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Responsibility Quotes
	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.