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|  Lord Acton | By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes is his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion. | |
| 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 | 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. | |
| 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. | |
| American Bar Association | It is the duty of the officials to prevent or suppress the threatened disorder with a firm hand instead of timidly yielding to threats…. Surely a speaker ought not to be suppressed because his opponents propose to use violence. It is they who should suffer from their lawlessness, not he. | |
| Sir Francis Bacon | Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. | |
| Justice Hugo L. Black | The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people. | |
| Pearl S. Buck | Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then; life is dull without it. | |
| Buddha | To keep the body in good health is a duty...otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. | |
| Buddha | | |
| Edmund Burke | Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. | |
| Bishop Joseph Butler | The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive of a good life. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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 | I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. | |
| Colorado Constitution | The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons. | |
| Auguste Comte | Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. ... Any human right is therefore as absurd as immoral. Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely as related only to the preliminary regime and totally inconsistent with the final state where there are only duties based on functions. | |
| 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. | |
| Pierre Corneille | Do your duty, and leave the rest to heaven. | |
| 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 | Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms. | |
| Eugene Debs | They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. | |
| 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. | |
| Norman Dorsen | Free speech is essential to education, especially to a liberal education, which encourages the search for truths in art and science. If expression is restricted, the range of inquiry is also curtailed... The beneficiaries of a free society have a duty to pursue the truth and to protect the freedom of expression that makes possible the search for a new enlightenment. | |
| Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Every member of the society spies on the rest, and it is his duty to inform against them. All are slaves and equal in their slavery... The great thing about it is equality... Slaves are bound to be equal. | |
| 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 | By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. | |
| Albert Einstein | The highest destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule. | |
| Henry Fielding | When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough; I've done my duty, and I've done no more. | |
| Jim Florio | There are some weapons that are just so dangerous that society has a right and the obligation even to take those weapons out of circulation. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. | |
| Anne Louise Germaine de Stael | Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty. | |
| Khalil Gibran | He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth or duty. | |
| Henry Giles | Not until right is founded upon reverence will it be secure; not until duty is based upon love will it be complete; not until liberty is based on eternal principles will it be full, equal, lofty, and universal. | |
| William Branch Giles | [It is not the purpose nor right of Congress] to attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require. | |
| Charlotte Perkins Gilman | The one predominant duty is to find one's work and do it. | |
| 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. | |
| Edwin Arthur Hall | Before the advent of Hitler or Stalin, who took their power from the German and the Russian people, measures were thrust upon the free legislatures of those countries to deprive the people of the possession and use of firearms, so that they could not resist the encroachments of such diabolical and vitriolic state police organizations as the Gestapo, the Ogpu, and the Cheka. Just as sure as I am standing here today, you are going to see this measure followed by legislation, sponsored by the proponents of such encroachment upon the rights of the people, which will eventually deprive the people of their constitutional liberty which provides for the possession of firearms for the protection of their homes. I submit to you that it is a serious departure from constitutional government when we consider legislation of this type. I predict that within 6 months of this time there will be presented to this House a measure which will go a long way toward taking away forever the individual rights and liberties of citizens of this Nation by depriving the individual of the private ownership of firearms and the right to use weapons in the protection of his home, and thereby his country. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws. | |
| Judge Learned Hand | Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands. | |
| 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. | |
| Abbie Hoffman | The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. | |
| John Holt | It is the duty of a citizen in a free country not to fit into society but to make society. | |
| Jacob G. Hornberger | The true patriot scrutinizes the actions of his own government with unceasing vigilance. And when his government violates the morality and rightness associated with principles of individual freedom and private property, he immediately rises in opposition to his government. | |
| Jacob G. Hornberger | The biggest threat to the American people today lies with the United States government. ... [T]he long-term solution is to dismantle, not reform, the iron fist of the welfare state and the controlled economy. This includes the end (not the reform) of the IRS, the DEA, the BATF, the SEC, the FDA, HUD, the departments of HHS, Labor, Agriculture, and energy, and every other agency that takes money from some and gives it to others or interferes with peaceful behavior. | |
| Indian Proverb | The most beautiful things in the universe are the starry heavens above us and the feeling of duty within us. | |
| William Ralph Inge | Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due. | |
| Robert G. Ingersoll | The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and his fellow men. | |
| 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. | |
| Helmuth James | Since National Socialism came to power, I have striven to make its consequences milder for its victims and to prepare the way for a change. In that, my conscience drove me -- and in the end, that is a man's duty. | |
| John Jay | Providence has given our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. | |
| 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 | | |
| 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. | |
| Thomas Kempis | Activate yourself to duty by remembering your position, who you are, and what you have obliged yourself to be. | |
| 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. | |
| Kathe Kollwitz | I was put in this world to change it. | |
| 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. | |