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|  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.” | |
| Susan B. Anthony | I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand. | |
| Larry P. Arnn | Hillsdale [College] forgoes government money in order to spare our students, faculty and administrators the bureaucratic interference that is the price of accepting federal financial support. | |
| James Baldwin | Freedom is not something that can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism -- including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice? | |
| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher | Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them. | |
| Justice Louis D. Brandeis | They: The makers of the Constitution: conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. | |
| Buddha | To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent. | |
| Buddha | The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed. | |
| James Burgh | No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion. | |
| 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. | |
| Lord Byron | The wish, which ages have not yet subdued
In man, to have no master save his mood. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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 | 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Mark Da Vee | Positive laws are tyrannical. One's individual rights -- whether they be life, liberty, or property -- must be sacrificed by the state in order to fulfill the positive rights of another. For example, if housing is considered a "right," then the state will have to confiscate wealth (property) from those who have provided shelter for themselves in order to house those who have not. ... True justice is realized when our lives, and property are secure, and we are free to express our thoughts without fear of retribution. Just laws are negative in nature; they exist to thwart the violation of our natural rights. Government ought to be the collective organization -- that is, the extension -- of the individual's right of self-defense, and its purpose to protect our lives, liberties, and property. | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states;
and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality,
nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people.
If one of the states chooses to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disapprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right. | |
| 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. | |
| Anthony J. Dennis | Standing armies consist of professional soldiers who owe their livelihood and income to the government. Unlike civilians who render periodic service in local militia, professional soldiers do not own property and therefore do not have any source of income other than the government’s military paymaster. Thus, they are more likely to serve the government’s interests, regardless of whether its leaders are dishonest and corrupt or not. In fact, standing armies may even promote rapacious foreign or domestic policies if such policies enrich the army. In contrast, arms bearing, property owning citizen militiamen have a stake in the health of the republic as a whole and can be trusted to act in the republic’s best interests, whether those interests call for action in support of or against the political leadership of the nation. | |
| 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. | |
| Robert Dowlut | Because this right [of self-defense] cannot be effectively exercised with bare hands, the right to keep and bear arms is the only efficient way to secure the fundamental right of self-defense. | |
| 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! | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Epicurus | Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | Live life simply so that others may simply live. | |
| Gazette of the United States | The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States... Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | The best of all government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | In the general course of human nature, A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will. | |
| Handgun Control, Inc. | The thought that average citizens will somehow be better able to successfully defend themselves more effectively than our nation's trained professionals is absurd. | |
| William Havard | The greatest Glory of a free-born People, Is to transmit that Freedom to their Children. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| John Holt | People who make careers out of helping others -- sometimes at great sacrifice, often not -- usually don't like to hear that those others might get along fine, might even get along better, without their help. | |
| Horace | Who then is free? The wise who can command his passions, who fears not want, nor death, nor chains,
firmly resisting his appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been
rounded off and polished. | |
| Hubert H. Humphrey | There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free. | |
| William Ralph Inge | It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own. | |
| 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 | 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 | It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate. | |
| Dr. Samuel Johnson | Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intelligence. | |
| Don B. Kates, Jr. | Ironically, the only gun control in 19th century England was the policy forbidding police to have arms while on duty. | |
| Helen Keller | Security is mostly superstition. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | The group consisting of mother, father and child is the main educational agency of mankind. | |
| 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. | |
| Latin Proverb | If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| General Douglas MacArthur | History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster. | |
| Michelle Malkin | What our country deserves from everyone who enjoys its fruits and freedoms is a little more gratitude -- and a lot less greed. | |
| James McGuigan | Rules are written for those who lack the ability to truly reason. But for those who can, rules become nothing more than guidelines, and live their lives governed not by rules but by reason. | |
| 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 state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. | |
| John Stuart Mill | Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. | |
| Ted Nugent | To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic. | |
| Pythagoras | No one is free who is not master of himself. | |
| 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. | |
| Ronald Reagan | Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence. | |
| Ronald Reagan | I think the best possible social program is a job. | |
| 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. | |
| Glenn Harlan Reynolds | The purpose of the right to bear arms is twofold; to allow individuals to protect themselves and their families, and to ensure a body of armed citizenry from which a militia could be drawn, whether that militia’s role was to protect the nation, or to protect the people from a tyrannical government. | |
| Sheldon Richman | If you own your life, then you have the right to defend yourself against anyone who would deprive you of it. ... And, if you have the right of self-defense, it follows that you have the right to act ... to obtain means appropriate to that defense. That brings us to firearms, particularly the handgun, which so many people would outlaw. The handgun has been called the equalizer ..., and for good reason. It affords smaller, weaker people the chance to defend themselves against bigger, stronger people who threaten them. Handguns offer the otherwise defenseless a convenient, practical, inexpensive method of safeguarding themselves and their families. Banishing handguns -- even if the big and strong were also denied them -- would leave the small and the weak defenseless. | |
| Lew Rockwell | Even though they are a relatively recent policy development, civil rights laws are considered necessary to insure rights for blacks. But they are, in fact, among the most draconian forms of intervention into the free market. They attack the essence of private property, the ability to exercise control over it. Such laws have resulted in lessened economic freedom, lowered prosperity, heightened social tension, and more trouble for the groups the laws are supposed to help. ... A Korean grocer may want to employ only Korean clerks, a magazine for black professionals only black editors and writers, and a German restaurant only German cooks and waiters. An employer may think that Iraqi-Americans have been unfairly treated and want to favor them. A women’s health club may want only women customer’s and a men’s bar may want only men. There is nothing wrong with any of these behaviors, although civil rights laws seek to end them. In addition to violating the free labor contract, civil rights laws guarantee everyone the right of “access” to “public accommodations” like restaurants, movie theaters, and shops. In fact, what the civil rights laws call public is really private. These businesses are established by private entrepreneurs with private money. The owners should no more be required to serve everyone who comes into their place than they are required to invite everyone to their home for dinner. A large downtown restaurant is as private as a small house in the country. The real difference between private and public is one of ownership, not function or location. | |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt | Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants? | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Dr. Mary J. Ruwart | In the late 1980s, Soviets were allowed to keep the wealth they created by raising vegetables on their garden plots. Although these plots composed only about 2% of the agricultural lands in the Soviet Union, they produced 25% of the food! When Soviets kept the wealth they created, they produced almost 16 times more than when it was taken from them at gunpoint, if necessary! | |
| Patricia Sampson | Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward. | |
| Eric Schaub | Freedom is risky.
Nature makes no promises. | |
| Eric Schaub | There is no Freedom without Courage. | |
| 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. | |
| Rick Scott | It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach. | |
| Adam Smith | The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition . . . is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration. | |
| 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. | |
| 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 | If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you? | |
| 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... The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people. | |
| 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. | |
| Lysander Spooner | [F]or everybody has a natural right to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to go to the assistance and defence of every one else whose person or property is invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on earth. | |
| Dorothy Thompson | It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. | |
| Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi | The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase. | |
| Arnold J. Toynbee | We differ from Tory Socialism in so far as we are in favour, not of paternal, but of fraternal government, and we differ from Continental Socialism because we accept the principle of private property, and repudiate confiscation and violence. With Mazzini, we say the worst feature in Continental Socialism is its materialism. It is this indeed which utterly separates English Radical Socialists from Continental Socialists — our abhorrence and detestation of their materialistic ideal. | |
| Arnold J. Toynbee | The Radical creed, as I understand it, is this: We have not abandoned our old belief in liberty, justice, and Self-help, but we say that under certain conditions the people cannot help themselves, and that then they should be helped by the State representing directly the whole people. In giving this State help, we make three conditions: first, the matter must be one of primary social importance; next, it must be proved to be practicable; thirdly, the State interference must not diminish self-reliance. Even if the chance should arise of removing a great social evil, nothing must be done to weaken those habits of individual self-reliance and voluntary association which have built up the greatness of the English people. | |
| Arnold J. Toynbee | To a reluctant admission of the necessity for State action, we join a burning belief in duty, and a deep spiritual ideal of life. And we have more than an abstract belief in duty, we do not hesitate to unite the advocacy of social reform with an appeal to the various classes who compose society to perform those duties without which all social reform must be merely delusive. | |
| Laura K. Van Onymous | The media can now wistfully reflect on their glory days of the 1970's when the majority of people actually bought into their bullshit. | |
| Ludwig Von Mises | The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. | |
| Ludwig von Mises | The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain's orders. The captain is the consumer. ...[Consumers] make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. | |
| George Washington | There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. | |
| George Washington | My policy has been, and will continue to be, while I have the honor to remain in the administration of the government, to be upon friendly terms with, but independent of, all the nations of the earth. To share in the broils of none. To fulfil our own engagements. To supply the wants, and be carriers for them all: Being thoroughly convinced that it is our policy and interest to do so. | |
| 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. | |
| Albert Edward Wiggin | Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence. | |
| 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. | |
| Woodrow Wilson | Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles. | |
| Mary Wollstonecraft | I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves. | |
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