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves. | |
| Lyn Nofziger | One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain't. | |
| Lyn Nofziger | The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country. A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn't see so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly old men. | |
| Charles Eliot Norton | 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 and keep 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. | |
| Nunn vs. State | 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the milita, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right. | |
| George O'Neil | When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone. | |
| P. J. O'Rourke | If you are young
and you drink a great deal
it will spoil your health,
slow your mind,
make you fat --
in other words,
turn you into an adult. | |
| P. J. O'Rourke | Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. 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 | There is 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. | |
| Barack Hussein Obama | Yes, you’ve worked hard, but you’ve also been lucky. That’s a pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don’t realize they’ve been lucky. That God may have blessed them; it wasn’t nothing you did. | |
| José Ortega y Gasset | I am I plus my circumstances. | |
| George Orwell | If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. | |
| George Orwell | The ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle, home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics, he feels himself master of his fate. But otherwise he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. | |
| George Orwell | If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. | |
| Ovid | Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these. | |
| Thomas Paine | It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact between those who govern and those that are governed: but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist. | |
| Thomas Paine | Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. | |
| Thomas Paine | Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. | |
| Thomas Paine | What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated. | |
| Thomas Paine | But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then you are not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant. | |
| Thomas Paine | When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. | |
| Thomas Paine | 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 | The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood. | |
| Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit | The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war. | |
| Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus | Thoughts are free and are subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature. | |
| Michael Parenti | The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful
ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate
themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric
of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny. | |
| Blaise Pascal | It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf. | |
| George Pataki | When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves. | |
| General George S. Patton, Jr. | It is certain that the two World Wars in which I have participated would not have occurred had we been prepared. It is my belief that adequate preparation on our part would have prevented or materially shortened all our other wars beginning with that of 1812. Yet, after each of our wars, there has always been a great hue and cry to the effect that there will be no more wars, that disarmament is the sure road to health, happiness, and peace; and that by removing the fire department, we will remove fires. These ideas spring from wishful thinking and from the erroneous belief that wars result from logical processes. There is no logic in wars. They are produced by madmen. No man can say when future madmen will reappear. I do not say that there will be no more wars; I devoutly hope that there will not, but I do say that the chances of avoiding future wars will be greatly enhanced if we are ready. | |
| General George S. Patton, Jr. | Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash. | |
| St. Paul | For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. | |
| Jean Paul | Individuality is to be preserved and respected everywhere, as the root of everything good. | |
| Dr. Ron Paul | Under the constitution, there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century. Yet today, fueled by the federal government’s misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the States where they have no legal authority. The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive. | |
| Dr. Ron Paul | American voters should understand that Congress will always find a way to spend every last dollar sent to Washington. Remember, politicians get votes by promising everything to everyone, always at the expense of some other invisible taxpayers. …The federal government cannot maintain a budget surplus any more than an alcoholic can leave a fresh bottle of whiskey untouched in the cupboard. | |
| Dr. Ron Paul | Times of tragedy and war naturally bring out strong emotions... Sometimes people are only too anxious to sacrifice their constitutional liberties during a crisis, hoping to gain some measure of security. Yet nothing would please terrorists more than if we willingly gave up our cherished liberties because of their actions. | |
| William Penn | Justice is the insurance we have in our lives, and obedience is the premium we pay for it. | |
| Claude Pepper | One has the right to be wrong in a democracy. | |
| Darren Perkins | I believe that America is the greatest country in history and for good reasons, but America has been changing and not for the better. Our free society has been falling prey to a more repressive system with methods for the increased control of people. The return of groups and individuals to the controlling ideology of Imperialism and Marxism using the structures of Corporatism, Socialism and Democracy. The result is that this nation's foundational principles based on the ideology of Liberty are now in danger of extinction. | |
| Wendell Phillips | No matter whose lips that would speak, they must be free and ungagged. The community which dares not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can’t stand discussion, let it crack. | |
| Wendell Phillips | Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty. | |
| William Pitt | The poorest man may in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement. | |
| Plato | One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. | |
| Plato | The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men. | |
| Plato | Your silence gives consent. | |
| Plato | Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. | |
| Plato | Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. | |
| Sir Karl Popper | We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure. | |
| Judge Richard Allen Posner | Police may have no right to privacy in carrying out official duties in public. But the civilians they interact with do. | |
| Judge Richard Allen Posner | If you permit the audio recordings, they'll be a lot more eavesdropping. ... There's going to be a lot of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers. ... Yes, it's a bad thing. There is such a thing as privacy. | |
| John Enoch Powell | I will not surrender responsibility for my life and my actions. | |
| Hugh Prather | Our job this day is to become part of the answer to the world's immense and protracted suffering rather than continuing our ancient task of being part of the difficulty. | |
| Proverb | The wise learn from the experience of others, most from their own experience, and fools not at all. | |
| Proverb | The wise do freely, early and in good time, what fools do later out of necessity. | |
| Vladimir Putin | Our anti-crisis policy is directed to internal demand support, social security of citizens and creation of new jobs. Like many other countries, we are reducing taxes on production, investing money in the economy. We are optimising state expenses. | |
| Vladimir Putin | We must seek support in the moral values that have ensured the progress of our civilization. Honesty and hard work, responsibility and faith in our strength are bound to bring us success. There should be no place for despondency. The crisis can and must be fought by uniting our intellectual, spiritual and material resources. | |
| Vladimir Putin | I think that the 21st-century economy is an economy of people, not of factories. The intellectual aspect in the global economic development has grown immensely. That’s why we plan to concentrate on creating additional opportunities for our people to realise their potential. | |
| Vladimir Putin | Let us be frank: provoking military-political instability and other regional conflicts is also a convenient way of deflecting people’s attention from mounting social and economic problems. Regrettably, further attempts of this kind cannot be ruled out. | |
| Vladimir Putin | Unfortunately, more and more often we hear that increasing military spending will help solve today’s social and economic problems. The logic here is quite simple. Additional allocations for military needs create new jobs.
For reference:
The growth of military spending:
USA—$529 billion in 2006, $555 billion in 2007, and $583 billion in 2008. Experts expect $606 billion in 2009.
Great Britain—£27 billion in 2006, £31 billion in 2007, £34 billion in 2008, and £35.2 billion planned for 2009.
Germany—€23 billion in 2006, €24 billion in 2007, and €25 billion in 2008.
China—$38 billion in 2006, $44 billion in 2007, $58 billion in 2008, and a 17% increase in 2009 (around $66 billion).
Georgia (according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute)—$49 million in 2002, $80 million in 2004, $362 million in 2006, $592 million in 2007, and $1.104 billion in 2008.
At a glance, it seems to be merely a method to fight the crisis and unemployment. Perhaps, in the short run, such a measure may yield some results. But in reality, instead of solving the problem, militarisation pushes it to a deeper level. It draws away from the economy immense financial and material resources, which could have been used much more efficiently elsewhere. | |
| Vladimir Putin | One must not allow oneself to skid down to isolationism and unbridled economic egoism. ... The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country. And the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state. | |
| Vladimir Putin | During the time of the Soviet Union the role of the state in economy was made absolute, which eventually lead to the total non-competitiveness of the economy. That lesson cost us very dearly. I am sure nobody would want history to repeat itself.
We should also be aware that for during the last months, we have been witnessing the washout of the entrepreneurship spirit. That includes the principle of the personal responsibility – of a businessman, an investor or a share-holder – for his or her own decisions. There are no grounds to suggest that by putting the responsibility over to the state, one can achieve better results.
Another thing – handling crisis must not turn into financial populism, into rejecting a responsible macro-economic policy. Unreasonable expansion of the budget deficit, accumulation of the national debt – are as destructive as an adventurous stock market game. | |
| Sir Walter Raleigh | A man must first govern himself ere he is fit to govern a family; and his family ere he be fit to bear the government of the commonwealth. | |
| Ayn Rand | I swear by my life, and love of it,
that I will never live for the sake of another man,
nor ask another man to live for mine. | |
| Ayn Rand | The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind. | |
| Ayn Rand | There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, 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. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system. | |
| Ayn Rand | Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it -- that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life. | |
| Ayn Rand | The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time. | |
| Edmund Randolph | A people who mean to continue free must be prepared to meet danger in person; not rely upon the fallacious protection of mercenary armies. | |
| John Randolph | We all know our duty better than we discharge it. | |
| John W. Raper | We have plenty of freedom in this country but not a great deal of independence. | |
| Leonard E. Read | It is incorrect to think of liberty as synonymous with unrestrained action. Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal. | |
| Ronald Reagan | Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid. | |
| Ronald Reagan | Man is not free unless government is limited.... As government expands, liberty contracts. | |
| Ronald Reagan | If history teaches us anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. | |
| Ronald Reagan | The NRA believes America's laws were made to be obeyed and that
our Constitutional liberties are just as important today as 200 years ago.
And by the way, the Constitution does not say
Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms.
The Constitution says 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed.' | |
| Ronald Reagan | Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? | |
| Ronald Reagan | An informed patriotism is what we want. | |
| Ronald Reagan | Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. | |
| Ronald Reagan | If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. | |
| Ronald Reagan | I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books. | |
| Ronald Reagan | You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.' | |
| Ronald Reagan | When you start talking about government as 'we' instead of 'they,' you have been in office too long. | |
| Ronald Reagan | Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence. | |
| Ronald Reagan | Republicans believe the best way to assure prosperity is to generate more jobs. The Democrats believe in more welfare. | |
| Ronald Reagan | Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. | |
| Ronald Reagan | Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself. ... [I] hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. | |
| Ronald Reagan | For too long, the world was paralyzed by the argument that terrorism could not be stopped until the grievances of terrorists were addressed. The complicated and heartrending issues that perplex mankind are no excuse for violent, inhumane attacks, nor do they excuse not taking aggressive action against those who deliberately slaughter innocent people. | |
| Dr. Lawrence W. Reed | When the socialist economies of Eastern Europe disintegrated, the cause was evident to nearly everyone: the stifling directives of central planning had all but obliterated individual initiative and accountability. The cure was just as obvious: a healthy dose of entrepreneurship and private enterprise. | |
| Thomas B. Reed | One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. | |
| Charley Reese | It is both illogical and inconsistent for a government to say people have a right to life and a right
to self-defense but no right to own the tools necessary to defend their lives. It is illogical for a government that says its police have no obligation
to provide individual protection to deny people the means to protect themselves. It is immoral for a government that repeatedly releases
predators to prey on people to tell those victims they cannot have a weapon for self-defense. It’s stupid for a government that can’t control
criminals, drugs or illegal immigrants to claim it can take guns away from criminals only if honest folks will give up theirs. Gun-control
proposals are also an insult. Gun control by definition affects only honest people. When a politician tells you he wants to forbid you from owning a
firearm or force you to get a license, he is telling you he doesn’t trust you. That’s an insult. The government trusted me with a M-48 tank and
assorted small arms when it claimed to have need of my services. It trusts common Americans with all kinds of arms when it wants them to go kill
foreigners somewhere—usually for the financial benefit of some corporations. But when the men and women take off their uniforms and return to
their homes and assume responsibility for their own and their families’ safety, suddenly the politicians don’t trust them to own a gun. This is pure
elitism. . . . Gun control is not about guns or crime. It is about an elite that fears and despises the common people. | |
| Charley Reese | Congress is extraordinarily reluctant to inject itself into foreign policy. It has dumped entirely its constitutional duty for money onto
a central bank, and for trade, onto the executive branch. It seems to never know what the CIA and other intelligence agencies are doing. Like the
Romans, they no longer talk of the republic or liberty. And like the Romans, the American people, or most of them anyway, don’t seem to care. ...
Like the Romans, we no longer have a citizen army but professional legions, and whether they wear jackboots or not, some federal officers seem to
regard Americans with about the same compassion as the Praetorian Guard had for the plebes. As in Rome, the air is full of suspicion, intrigues and
conspiracies, real or imagined, and the air reeks of greed and opportunism. As those on the Tiber, the rulers on the Potomac have grown
suspicious of the people, don’t trust them and, in some cases fear them. And, as in Rome, they grovel in luxury while taking 40 cents on the dollar
out of the sweat of working people to pay for corn and circuses to keep the mob satisfied. | |
| Florence Robinson | If the people will lead, eventually the leaders will follow. | |
| John D. Rockefeller, Jr. | I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living. | |
| John D. Rockefeller, Jr. | I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. | |
| Anita Roddick | If you think you're too small to make a difference, you haven't been in bed with a mosquito. | |
| Will Rogers | It will take America fifteen years of steady taking care of our own business and letting everybody else's alone, to get us back to where everybody speaks to us again. | |
| Will Rogers | Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. | |
| Will Rogers | A Country can get more real joy out of just Hollering for their Freedom than they can if they get it. | |
| Will Rogers | The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office. | |
| Will Rogers | I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat. | |
| Will Rogers | The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. | |
| Will Rogers | There is good news from Washington today. The Congress is deadlocked and can't act. | |
| Felix Rohatyn | Fairness does not require the redistribution of wealth; it requires the creation of wealth, geared to an economy that can provide employment for everyone able and willing to work. | |
| Eleanor Roosevelt | The things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was. | |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt | The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind -- men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others -- men and women who are capable of disciplining themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves. | |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt | The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | Freedom is not a gift which can be enjoyed save by those shown themselves worthy of it. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity. | |
| Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr. | Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded. Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave. | |
| Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr. | The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind. When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious. | |
| Murray N. Rothbard | There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. In concentrating on the ends of choice, the conservative, by neglecting the conditions of choice, loses that very morality of conduct with which he is so concerned. And the libertarian, by concentrating only on the means, or conditions, of choice and ignoring the ends, throws away an essential moral defense of his own position. | |
| Murray N. Rothbard | It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. | |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. | |
| Kenneth W. Royce | Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew. | |
| Robert L. Ruble | In March, 1982, Kennesaw, Georgia, passed a mandatory gun ownership ordinance which requires all heads of households to own a firearm—handgun, rifle or shotgun. In 1982, our crime against persons, which include murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault and residential burglary, decreased 74%. In 1983 these same crimes decreased [an additional] 46%. ... I would also like you to be aware that our population has increased in excess of 20% since 1982. We have had no accidents nor incidents involving our citizens with regards to firearms. ... It is a pleasure to see our senior citizens strolling the streets at night without fear of becoming a victim of violent crime. | |
| Rudolph J. Rummel | Nobody can be trusted with unlimited power. The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom. | |
| John Ruskin | One evening, when I was yet in my nurse’s arms, I wanted to touch the tea urn, which was boiling merrily... My nurse would have taken me away from the urn, but my mother said 'Let him touch it.' So I touched it -- and that was my first lesson in the meaning of liberty. | |
| John Ruskin | Without seeking, truth cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by itself out of it such, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own. | |
| Bertrand Russell | When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine. | |
| Dr. Mary J. Ruwart | Using aggression to stop drug abuse kills more people than the drugs themselves! If we honored our neighbor’s choice, the people now enforcing the minimum wage and licensing laws would be available to go after the real criminals. In 1987, drug offenders made up 36% of the federal prison population. As the War on Drugs escalates, more of our law enforcement dollar will be spent on drug-related crimes and less on rapists, murderers, and thieves. Is this the best way to deal with the drug problem? ... People who drink an alcoholic beverage in the privacy of their own homes are not using first-strike force, theft, or fraud against anyone else. Nor is a person smoking a joint or snorting cocaine, under the same conditions, guilty of anything more sinister than trying to feel good. We see no contradiction in arresting the cocaine user while we enjoy our favorite cocktail. Are we once again sanctioning aggression-through-government in an attempt to control the lives of others? In the early 1900s, many people supported aggression through-government to stop the consumption of alcoholic beverages. As we all know, Prohibition was tried, but it just didn’t work. People still drank, but they had to settle for home-brews, which were not always safe. Some people even died from drinking them. Since business people could no longer sell alcohol, organized crime did. Turf battles killed innocent bystanders, and law enforcement officials found they could make more money taking bribes than jailing the bootleggers. Aggression was ineffective—and expensive, both in terms of dollars and lives. When Prohibition was repealed, people bought their alcohol from professional brewers instead of criminals. As a result, they stopped dying from bathtub gin. The turf fighting subsided, since there was no turf to fight about. The murder and assault rate that had skyrocketed during Prohibition fell steadily after its repeal. | |
| Florence Sabin | The prohibition law,
written for weaklings and derelicts,
has divided the nation,
like Gaul, into three parts --
wets, drys, and hypocrites. | |
| Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | True, it is evil that a single man should crush the herd, but see not there the worse form of slavery, which is when the herd crushes out the man. | |
| Richard Salant | If newsmen do not tell the truth as they see it because it might make waves,
or if their bosses decide something should or should not be broadcast
because of Washington or Main Street consequences,
we have dishonored ourselves and we have lost the First Amendment by default. | |
| Patricia Sampson | Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward. | |
| Jean-Paul Sartre | Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. | |
| Jean-Paul Sartre | Man is condemned to be free. | |
| John Scharr | Surely a large part of the zealous repression of radical protest in America has its roots in the fact that millions of men who are apparently “insiders” know how vulnerable the system is because they know how ambiguous their own attachments to it are. The slightest challenge exposes the fragile foundations of legitimacy of the state. | |
| Eric Schaub | The Truth is not a thing. It is alive. It cannot be grasped. It is spoken. | |
| Eric Schaub | Life is but a blink,
and it matters. | |
| Eric Schaub | Americans find it intolerable that one constitutional right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another. America is the land of the free and home of the brave -- we don't need a Patriot Act, because we are already patriots. We know freedom means responsibility, but I am not sure Congress and its domestic enforcement agencies do. More often than not, new security measures enacted by the government have resulted in more violations of the citizenry than terrorists have ever done. The terrorists want us to be afraid -- well, we are not afraid. Stop wasting dollars on this program -- it is not good for America. To give up essential liberty for a little security provides neither. The right to be left alone from government intrusion is the beginning of all freedoms. | |
| Eric Schaub | Freedom is risky.
Nature makes no promises. | |
| Eric Schaub | I cannot free another,
and no one can free me.
Freedom is acquired with
the responsibility that sustains it. | |
| Eric Schaub | If you want to know the big 'T' Truth,
tell the little 't' truth without fail.
Then listen closely to what you say. | |
| Eric Schaub | When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires. | |
| Eric Schaub | Freedom has never been free.
Sometimes it costs everything you've got. | |
| Eric Schaub | Standing up to a tyrant
has always been illegal and dangerous.
There is no guarantee but one --
to not live like a slave,
nor to die like one. | |
| Eric Schaub | Life is a gift. Freedom is a responsibility. | |
| Eric Schaub | By a Declaration, Liberty is born.
With Courage she is nourished, and
with unceasing Commitment she is guarded. | |
| Eric Schaub | The process of liberation is continuous. | |
| Eric Schaub | I am not free until I say so.
And there's a good chance
I am going to have to fight once I do.
Ever since I declared my Independence,
I have had to support and defend it. | |
| Eric Schaub | Our inalienable rights cannot shield us from our own follies. | |
| Eric Schaub | The 'strength' of the People becomes weak when we don't 'exercise' our rights. | |
| Alan W. Scheflin | A juror who is forced by the judge’s instructions to convict a defendant whose conduct he applauds or at the least feels is justifiable, will lose respect for the legal system. . . . A juror compelled to decide against his own judgment will rebel at the system that made him a traitor to himself. | |
| Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. | Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue... | |
| Bruce Schneier | It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state. | |
| Carl Schurz | If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other. | |
| Carl Schurz | From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own. | |
| General H. Norman Schwarzkopf | The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it. | |
| Albert Schweitzer | I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end. | |
| Albert Schweitzer | I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found a way to serve. | |
| Roger Scruton | The welfare state that is built upon this conception seems to prove precisely away from the conservative conception of authoritative and personal government, towards a labyrinthine privilege sodden structure of anonymous power, structuring a citizenship that is increasingly reluctant to answer for itself, increasingly parasitic on the dispensations of a bureaucracy towards which it can feel no gratitude. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | Freedom can't be kept for nothing. If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | A sword never kills anybody;
it's a tool in the killer's hand. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | What is freedom? It means not being a slave to any circumstance, to any restraint, to any chance. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | Who profits by a sin has done the sin. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | He who, when he may, forbids not sin, commands it. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer. | |
| Butler D. Shaffer | The idea of creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy, and not expect them to lead to wars, genocides, and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence we can no longer afford to indulge. | |
| Butler D. Shaffer | Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us. | |
| Butler D. Shaffer | Our lack of constant awareness has also permitted us to accept definitions of freedom that are not necessarily consistent with the actuality of being free. Because we have learned to confuse the word with the reality the word seeks to describe, our vocabulary has become riddled with distorted and contradictory meanings smuggled into the language. | |
| Angel Shamaya | Liberty's view of the government could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it works, work with it. If it doesn't, work against it. If it works you over, abolish it. | |
| George Bernard Shaw | If you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may as well not say it at all because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them. | |
| George Bernard Shaw | Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. | |
| George Bernard Shaw | People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. | |
| George Bernard Shaw | Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. | |
| George Bernard Shaw | A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. | |
| Leo Shestov | Heretics were often most bitterly persecuted for their least deviation from accepted belief. It was precisely their obstinacy about trifles that irritated the righteous to madness. Why can they not yield on so trifling a matter? | |
| General David M. Shoup | I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own -- and if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans. | |
| Alan K. Simpson | There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders. | |
| Homer Simpson | It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen. | |
| Isaac Bashevis Singer | You must believe in free will; there is no choice. | |
| Mark Skousen | Here in America, government began as a tool to assure freedom. It gradually turned into a hideously expensive political toy designed to redistribute your wealth and control most aspects of your business and private life. | |
| Adam Smith | Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so. | |
| Adam Smith | The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations. | |
| Craig R. Smith | Protection of political speech advanced two important democratic goals:\\1) an informed citizenry that would be capable of making educated decisions on matters of public concern, and \\2) a free and open marketplace of ideas wherein the truth would ultimately prevail… Only through a vigorous and spirited public debate could citizens be educated about the actions of their government and react responsibly. | |
| L. Neil Smith | People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work. | |
| L. Neil Smith | Guns cause crime like flies cause garbage. | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow. ... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding. | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? ... How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | [O]ne who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous bodily injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety.... | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers. | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. | |
| Joseph Sobran | If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion. | |
| Joseph Sobran | Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money. | |
| Joseph Sobran | Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding 'more' while never defining 'enough.' The predictable result is that they always get more, and it's never enough. | |
| Joseph Sobran | If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal.
If you want government to intervene overseas, you're conservative.
If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate.
If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist. | |
| Socrates | I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world. | |
| Solon | If through your vices you afflicted are,
Lay not the blame of your distress on God;
You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards,
So now you groan 'neath slavery's heavy rod. | |
| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. | |
| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward. | |
| George Soros | Although I have made a fortune in the financial markets, I now fear that the untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat. | |
| Thomas Sowell | The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices -- paid by others. | |
| Thomas Sowell | When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap. | |
| Thomas Sowell | One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them. | |
| Thomas Sowell | If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today. | |
| Thomas Sowell | One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain. | |
| Thomas Sowell | Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. | |
| Thomas Sowell | Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. | |
| Herbert Spencer | All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit? | |
| Baruch Spinoza | He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason. | |
| Lysander Spooner | The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that -- however bloody -- can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave. | |
| Lysander Spooner | Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given. | |
| Shelby Steele | Freedom always carries a burden of proof, always throws us back on ourselves. | |
| John Steinbeck | Man is the only kind of varmint that sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it. | |
| John Steinbeck | And this I must fight against: any idea, religion or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. | |
| John Steinbeck | And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in all the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. | |
| Rudolf Steiner | What is necessary to keep providing good care to nature has completely fallen into ignorance during the materialism era. | |
| Robert Louis Stevenson | To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. | |
| Robert Louis Stevenson | Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. | |
| Justice Potter Stewart | The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights... . In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. | |
| Justice Potter Stewart | The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it’s invalid on its face. | |
| J. A. Stormer | The pretence is made that to do away with right and wrong would produce uncivilized people, immorality, lawlessness, and social chaos. The fact is that most psychiatrists and psychologists and other respected people have escaped from moral chains and are able to think freely. | |
| Justice Joseph Story | If aliens might be admitted indiscriminately to enjoy all the rights of citizens at the will of a single state, the Union might itself be endangered by an influx of foreigners, hostile to its institutions, ignorant of its powers, and incapable of a due estimate of its privileges. | |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe | The literature of a people must so ring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible
without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty. | |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe | I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred -- that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. | |
| William Graham Sumner | All history is one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others. | |
| Anthony Sutton | [T]he power system continues only as long as individuals try to get something for nothing. The day when a majority of individuals declares or acts as if it wants nothing from the government, declares that it will look after its own welfare and interests, then on that day the power elites are doomed. | |
| John Swett | [T]he child should be taught to consider his instructor... superior to the parent in point of authority.... The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous.... Parents have no remedy as against the teacher. | |
| John Swett | As a general thing the only persons who have a legal right to give orders to the teacher are his employers, namely, the committee in some States, and in others the directors or trustees. If his conduct is approved by his employers the parents have no remedy as against him or them. | |
| John Swett | The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous. | |
| Charlie Sykes | The public expects too much from teachers because educationists have led it to believe teachers could be substitute parents, psychotherapists, cops, social workers, dieticians, nursemaids, babysitters, and nose wipers and still do a decent job teaching kids to read, write, and do math. Instead of saying no, educationists have added courses in environmental education, death education, personal hygiene, self-esteem, driver's ed, job readiness, sexual harassment, radon studies, yoga, yogurt awareness, and god-knows-what-else. | |
| Thomas Szasz | The battle for the world is the battle for definitions. | |
| Cornelius Tacitus | So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants. | |
| William Howard Taft | Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity. | |
| The Talmud | Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act. | |
| Rebazar Tarzs | Illusions are like mistresses.
We can have many of them
without tying ourselves down to responsibility.
But truth insists on marriage.
Once a person embraces truth,
he is in its ruthless, but gentle, grasp. | |
| Tecumseh | Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.\\
Trouble no one about his religion.\\
Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours.\\
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.\\
Seek to make your life long and of service to your people.\\
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.\\
Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.\\
Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.\\
When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. \\
Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.\\
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.\\
When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.\\
Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home. | |
| Tennessee Constitution | That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. | |
| Mother Teresa | If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. | |
| Mother Teresa | Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign. ... You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth. | |
| Margaret Thatcher | We want a society in which we are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. That is what we mean by a moral society – not a society in which the State is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the State. | |
| Margaret Thatcher | All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual. | |
| The Mahabharata | This is the sum of all true righteousness: deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt by. Do nothing to thy neighbor which thou wouldst not have him do to thee hereafter. | |
| The New American | [N]one are so emboldened as thugs who, in spite of the law are armed, in confrontations with law-abiding citizens who, because of the law, are disarmed. | |
| Justice Clarence Thomas | I don’t believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights. | |
| Justice Clarence Thomas | Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law. | |
| Justice Robert R. Thomas | All statutes are presumed constitutional and the party challenging the constitutionality of a statute has the burden of clearly establishing that it violates the constitution. | |
| Dorothy Thompson | 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 | It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a
conscience, then? It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? | |
| Henry David Thoreau | I heartily accept the motto, that government is best which governs least ... Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, that government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? -- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man? | |
| Paul Tillich | The first duty of love is to listen. | |
| Charles W. Tobey | The things that are wrong with the country today are the sum total of all the things that are wrong with us as individuals. | |
| Alvin Toffler | The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. | |
| Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi | Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. | |
| John Trenchard | It's the misfortune of all Countries, that they sometimes lie
under a unhappy necessity to defend themselves by Arms against the
ambition of their Governors, and to fight for what's their own.
If those in government are heedless of reason, the people must
patiently submit to Bondage, or stand upon their own Defence; which
if they are enabled to do, they shall never be put upon it, but
their Swords may grow rusty in their hands; for that Nation is
surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a
Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to
make use of it. | |
| Phil Trieb | [I]f we won’t choose to pay the price of liberty, then by default we shall suffer the cost of servitude -- whether it be the iron chains of a
tyrannical oligarchy or the regulatory chains of unelected, faceless bureaucrats. When we witness our neighbors abused by tyrants, will we skulk
away and hope we’re not next? Or will we stand by them and challenge -- as freedom-loving Americans -- the tyranny of lawless leaders. | |
| Harry S. Truman | 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. | |
| Mao Tse-Tung | Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. | |
| Bishop Desmond Tutu | If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. | |
| Mark Twain | A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. | |
| Mark Twain | Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. | |
| Mark Twain | Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. | |
| Mark Twain | Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest. | |
| Mark Twain | Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. | |
| Mark Twain | It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. | |
| Mark Twain | Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first. | |
| Mark Twain | Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. | |
| Mark Twain | My kind of loyalty was to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. | |
| Mark Twain | We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. | |
| Mark Twain | Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -- the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. | |
| Mark Twain | [N]o country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. | |
| Sir Alex Fraser Tytler | A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. | |
| Unknown | Be more aware of your responsibilities than of your rights. | |
| Unknown | No shade tree? Blame not the sun, but yourself. | |
| John Updike | The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it. | |
| U. S. Treasury | Mind Your Business | |
| U.S. Supreme Court | Congress may not abdicate or transfer to others its legitimate functions. | |
| Paul Valéry | Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. | |
| Mike Vanderboegh | Anyone who tells you that "It Can't Happen Here" is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no 'house rule' that bars tyranny coming to America. History is replete with republics whose people grew complacent and descended into imperial butchery and chaos. | |
| Bill Vaughan | A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. | |
| Vince Vaughn | I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home. We don't have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It's not about duck hunting; it's about the ability of the individual. It's the same reason we have freedom of speech. | |
| Jesse Ventura | Government cannot be your parent. | |
| Veterans Fast for Life | The soul of our country needs to be awakened...
When leaders act contrary to conscience,
we must act contrary to leaders. | |
| Voltaire | We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard. | |
| Voltaire | It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. | |
| Voltaire | It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. | |
| Voltaire | The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death. | |
| Johann von Schiller | The voice of the majority is no proof of justice. | |
| Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. | Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. | |
| Kenneth D. Wald | Given the ambiguity of religious texts and teachings, the mixed historical record, and the empirical evidence, it would be foolhardy to assert that religious faith necessarily upholds democratic values. | |
| Josiah Warren | The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us. | |
| George Washington | Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles. | |
| George Washington | If we are wise, let us prepare for the worst. | |
| George Washington | There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This, within certain limits, is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favour, upon the spirit of party: but, in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume. | |
| George Washington | It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn. | |
| George Washington | No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable. | |
| George Washington | As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. | |
| George Washington | Avoid occasions of expense ... and avoid likewise the accumulation of debt not only by shunning occasions of expense but by vigorous exertions to discharge the debts, not throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. | |
| George Washington | Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. | |
| George Washington | There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. | |
| George Washington | If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. | |
| George Washington | No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass. | |
| George Washington | The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissensions, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.
The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils, and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. | |
| George Washington | Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by the supineness or venality of their constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to show, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other. | |
| George Washington | The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. | |
| George Washington | There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard. | |
| George Washington | [T]he policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people. | |
| Alan Watts | But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies. | |
| Alan Watts | Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment. | |
| J. C. Watts, Jr. | My father taught that the only helping hand you're ever going to be able to rely on is the one at the end of your sleeve. | |
| J. C. Watts, Jr. | Too often when we talk about racial healing, we make the old assumption that government can heal the racial divide. … Republicans and Democrats – red, yellow, black and white – have to understand that we must individually, all of us, accept our share of responsibility. … It does not happen by dividing us into racial groups. It does not happen by trying to turn rich against poor or by using the politics of fear. It does not happen by reducing our values to the lowest common denominator. And friends, it does not happen by asking Americans to accept what’s immoral and wrong in the name of tolerance. | |
| Amy Wax | Remind students that one of the central missions of the university, which justifies its existence, is to get at the truth. That requires honest debate, patience, intellectual honesty, investigation, and a lot of hard work. But it also is not for the faint of heart. And that is a lesson that is almost never transmitted today. That offense, bruising thoughts, and unpleasant facts simply go with the territory. They are an intrinsic feature of an open society, and they never can be entirely avoided. | |
| Daniel Webster | God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it. | |
| Daniel Webster | I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy. | |
| Noah Webster | When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, 'just men who will rule in the fear of God.' The preservation of [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this Duty; if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded. If [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine Commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws. | |
| Josiah C. Wedgwood | Men must have the right of choice, even to choose wrong, if he shall ever learn to choose right. | |
| Robert Welch | I want for our country enough laws to restrain me from injuring others, so that these laws will also restrain others from injuring me. I want enough government, with enough constitutional safeguards, so that this necessary minimum of laws will be applied equitably to everybody, and will be binding on the rulers as well as those ruled. Beyond that I want neither laws nor government to be imposed on our people as a means or with the excuse of protecting us from catching cold, or of seeing that we raise the right kind of crops, or of forcing us to live in the right kind of houses or neighborhoods, or of compelling us to save money or to spend it, or of telling us when or whether we can pray. I do not want government or laws designed for any other form of welfarism or paternalism, based on the premise that government knows best and can run our lives better than we can run them ourselves. And my concept of freedom, and of its overwhelming importance, is implicit in these aspirations and ideals. | |
| Robert Welch | The real freedom of any individual can always be measured by the amount of responsibility which he must assume for his own welfare and security. | |
| Col. Allen West | The first of the dreams that [my parents] instilled in me was individual responsibility and accountability. They taught me that in life you have consequences to each and every decision that you make, and when you try to shy away from those decisions, when you try to shy away from those consequences then someone will come in and allow you to be seen as a victim, and when you become seen as a victim, it’s a spiraling slope downward and downward. Before the next thing you know, you become dependent upon something and right here in the United States of America this is one of the things that we combat against because too many Americans are being castigated as victims. Too many Americans are not being individually responsible and accountable. Too many Americans are becoming dependent upon government and therefore government continues to grow. My parents and their dream was to have a son that was not a victim, but a son that was a victor, and that enables me to stand here before you today. | |
| Justice Byron R. White | While the collateral consequences
of drugs such as cocaine
are indisputably severe,
they are not unlike those
which flow from the misuse
of other, legal, substances. | |
| E. B. White | Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men. | |
| William Allen White | Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others. | |
| Tom Wicker | If the true freedom of the press is to decide for itself what to publish and when to publish it, the true responsibility of the press must be to assert and defend that freedom… What the press in America needs is less inhibition, not more restraint. | |
| Elie Wiesel | There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. | |
| Elie Wiesel | Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. | |
| Elie Wiesel | The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. | |
| Oscar Wilde | Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. | |
| Oscar Wilde | To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die. | |
| Oscar Wilde | Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. | |
| George Will | The cultivation -- even celebration -- of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint. | |
| Walter E. Williams | Liberalism is a moral manipulation that exaggerates inequity and unfairness in American life in order to justify overreaching public policies and programs. Liberalism undermines the spirit of self-help and individual responsibility. For liberals in academia, the fact that black college students earn lower grades and have a higher dropout rate than any group besides reservation Indians means that blacks remain stymied and victimized by white racism. Thus, their push for affirmative action and other race-based programs is to assuage their guilt and shame for America’s past by having people around with black skin color. The heck with the human being inside that skin. | |
| Walter E. Williams | The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny. | |
| Woodrow Wilson | You are not here merely to make a living.
You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply,
with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement.
You are here to enrich the world,
and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. | |
| Woodrow Wilson | I have always in my own thought summed up individual liberty, and business liberty, and every other kind of liberty, in the phrase that is common in the sporting world, 'A free field and no favor.' | |
| Woodrow Wilson | Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action. | |
| George Winder | Primitive communism ... once existed among all peoples and still survives in many uncivilized countries. All production in this stage of society is under the direction of chiefs or councils of elders. No individual responsibility exists. | |
| Claire Wolfe | America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. On the road to tyranny, we've gone so far that polite political action is about as useless as a miniskirt in a convent. | |
| Claire Wolfe | America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. On the road to tyranny, we've gone so far that polite political action is about as useless as a miniskirt in a convent. ... Something’s eventually going to happen. Government will bloat until it chokes us to death, or one more tyrannical power grab will turn out to be one too many. ... Maybe it’ll be one more round of “reasonable gun control” or one more episode of burning children to death to save them from “child abuse.” Whatever, something will snap. | |
| John Wooden | Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights. | |
| Virginia Woolf | To enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot. | |
| Alexander Woollcott | I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it. | |
| William Wordsworth | Man free, man working for himself, with choice of time, place, and object. | |
| James D. Wright | It perhaps goes without saying that the ‘average’ gun owner and the ‘average’ criminal are worlds apart in background,
social outlooks, and economic circumstances. The idea that common, ordinary citizens are somehow transformed into potential perpetrators of
criminally violent acts once they have acquired a firearm seems farfetched, most of all since there is substantial evidence that the typical gun owner is
affluent, Protestant, and middle-class. | |
| Malcolm X | Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it. | |
| Emile Zola | Since they have dared, I too shall dare. I shall tell the truth because I pledged myself to tell it if justice regularly empowered did not do so fully, unmitigated. My duty is to speak; I have no wish to be an accomplice. | |
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