Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.
-- Buckminster Fuller		 
[S]ince the substitution of an industrial for the agricultural order of society and the conquest of the industrial by the financial, the government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semioccult power which, automatically, rather than calculatedly, pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron [of World War I].
-- Major General J.F.C. Fuller		 
I know of no inquiry which the impulses of man suggests that is forbidden to the resolution of man to pursue.
-- Margaret Fuller		 
To hold that Congress has general police power would be to hold that it may accomplish objects not intrusted to the general government, and to defeat the operation of the 10th Amendment, declaring that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.'
-- Justice Melville Fuller		 
The power of the state to impose restraints and burdens upon persons and property in conservation and promotion of the public health, good order, and prosperity is a power originally and always belonging to the states, not surrendered to them by the general government, nor directly restrained by the constitution of the United States, and essentially exclusive.
-- Justice Melville Fuller		 
The framers of the constitution employed words in their natural sense; and, where they are plain and clear, resort to collateral aids to interpretation is unnecessary, and cannot be indulged in to narrow or enlarge the text; but where there is ambiguity or doubt, or where two views may well be entertained, contemporaneous and subsequent practical construction is entitled to the greatest weight.
-- Justice Melville Weston Fuller		 
How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller		 
Real wealth can only increase.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller		 
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller		 
The more laws the more offenders.
-- Dr. Thomas Fuller		 
He does not believe, that does not live according to his belief.
-- Dr. Thomas Fuller		 
The more laws the more offenders.
-- Dr. Thomas Fuller		 
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.
-- Dr. Thomas Fuller		 
Curiosity is the kernal of forbidden fruit.
-- Dr. Thomas Fuller		 
'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it.
-- Thomas Fuller		 
One Blue Dog Democratic House Member reminded me earlier this month of the saying that 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' He wondered if his fellow Members weren't more in need of advice from psychiatrists than from economists at this point.
-- John Fund		 
Murder rates in "gun controlled" areas, such as Mexico and South Africa, are more than twice as high as those in the United States. Conversely, countries such as Switzerland, New Zealand, and Israel, which have household gun ownership rates comparable to those in the United States, have much lower rates of crime and violence.
-- Markus T. Funk		 
Give a good man great powers and crooks grab his job.
-- Rick Gaber		 
A moderate is either someone who has no moral code of his own, or if he does, then he's someone who doesn't have the guts to take sides between good and evil.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Control freaks who sneer at people who have 'faith' in the free market (voluntary trading) must be fantasizing an allegedly 'higher' political end than freedom.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Notice how some people even try to put socialists on the 'left' and fascists on the 'right' ... and then trap you into accepting the bizarre and evil notion that freedom is somehow a 'compromise' between, or a combination of, two allegedly 'opposite' collectivist extremes. This, of course, is absurd on its face, and actually leaves limited-government advocacy and the essence of freedom totally off the chart out of the picture.
-- Rick Gaber		 
The Nazis are well remembered for murdering well over 11 million people in the implementation of their slogan, 'The public good before the private good,' the Chinese Communists for murdering 62 million people in the implementation of theirs, 'Serve the people,' and the Soviet Communists for murdering more than 60 million people in the implementation of Karl Marx's slogan, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.'  Anyone who defends any of these, or any variation of them, on the grounds of their 'good intentions' is an immoral (NOT 'amoral') enabler of the ACTUAL (not just the proverbial) road to hell.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Always remember the difference between economic power and political power: You can refuse to hire someone's services or buy his products in the private sector and go somewhere else instead. In the public sector, though, if you refuse to accept a politician's or bureaucrat's product or services you go to jail. Ultimately, after all, all regulations are observed and all taxes are paid at gunpoint. I believe those few who can't even see that have been short-sighted sheep, and I suggest they learn how to think conceptually, develop consistency and grasp principles soon.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Many academicians and self-styled intellectuals, with a habitually arrogant and condescending attitude, treat the rest of the world with contempt.  These so-called 'intelligentsia' congratulate themselves for, not only having high IQs and lots of education in their particular fields, but for having achieved the allegedly momentus insight that free-market capitalism and altruism are ultimately incompatible (duh).  Yet they're still too damned stupid to realize and too damned ignorant to acknowledge that altruism is NOT the only moral code available to mankind.  (It is, in fact, the bloodiest and most regressive one of all).  This stunted thinking has resulted in their committing the intellectual atrocity of rejecting the capitalism and freedom instead of the altruism and coercion.
-- Rick Gaber		 
'Extremism' is a word deliberately chosen for its vagueness and used by intellectual slobs who are too desperate, sneaky or lazy to say exactly what they mean. Its only purpose is to deliberately try to confuse the difference between people who are extremely good (usually because of devotion to their principles) with people who are extremely bad. The sleazeballs who use this supposedly scary, yet undefined word are not only trying to smear people of conviction and integrity, but they're also trying to divert attention away from the fact that they are obviously not people of principle themselves.
-- 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!
-- Rick Gaber		 
Then, while trying to get you to accept the ridiculous notion that every kind of "selfishness," even just making money in the private sector (earning a living and growing a nest egg) is morally vicious, they also try to get you to accept the even more absurd idea that the accumulating of political power by government employees and politicians (and their legal machinations to steal or control the property of others) is morally good. This is sold along with an implicit demand that their professed concern for "others" be accepted without question at face value, together with an implicit threat: "Don't you DARE point out that grasping for and accumulating political power definitely IS a kind of 'selfishness,' only this time it's the bad kind, the vicious taking-unwilling-advantage kind, the kind that's the hallmark of criminals, politicians, their intellectual excuse-makers and other aggressive parasites.
-- Rick Gaber		 
The Nazis are well remembered for murdering well over 11 million people in the implementation of their slogan, 'The public good before the private good,' the Chinese Communists for murdering 62 million people in the implementation of theirs, 'Serve the people,' and the Soviet Communists for murdering more than 60 million people in the implementation of Karl Marx's slogan, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.' Anyone who defends any of these, or any variation of them, on the grounds of their 'good intentions' is an immoral (NOT 'amoral') enabler of the ACTUAL (not just the proverbial) road to hell.
-- Rick Gaber		 
The Nazis are well remembered for murdering well over 11 million people in the implementation of their slogan, 'The public good before the private good,' the Chinese Communists for murdering 62 million people in the implementation of theirs, 'Serve the people,' and the Soviet Communists for murdering more than 60 million people in the implementation of Karl Marx's slogan, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.'  Anyone who defends any of these, or any variation of them, on the grounds of their 'good intentions' is an immoral (NOT 'amoral') enabler of the ACTUAL (not just the proverbial) road to hell.
-- Rick Gaber		 
If I said, "The live-and-let-live people I've met are generally warm and generous, although often reserved and respectful, while the control freaks I've met are generally cynical, mean and aggressively obnoxious," would that seem likely to be true? Of course it does. It IS true, and it's obviously logically consistent and what you'd expect. BUT, if I said, "I've found the intellectual defenders of private property and laissez-faire capitalism whom I've met to be generally warm and generous, while the so-called "liberal" defenders of the welfare state I've found to be often cynical, mean and tight-fisted in their personal lives," would THAT seem likely to be true? Think about it. Well, it's also true ... it's a matter of semantics, or word choice. BECAUSE BOTH SENTENCES SAY EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
-- Rick Gaber		 
I do encourage you to question authority, apply logic, and think for yourself. Look at the forest, not the trees. And the centuries, not the months. Or you might risk being lead willingly, as a sheep, to the slaughter.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Free enterprise capitalism exists only when people in the private sector are free to pursue their own interests without direction from government. When politicians start passing laws to tell them what to do, or bureaucrats start issuing edicts to tell them what to do, it is no longer capitalism; it's fascism.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Many of the deliberate con artists are the "true believers" of fanatical religious or political sects who actually accept the dogma that it is a mortal sin for you to take care of yourself and your family first and in any way exercise your right to the pursuit of happiness while their precious cause is in any way neglected, underfunded or even unaccepted.
-- Rick Gaber		 
The single most frightening thing you encounter is confidence-in-government because it's so common.
-- Rick Gaber		 
The people in the MSM (mainstream media) don't think of themselves as liberal.  They're just in favor of collectivism and against individualism in general -- without using many labels (or much thought) of any kind.  They go out of their way only to mention a minority group if they can.  Groupism is what they believe in.
-- Rick Gaber		 
The United States was supposed to have a limited government because the founders knew government power attracts demagogues and despots as surely as horse manure attracts horseflies.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Many academicians and self-styled intellectuals, with a habitually arrogant and condescending attitude, treat the rest of the world with contempt. These so-called 'intelligentsia' congratulate themselves for, not only having high IQs and lots of education in their particular fields, but for having achieved the allegedly momentous insight that free-market capitalism and pure altruism are ultimately incompatible (duh). Yet they're still too damned stupid to realize, and too damned ignorant to acknowledge, that altruism is NOT the only moral code available to mankind. (It is, in fact, the bloodiest and most regressive one of all). This stunted thinking has resulted in their committing the intellectual atrocity of rejecting the capitalism and freedom instead of the altruism and coercion.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Enron, of course, is exactly the kind of corporation which could not exist in pure capitalism. As a creature, in effect, of politicians, it was deliberately converted from a small pipeline company into an international conglomerate by conniving scoundrels who designed it from the beginning to use the power of their politician-friends to give it government contracts, subsidies, monopoly powers, and favorable regulations to force prospective customers to do business with them, essentially at gunpoint. Obviously, this is fascism, not capitalism, and what you get more and more of when you work to transform what was once the rule of clear-cut law into the rule of men (especially agenda-driving, nuance-inventing judges and lawyers).
-- Rick Gaber		 
Always remember the difference between economic power and political power: You can refuse to hire someone's services or buy his products in the private sector and go somewhere else instead. In the public sector, though, if you refuse to accept a politician's or bureaucrat's product or services you go to jail. Ultimately, after all, all regulations are observed and all taxes are paid at gunpoint. I believe those few who can't even see that have been short-sighted sheep, and I suggest they learn how to think conceptually, develop consistency and grasp principles soon.
-- Rick Gaber		 
Most of us here were, at one time or another, active in either the O.S.S., the State Department, or the European Economic Administration. During those times, and without exception, we operated under directives issued by the White House, the substance of which was to the effect that we should make every effort to so alter life in the United States as to make possible a comfortable merger with the Soviet Union. We are continuing to be guided by just such directives.
-- H. Rowan Gaither		 
We operate here under directives which emanate from the White House... The substance of the directives under which we operate is that we shall use our grant making power to alter life in the United States such that we can comfortably be merged with the Soviet Union.
-- Rowan Gaither		 
[The task is to] covertly lower the standard of living, the whole social structure, of America so that we can be merged with all other nations.
-- Rowan Gaither		 
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.
-- Rocco Galati		 
The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the original parable, the bland lead the bland.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
Under the privilege of the First Amendment many, many ridiculous things are said.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
-- 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.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
Every corner of the public psyche is canvassed by some of the most talented citizens to see if the desire for some merchandisable product can be cultivated.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
The Federal Reserve System is treated by nearly all economists with reverence. On no matter is their instruction of the young in the subtlety and benignity of established institutions more admiring-or, in broad effect, more successful. Corporations are flawed by an instinct for monopoly. Trade unions interfere with the market, urge trade restrictions, resist new technology and thus obstruct progress, and they can fall victim to extortionists and racketeers. The regulatory agencies of the government are notably imperfect instruments of economic guidance. The Federal Reserve System is not totally above criticism. It makes many mistakes but these are always interesting errors of judgment. they are examined not critically but respectfully to discover why men of insight went wrong. That for such error anyone should be sacked or even seriously rebuked is, for economists, nearly unthinkable. This approval goes back to the origins and can be highly negligent of circumstance. The most widely read account of the genesis of the System tells glowingly of its birth in the closing weeks of 1913 when the Federal Reserve Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Wilson.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith		 
Integrity is what we do, what we say, and what we say we do.
-- Don Galer		 
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
-- Galileo Galilei		 
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.
-- Galileo Galilei		 
In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
-- Galileo Galilei		 
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and  intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei		 
I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work.
-- Gallagher		 
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.
-- Albert Gallatin		 
My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.
-- Indira Gandhi		 
You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
-- Indira Gandhi		 
Freedom is not worth living if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that previous right.
-- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi		 
Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.
-- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi		 
The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.
-- 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		 
It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
-- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi		 
From my experience of hundreds of children, I know that they have perhaps a finer sense of honour than you or I have. The greatest lessons in life, if we would but stoop and humble ourselves, we would learn not from grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children.
-- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi		 
Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth.
-- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi		 
The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.
-- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi		 


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