Famous Quotations / Quotes Famous Quotes about Liberty
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	A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man; a debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy   A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy   People everywhere confuse, What they read in newspapers with news. -- A. J. Liebling   Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. -- A. J. Liebling   Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them. -- Joshua Liebman   In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. -- John Lilly   There’s no longer any left or right. There’s the system and the enemies of the system. -- Eduard Limonov   Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. -- Abraham Lincoln   Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. -- Abraham Lincoln   When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest. -- 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   A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. -- Abraham Lincoln   Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws. -- Abraham Lincoln   I have been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a Dome on it. -- Abraham Lincoln   [I]f the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. -- Abraham Lincoln   America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. -- Abraham Lincoln (False)   The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. -- Abraham Lincoln   Ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. -- 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   Prohibition 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. -- Abraham Lincoln (Questionable)   This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it. -- Abraham Lincoln   It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. -- Abraham Lincoln   Let it [the Constitution] be taught in schools, seminaries and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, enforced in courts of justice. In short, let it become the political religion of the nation. -- Abraham Lincoln   The Shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shephard as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty. -- Abraham Lincoln   The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow. -- Abraham Lincoln   Nearly all men can withstand adversity; if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -- Abraham Lincoln   The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma. -- Abraham Lincoln   My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. -- Abraham Lincoln   This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. -- Abraham Lincoln   That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. -- Abraham Lincoln   The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. By adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. -- Abraham Lincoln   If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution. -- Abraham Lincoln   Military glory -- the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood. -- Abraham Lincoln   How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. -- Abraham Lincoln   Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. -- Abraham Lincoln   What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say. -- Abraham Lincoln   I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war -- Abraham Lincoln (Questionable)   Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet. -- Abraham Lincoln   To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. -- 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   A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. -- Abraham Lincoln   Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. -- Abraham Lincoln   You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time. -- Abraham Lincoln   Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. -- Abraham Lincoln   Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy. -- Abraham Lincoln   If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time. -- Abraham Lincoln   With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. -- Abraham Lincoln   I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free. -- 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! -- Abraham Lincoln   The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity. The financing of all public enterprise, and the conduct of the treasury will become matters of practical administration. Money will cease to be master and will then become servant of humanity. -- Abraham Lincoln   Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be; and where liberty is, there slavery cannot be. -- Abraham Lincoln   To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. -- Abraham Lincoln   As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. -- Abraham Lincoln   It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. -- Abraham Lincoln   Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. -- Abraham Lincoln   ... the privilege of creating and issuing money... is the government's greatest creative opportunity... [saving] the taxpayers immense sums of money... -- Abraham Lincoln   It is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong - throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time... -- Abraham Lincoln   We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. -- Abraham Lincoln   I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. -- Abraham Lincoln   I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from ... the Declaration of Independence ... that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence ... I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. -- Abraham Lincoln   Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough. -- Abraham Lincoln   No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar. -- Abraham Lincoln   What chance of survival does a culture have when its own elites actively seek its destruction? -- William S. Lind   The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh   Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me. -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh   This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this bill, the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately, but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed. The trusts will soon realize that they have gone too far even for their own good. The people must make a declaration of independence to relieve themselves from the Monetary Power. This they will be able to do by taking control of Congress. Wall Streeters could not cheat us if you Senators and Representatives did not make a humbug of Congress... The greatest crime of Congress is its currency system. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill. The caucus and the party bosses have again operated and prevented the people from getting the benefit of their own government. -- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.   When the President signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913], the invisible government by the money power -- proven to exist by the Monetary Trust Investigation -- will be legalized. The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on, depressions will be scientifically created. -- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.   A radical is one who speaks the truth. -- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.   This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill. -- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.   The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation...they can unload the stocks on the people at high prices during the excitement and then bring on a panic and buy them back at low prices...the day of reckoning is only a few years removed. -- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.   Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt. -- Robert Lindner   There are men – now in power in this country – who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit. -- John V. Lindsay   Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. -- John V. Lindsay   Paradoxical as it may seem, men and women who are free to pursue individualism and material wealth turn out to be the most compassionate of all. -- Lawrence Lindsey   Contemporary liberals increasingly think and talk like a class of self-satisfied commissars enforcing a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. The idea that someone, somewhere might devote her life to an alternative vision of the good -- one that clashes in some respects with liberalism's moral creed -- is increasingly intolerable. That is a betrayal of what's best in the liberal tradition. -- Damon Linker   Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’ -- Judge Kermit Victor Lipez   The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative. -- Judge Kermit Victor Lipez   It is perfectly true that the government is best which governs least. It is equally true that the government is best which provides most. -- Walter Lippmann   Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. -- Walter Lippmann   In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable. -- Walter Lippmann   Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration. -- 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   It is the very essence of despotism that it can never afford to fail. This is what distinguishes it most vitally from democracy. In a despotism there is no organized opposition which can take over the power when the Administration in office has failed. All the eggs are in one basket. Everything is staked on one coterie of men. When the going is good, they move more quickly and efficiently than democracies, where the opposition has to be persuaded and conciliated. But when they lose, there are no reserves. There are no substitutes on the bench ready to go out on the field and carry the ball. That is why democracies with the habit of party government have outlived all other forms of government in the modern world. They have, as it were, at least two governments always at hand, and when one fails they have the other. They have diversified the risks of mortality, corruption, and stupidity which pervade all human affairs. They have remembered that the most beautifully impressive machine cannot run for very long unless there is available a complete supply of spare parts. -- Walter Lippmann   Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark. -- Walter Lippmann   A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. -- Walter Lippmann   The opposition is indispensable. A good statesmen, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. -- Walter Lippmann   The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd. -- Walter Lippmann   When all think alike, no one is thinking very much. -- Walter Lippmann   The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively. -- 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   In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs. -- Walter Lippmann   A regime, an established order, is rarely overthrown by a revolutionary movement; usually a regime collapses of its own weakness and corruption and then a revolutionary movement enters among the ruins and takes over the powers that have become vacant. -- Walter Lippmann   Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends. -- Walter Lippmann   The American’s conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man’s way of life. -- Walter Lippmann   Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. -- Walter Lippmann   While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes the right important. -- Walter Lippmann   We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say. -- Walter Lippmann   A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so. -- Walter Lippmann   When you get into politics, you find that all your worst nightmares about it turn out to be true, and the people who are attracted to large concentrations of power are precisely the ones who should be kept as far away from it as possible. -- Ken Livingstone   Prosperity or egalitarianism – you have to choose. I favor freedom – you never achieve real equality anyway, you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion. -- Marios Vargas Llosa   Public educators, like Soviet farmers, lack any incentive to produce results, innovate, to be efficient, to make the kinds of difficult changes that private firms operating in a competitive market must make to survive. -- Carolyn Lochhead   To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues. -- John Locke   [W]henever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty. -- John Locke   Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man. -- John Locke   The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. -- John Locke   [Individuals] have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them. -- John Locke   Government has no other end than the preservation of property. -- 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   Where there is no law there is no freedom. -- John Locke   New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. -- John Locke   All wealth is the product of labor. -- John Locke   The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands. -- 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   I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. -- John Locke   Whosoever uses force without Right ... puts himself into a state of War with those, against whom he uses it, and in that state all former Ties are canceled, all other Rights cease, and every one has a Right to defend himself, and to resist the Aggressor. -- 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   The body of People may with Respect resist intolerable Tyranny. -- John Locke   The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. -- John Locke (False)   Virtue is harder to be got than a knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. -- John Locke   [H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary. -- John Locke   Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many. -- John Locke   ... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. ... [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society. -- John Locke   [I]t being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a Wolf or a lion.... -- John Locke   Men being by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent which is done by agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living in a secure enjoyment of their properties. -- 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. -- John Locke   And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage, and thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community, contrary to the end of society and government: therefore in wellordered commonwealths, where the good of the whole is so considered, as it ought, the legislative power is put into the hands of divers persons, who duly assembled, have by themselves, or jointly with others, a power to make laws, which when they have done, being separated again, they are themselves subject to the laws they have made; which is a new and near tie upon them, to take care, that they make them for the public good. -- John Locke   The Natural Liberty of Man is to be free from any Superior Power on Earth, and not to be under the Will or Legislative Authority of Man, but to have only the Law of Nature for his Rule. -- John Locke   All men by nature are equal in that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man; being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. -- John Locke   It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man, or many in combination. Whereas by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute arbitrary power and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him, to make a prey of them when he pleases; he being in a much worse condition, who is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man, who has the command of 100,000, than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of 100,000 single men; no body being secure, that his will, who has such a command, is better than that of other men, though his force be 100,000 times stronger. -- John Locke   Self-defence is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself... -- John Locke   The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it. -- John Locke   Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool? -- John Locke   [W]henever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty ... -- John Locke   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. -- Henry Cabot Lodge   If you look like a rabbit, and act like a rabbit, you will be treated like a rabbit -- prey for all predators. -- Stony Loft   Fatigue makes cowards of us all. -- Vince Lombardi   The IRS has become morally corrupted by the enormous power which we in Congress have unwisely entrusted to it. Too often it acts like a Gestapo preying upon defenseless citizens. -- Senator Edward V. Long   Democracy is like a raft. It won't sink, but you'll always have your feet wet. -- Russell Long   All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow   It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow   We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow   We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow   How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself?  There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.  You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. -- Barry Lopez   Because law enforcement resources have been concentrated on the street drug trade in minority communities, drug arrests of minorities increased at 10 times the rate of increase for whites. -- Los Angeles Times   If the rest of the country had adopted right-to-carry concealed-handgun provisions in 1992, about 1,500 murders and 4,000 rapes would have been avoided. -- John R. Lott, Jr.   The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. -- H. P. Lovecraft   The most merciless thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. -- H. P. Lovecraft   Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of opinion. -- 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   The ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools. -- 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   Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward. -- James Russell Lowell   A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic. -- James Russell Lowell   But it was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled. -- 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   Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. -- James Russell Lowell   Participation is an instrument of conquest because it encourages people to give their consent to being governed. ... Deeply embedded in people's sense of fair play is the principle that those who play the game must accept the outcome. Those who participate in politics are similarly committed, even if they are consistently on the losing side. Why do politicians plead with everyone to get out and vote? Because voting is the simplest and easiest form of participation by masses of people. Even though it is minimal participation, it is sufficient to commit all voters to being governed, regardless of who wins. -- Theodore Lowi   Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork. -- Harold Lowman   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. -- John Lubbock   All go free when multitudes offend. [Lat., Quicquid multis peccatur inultum est.] -- Lucanus   And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man from slavery. -- Lucanus   The remaining liberty of the world was to be destroyed in the place where it stood. [Lat., Libertas ultima mundi Quo steterit ferienda loco.] -- Lucanus   The liberty of the people, he says, whom power restrains unduly, perishes through liberty. [Lat., Libertas, inquit, populi quem regna coercent, Libertate perit.] -- Lucanus   The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do. -- E. V. 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. -- F. J. Lucas   There are no hopeless situations; There are only men who have grown hopeless about them. -- Clare Boothe Luce   [T]he police do not and cannot protect law-abiding citizens from criminal violence. ... This thought may not occur to wealthy people who can shelter themselves in low-crime enclaves and who care not at all about their less fortunate neighbors. But no one knows it better than the police, who scrupulously preserve their own right to carry firearms on and off duty (and often after they retire as well) even while some of them advocate disarming those whom the police cannot protect. -- Nelson Lund   You don't have to scratch liberalism very deeply to find socialism underneath, nor socialism to find authoritarianism underneath. -- Don Luskin   Never — and I mean never — blindly trust the statistics you read [or hear] about the economy. -- Don Luskin   Whenever the media covers anything I know about in intimate detail ... they always get it wrong. True on the left, and true on the right. Sigh. Double sigh. -- Don Luskin   I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self. -- Martin Luther   Peace if possible, but truth at any rate. -- Martin Luther   The man who has the will to undergo all labor may win to any good. -- Martin Luther   Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only -- no matter how big its membership may be -- is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently. -- Rosa Luxemburg   Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. -- Rosa Luxemburg   Without general elections, without unrestrained freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution…in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. -- Rosa Luxemburg   I've always said, the key organ here isn't the brain, it's the stomach. When things start to decline - there are bad headlines in the papers and on television - will you have the stomach for the market volatility and the broad-based pessimism that tends to come with it? -- Peter Lynch   Civil libertarians must often remind government officials (and others) that if the First Amendment only protected the expression of popular and agreeable ideas, it would be totally unnecessary since those ideas would never be threatened by our democratic form of government. Our society's commitment to free speech is tested when we encounter the expression of ideas that are disagreeable -- or even offensive. -- Timothy Lynch   We welcome almost any break in the monotony of things, a man has only to murder a series of wives in a new way to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer. -- Robert Wilson Lynd   There is nothing in the universe that I fear, but that I shall not know all my duty, or shall fail to do it. -- Mary Lyon   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. -- Lord George Lyttleton   Tell the American people never to lose their guns. As long as they keep their guns in their hands, whatever happened here [China] will never happen there. -- Donald S. MacAlvaney   No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation. -- 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. -- General Douglas MacArthur   The inescapable price of liberty is an ability to preserve it from destruction. -- General Douglas MacArthur   Last, but by no means least, courage -- moral courage, the courage of one’s convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle -- the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other. -- General Douglas MacArthur   Wars are caused by undefended wealth. -- General Douglas MacArthur   Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. -- General Douglas MacArthur   I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within. -- General Douglas MacArthur   In war there is no substitute for victory. -- General Douglas MacArthur   Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -­ kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour -­ with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real. -- General Douglas MacArthur   One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda. -- General Douglas MacArthur   The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power. -- General Douglas MacArthur   There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity. -- General Douglas MacArthur   None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller. -- 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 in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves? -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   Institutions purely democratic must, sooner, or later, destroy liberty or civilization or both. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom. -- 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. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay   There is no way; we make the road by walking it. -- Antonio Machado   If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality. -- Tibor Machan   This right to life, this right to liberty, and this right to pursue one’s happiness is unabashedly individualistic, without in the slightest denying at the same time our thoroughly social nature.   It’s only that our social relations, while vital to us all, must be chosen -­ that is what makes the crucial difference. -- Tibor R. Machan   Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist. -- J. Gresham Machen   Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised.... -- Niccolo Machiavelli   Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society. -- 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. -- Niccolo Machiavelli   The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom. -- Niccolo Machiavelli   [T]here is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.  For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order." -- Niccolo Machiavelli   One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived. -- Niccolo Machiavelli   One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived. -- Niccolo Machiavelli   Where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no consideration of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or of shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question should be: What course will save the life and liberty of the country? -- Niccolo Machiavelli   When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you. -- Niccolo Machiavelli   For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are. -- Niccolo Machiavelli   The wise man does at once what the fool does finally. -- Niccolo Machiavelli   The legal code can never be identified with the code of morals. It is no more the function of government to impose a moral code than to impose a religious code. And for the same reason. -- Robert M. MacIver   Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. -- Charles Mackay   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. -- Sir James MacKintosh   Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered. -- Archibald Macleish   The dissenter is every human being at those times of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. -- Archibald Macleish   There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American Dream. -- 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. -- Archibald MacLeish   Freedom is the right to one's dignity as a man. -- Archibald MacLeish   Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. -- James Madison   Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. -- James Madison   Whilst we assert a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to choose minds who have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. -- James Madison   Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. -- James Madison   I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other. -- James Madison   I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments. -- James Madison   We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that religion, or the duty we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. -- James Madison   But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them. -- James Madison   There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong…. In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right…. -- James Madison   Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own. -- James Madison   As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. -- James Madison   How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation? -- James Madison   Landholders ought to have a share in the government to support these invaluable interests and check the other many. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. -- James Madison   Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. -- James Madison   If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -- James Madison   Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. -- James Madison   The highest number to which a standing army can be carried in any country does not exceed one hundredth part of the souls, or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms.  This portion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. ... Besides the advantage of being armed, ... the existence of subordinate governments ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. ... [The governments of Europe] are afraid to trust the people with arms. ... Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. -- James Madison   It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated. -- James Madison   It is very certain that [the commerce clause] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government. -- James Madison   Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. -- James Madison   America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat. -- 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 pure democracy ... can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction.  A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party...  Hence it is that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. -- James Madison   History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance. -- James Madison (False)   We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future ...upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God. -- James Madison (False)   If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America. -- James Madison   If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. ... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America. -- James Madison   It becomes all therefore who are friends of a Government based on free principles to reflect, that by denying the possibility of a system partly federal and partly consolidated, and who would convert ours into one either wholly federal or wholly consolidated, in neither of which forms have individual rights, public order, and external safety, been all duly maintained, they aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth. -- James Madison   The internal effects of a mutable policy are [...] calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. -- James Madison   Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an ailment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. -- James Madison   All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree. -- James Madison   Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant. -- James Madison   Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. -- James Madison   May it not be asked of every intelligent friend to the liberties of his country, whether the power exercised in such an act as this ought not to produce great and universal alarm? Whether a rigid execution of such an act, in time past, would not have repressed that information and communication among the people which is indispensable to the just exercise of their electoral rights? And whether such an act, if made perpetual, and enforced with rigor, would not, in time to come, either destroy our free system of government, or prepare a convulsion that might prove equally fatal to it? -- James Madison   The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. -- James Madison   The powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments. It is equally evident, that none of them ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others, in the administration of their respective powers. It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. -- James Madison   With regard to Banks, they have taken too deep and too wide a root in social transactions, to be got rid of altogether, if that were desirable. They have a hold on public opinion, which alone would make it expedient to aim rather at the improvement, than the suppression of them. As now generally constituted, their advantages whatever they be, are outweighed by the excesses of their paper emissions, and the partialities and corruption with which they are administered. -- James Madison   During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution. -- 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   On the distinctive principles of the Government ... of the U. States, the best guides are to be found in ... The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental Act of Union of these States. -- James Madison   Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. -- James Madison   [A]s the Courts are generally the last in making the decision, it results to them by refusing or not refusing to execute a law to stamp it with its final character. This makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended, and can never be proper. -- James Madison   A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. -- James Madison   Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred. -- 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   Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death. -- James Madison   A government that does not trust it's law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is itself unworthy of trust. -- James Madison (False)   But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain. -- James Madison   One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one. -- James Madison   We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man. -- James Madison   Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. -- James Madison   A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union. -- James Madison   Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. -- James Madison   Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents. -- James Madison   Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. -- James Madison   ... large and permanent military establishments ... are forbidden by the principles of free government, and against the necessity of which the militia were meant to be a constitutional bulwark. -- James Madison   A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. -- James Madison   Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. -- James Madison   In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature. -- 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   The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: they are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself. -- James Madison   Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. -- James Madison   The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. -- James Madison   I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic -- it is also a truth, that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out. -- James Madison   What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, 1st destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedemonians; or 2nd it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or 3rd it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or 4th it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable. -- James Madison   Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society. -- James Madison   No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. -- James Madison   [T]he power to declare war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature. -- James Madison   The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex. -- James Madison   It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. -- James Madison   War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. -- James Madison   If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty. -- James Madison   All men having power ought to be mistrusted. -- James Madison   Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution -- 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   Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. ... This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own. -- James Madison   An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government. -- James Madison   If it be asked what is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part of the Constitution, and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer, the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them; as if the general power had been reduced to particulars, and any one of these were to be violated; the same, in short, as if the State legislatures should violate their respective constitutional authorities. In the first instance, the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers. -- James Madison   The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. -- James Madison   Because finally, 'the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience' is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider the 'Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of government,' it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis. -- 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   The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. -- James Madison   A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression. -- 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   It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? -- James Madison   By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt. -- James Madison   From this view of the subject, it may be concluded, that a pure Democracy, by which I mean a society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will in almost every case, be felt by the majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions. -- James Madison   With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. -- James Madison   There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong. -- James Madison   [T]he powers granted by the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and may be resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people. -- James Madison   The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others. -- James Madison   [In the case of] dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil. -- James Madison   Freedom arises from a multiplicity of sects, which pervades America, and is the best and only security for religious liberty in America. -- James Madison   The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. -- James Madison   In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. -- James Madison   A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts. -- James Madison   The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon … has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right. -- James Madison   The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it. -- James Madison   The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings. -- James Madison   The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of government most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature. -- James Madison   Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. -- James Madison   A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species. -- James Madison   The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. -- James Madison   Equal laws protecting equal rights -- the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country. -- James Madison   Complaints are every where heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable; that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. -- James Madison   There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence. -- James Madison   [T]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. -- James Madison   Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. -- James Madison   The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets. -- James Madison   The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty. -- James Madison   No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. -- James Madison   Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on public liberty. -- 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   What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support? -- James Madison   If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions. -- James Madison   I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. -- James Madison   The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. -- James Madison   It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object. -- James Madison   A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace. -- James Madison   [Y]ou will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government. -- James Madison   Conscience is the most sacred of all property. -- James Madison   The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable. -- James Madison   [T]he delegation of the government, in [a republic], to a small number of citizens elected by the rest . . . [is] to refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. -- James Madison   What can be more reasonable than that when crowds of them [immigrants] come here, they should be forced to renounce everything contrary to the spirit of the Constitution[?] -- 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. -- James Madison   The mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain. -- James Madison   In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. -- James Madison   Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past. -- Maurice Maeterlinck   We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities. -- Bill Maher   Only a debt-backed system of paper money could finance the great wars, the social improvements and the fevered dreams of the 20th century. -- Brian Maher   Fascist intellectuals, such as Ugo Spirito, made the round of conferences preaching the virtues of postcapitalism fascism and in fact tried to nudge the structure in a 'leftist' direction by calling for more collective control and even corporative ownership of the economy. Mussolini looked abroad to find that Franklin Roosevelt was merely seeking to emulate Italy's innovations. -- Charles S. Maier   The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level. -- Norman Mailer   Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer. -- Norman Mailer   Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it. -- Maimonides   If no information or return is filed, [the] Internal Revenue Service cannot assess you. -- Gary Makovski   The right of ordinary citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his government. -- Joyce Lee Malcolm   It was during the eighteenth century -- a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances within the English constitution -- that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate check on tyranny. -- Joyce Lee Malcolm   It is the freedom to blaspheme, to transgress, to move beyond the pale, that is at the heart of all intellectual, artistic and political endeavor. Far from censoring offensive speech, a vibrant and diverse society should encourage it. In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogeneous, there are bound to be clashes of viewpoints. -- Kenan Malik   Freedom demands that we struggle for an extension of both equality and free expression, not regard one as inimical to the other. -- Kenan Malik   Try walking the halls of Congress. It's Abercrombie & Fitch meets the Hair Club for Men. Lots of  really photogenic young people kissing up to lots of insufferable blowhards. Separated by one or two generations, most of these players have only one real thing in common: They have never been weaned from the public teat. The closest they've ever come to meeting a payroll is when they come together to spend everyone else's payroll taxes. -- Michelle Malkin   What our country deserves from everyone who enjoys its fruits and freedoms is a little more gratitude -- and a lot less greed. -- Michelle Malkin   The fact that we became a nation and immediately separated church and state -- it has saved us from all the misery that has beset mankind with inquisitions, internecine and civil wars, and other assorted ills. -- Dumas Malone   I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election... It adds up to a preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States! -- George W. Malone   We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.’ -- David Mamet   People may or may not say what they mean...but they always say something designed to get what they want. -- David Mamet   Always put off until tomorrow what you shouldn't do at all. -- Morris Mandel   There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires. -- 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   And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -- Nelson Mandela   I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other...The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements. -- Nelson Mandela   I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise. -- Nelson Mandela   -- Nelson Mandela   Once a person is determined to help themselves, there is nothing that can stop them. -- Nelson Mandela   I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than the opposite. -- Nelson Mandela   A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire. -- Nelson Mandela   When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw. -- Nelson Mandela   Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements. -- Nelson Mandela   Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me. -- Nelson Mandela   For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. -- Nelson Mandela   The Declaration of Independence is the all-time masterpiece of ideological simplification. There in a single sentence of self-evident truth, the founding Fathers put into clear, easily understandable focus, the broad basis of man's relationship to God, to government, and to his fellow man. -- Clarence Manion   A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word 'BUT' which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a liberal from a conservative - before they tell you. Thus: 'I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to none, but...(a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut). -- Frank Mankiewicz   Banking laws backfire, too. The savings and loan crises developed because in the early 1980s Washington increased deposit insurance to $100,000 at no cost to individual savers. This encouraged them to put their money wherever it would earn the highest interest, regardless of how unsound a bank’s lending policies might be. The result, of course, was the debacle whose costs soared into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Such costs should have been borne by those who chose to take the risks. Instead they were imposed on innocent taxpayers who never put any money in an S&L. -- Marisa Manley   In ancient Babylon, Sumeria, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome, for instance, price controls promoted not fairness but famine. During the twentieth century, central banks were supposed to help safeguard economies, but they brought on the worst inflations and depressions. Alcohol and drug prohibition, intended to enforce moral behavior, contributed to escalating violence. -- Marisa Manley   Consider compulsory school-attendance laws, for instance. They fill government schools with children who don't want to be there. Some students are violent, attacking -- and even killing -- teachers and other students. Teachers must lock their classrooms to keep hoodlums at bay in the hallways. Thus, compulsory attendance laws, alleged to promote education, can make it almost impossible. -- Marisa Manley   Since time immemorial, governments have claimed moral superiority. Yet they use laws to loot the productive wealth of working people and build palaces, pyramids, religious monuments, military forces, and other symbols of their power. -- Marisa Manley   No man escapes\\ When freedom fails,\\ The best men rot in filthy jails;\\ And they who cried: “Appease, Appease!”\\ Are hanged by men they tried to please. -- Hiram Mann   We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause. -- Horace Mann   Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil. -- Thomas Mann   Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. -- Thomas Mann   It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available. -- Thomas Mann   Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact – it is silence which isolates. -- Thomas Mann   True liberty can exist only when justice is equally administered to all. -- Katherine Mansfield   We will offer the Christian world unheard of peace overtures, and these nations, stupid and decadent, will leap at the chance to be our friends; they will willingly cooperate in their own destruction. Then, when their guard is down, and they have gone to sleep, we will smash them with our clenched fist. -- Dmitri Manuilsky   Justice, being violated, destroys; justice, being preserved, preserves: therefore, justice must not be violated, lest violated justice destroy us. -- Manusmriti   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. -- Alf Mapp, Jr.   All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void. -- Marbury vs. Madison   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. -- Peyton Conway March   When they are contending for victory, they avow their intention of enjoying the fruits of it. ... They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belongs the spoils. -- William Marcy   To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success. -- Orison Swett Marden   A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences. -- Jacques Maritain   Where both deliberate, the love is slight: Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight? -- Christopher Marlowe   Goodness is beauty in the best estate. -- Christopher Marlowe   The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary. -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez   It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each. So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty. If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply. -- Justice John Marshall   A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law. -- Justice John Marshall   That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected.... The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme ... they are designed to be permanent.... The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. -- Justice John Marshall   The province of the Court is solely to decide on the rights of individuals... . Questions, in their nature political or which are, by the Constitution and laws, submitted to the Executive, can never be made in this court. -- Justice John Marshall   State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. ... Inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c., are component parts of this mass. No direct general power over these objects is granted to Congress, and, consequently, they remain subject to State legislation. -- Justice John Marshall   An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation. -- Justice John Marshall   Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional. ... [S]hould Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers, pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not entrusted to the government, such [acts are] not the law of the land. -- Justice John Marshall   [T]he framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature. -- Justice John Marshall   This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers. -- Justice John Marshall   The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations. Of consequence, the demand of a foreign nation can only be made on him. -- Justice John Marshall   It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. ... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, ... is fundamental to our free society. -- Justice Thurgood Marshall   If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds. -- Justice Thurgood Marshall   Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom. -- Jose Marti y Perez   To change masters is not to be free. -- Jose Marti y Perez   Service cannot be expected from a friend in service; let him be a freeman who wishes to be my master. [Lat., Non bene, crede mihi, servo servitur amico; Sit liber, dominus qui volet esse meus.] -- Martial   Morality cannot exist one minute without freedom... Only a free man can possibly be moral. Unless a good deed is voluntary, it has no moral significance. -- Everett Dean Martin   Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love; for a man may love his brother so much that he feels himself thereby appointed his brother’s keeper. -- Everett Dean Martin   One of the serious results of propaganda is that it has caused the public to think that education and propaganda are the same thing, and thus to make an ignorant multitude believe it is being educated when it is only being manipulated. Education aims at independence of judgement. Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd. -- Everett Dean Martin   It is the trivial, the irrelevant, the sensational, the appeal to obsolete bigotry which naturally give it greatest publicity. In such publicity it becomes a mere vulgar caricature of itself. -- Everett Dean Martin   The educator aims at a slow process of development; the propagandist, at quick results. The educator tries to tell people how to think; the propagandist, what to think. The educator strives to develop individual responsibility; the propagandist, mass effects. The educator wants thinking; the propagandist, action. The educator fails unless he achieves an open mind; the propagandist, unless he achieves a closed mind. -- Everett Dean Martin   Forgiving releases you from the punishment of a self-made prison where you are both the inmate and the jailer. -- Howard 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. -- Luther Martin   However, is it not prudent, since no one has gone into the future, to pay attention to our elders? -- Thomas Martin   There is no such thing as the last word in history. There is always scope for debate in the reading of history which is never static. -- Tony Martin   Thanks to the war on drugs, nearly 700,000 people were arrested in the United States for possession of marijuana in 1997, while 400,000 currently sit in prison for drug crimes -- more than the entire prison population of Britain, Germany and Belgium -- for what is a consensual act. Nearly $35 billion a year is spent on arresting, prosecuting and jailing drug criminals in the US -- $400 million in Canada -- to hammer at a crime which essentially harms no one but the drug user. -- Steven Martinovich   Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. -- Groucho Marx   Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -- Groucho Marx   The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. -- Groucho Marx   There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says, "Yes," you know he is a crook. -- Groucho Marx   Although gold and silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and silver. -- Karl Marx   The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. -- Karl Marx   There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. -- Karl Marx   From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. -- Karl Marx   The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to Socialism. -- Karl Marx   Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor. -- Karl Marx   Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. -- Karl Marx   The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense. -- Karl Marx   The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property. -- Karl Marx   Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation. -- Karl Marx (Questionable)   1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. -- Karl Marx   My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism. -- Karl Marx   Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. -- Karl Marx   The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. -- George Mason   To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them. -- George Mason   The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments. -- George Mason   All men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing the obtaining of happiness and safety. -- George Mason   Now all acts of legislature apparently contrary to natural right and justice, are, in our laws, and must be in the nature of things, considered as void. The laws of nature are the laws of God: A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to him from whose punishments they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey. Such have been the adjudications of our courts of justice. -- George Mason   When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty. -- George Mason   Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit and security of the people, nation or community; whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public Weal. -- George Mason   No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. -- George Mason   Who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia?  They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers. -- George Mason   That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State... -- George Mason   Considering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people. -- George Mason   [W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia. -- George Mason   A frequent recurrence to the fundamental principles of the constitution, and a constant adherence to those of piety, justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty, and to maintain a free government. -- Massachusetts Bill of Rights   The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state; it ought not, therefore, to be restricted in this commonwealth. -- Massachusetts Declaration of Rights   Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty) -- Massachusetts State Motto   One of the things that really bothers me is that Americans don't have any sense of history. The majority of Americans don't have any idea of where we've come from, so they naturally succumb to the kind of cliche version that Ronald Reagan represented. -- Robert K. Massie   Somebody recently figured out that we have 35 million laws to enforce the ten commandments. -- Bert Masterson   Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? -- Matthew 20:15   The issue of this campaign -- it IS that word socialism. Some people like it. Younger people like it. Those of us like me, who grew up in a cold war and saw some aspects of it while visiting places like Vietnam, like I have, and seeing countries like Cuba, being there. I’m seeing what socialism’s like. I don’t like it. OK? It’s not only not free. It doesn’t freakin’ work! -- Chris Matthews   Power corrupts. But it does more than that. Power attracts the corrupt, then corrupts them further. -- Don Matthews   In 1950, the average family of four paid 2% of its earnings to federal taxes. Today it pays 24%. -- William R. Mattox, Jr.   You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency. -- W. Somerset Maugham   There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action. -- W. Somerset Maugham   If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. -- W. Somerset Maugham   It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. -- W. Somerset Maugham   The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling. -- Francois Mauriac   In literature as in love, we are astonished by what is chosen by others. -- Andre Maurois   Human freedom involves the capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. -- Rollo May   No taxation without representation. -- Jonathan Mayhew   To say that subjects in general are not proper judges (of the law) when their governors oppress them and play the tyrant, and when they defend their rights ...is as great a treason as ever a man uttered... (more) -- Jonathan Mayhew   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. -- Benjamin E. Mays   Liberty, understood by materialists as the right to do or not to do anything not directly injurious to others, we understand as the faculty of choosing, among the various modes of fulfilling duty, those most in harmony with our own tendencies. -- Giuseppe Mazzini   It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument. -- William Gibbs McAdoo   The fact is that there is a serious danger of this country becoming a pluto-democracy; that is, a sham republic with the real government in the hands of a small clique of enormously wealthy men, who speak through their money, and whose influence, even today, radiates to every corner of the United States. -- William Gibbs McAdoo   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. -- Donald S. McAlvaney   Switzerland, on the other hand, insists that every male of military age must keep a powerful, fully automatic assault rifle in his home. Every home must be armed -- by law -- and some even keep mortars. Yet Switzerland has one of the most law-abiding citizenry, the lowest crime rate, and least violence of any country in the free world. And it has remained free for over a thousand years. Compare it to New York and Washington where handguns are completely banned. In fact, in Washington, Chief of Police Maurice Turner recently said that the District of Columbia gun ban law had completely failed, and he has called for armed citizen's police auxiliary to help restore order. -- Donald S. McAlvaney   Thus perhaps the most dangerous of all socialist attacks on America in the 1990s is the onslaught to register and confiscate America's firearms. America cannot be subjugated to communism or a socialist dictatorship until Americans are first disarmed. Poland has strict gun control; so does Cambodia, Russia, and Red China. Over 100 million people were brutally slaughtered in those countries, but first they were disarmed. The danger to people when they can't own guns is far greater than any danger gun ownership can ever create. -- Donald S. McAlvaney   The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration. -- Barry McCaffrey   The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. -- Eugene McCarthy   The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency. -- Eugene McCarthy   There is danger in the concentration of control in the television and radio networks, especially in the large television and radio stations; danger in the concentration of ownership in the press…and danger in the increasing concentration of selection by book publishers and reviewers and by the producers of radio and television programs. -- Eugene McCarthy   Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important. -- Eugene McCarthy   Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. -- Mary McCarthy   The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers … is absurd. -- Robert McChesney   Former ABC News reporter/anchor Sam Donaldson is ready to say the last rites for network news because it will soon lose its dominant position as Americans' primary source of news. 'I think it's dead. Sorry,' he said during a breakfast panel Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Las Vegas. -- Bill McConnell   If, as it appears, the experiment that was called 'America' is at an end ... then perhaps a fitting epitaph would be ... 'here lies America the greatest nation that might have been had it not been for the Edomite bankers who first stole their money, used their stolen money to buy their politicians and press and lastly deprived them of their constitutional freedom by the most evil device yet created --- The Federal Reserve Banking System.' -- G. D. McDaniel   The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. … Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent. -- Larry P. McDonald   The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and communism under the same tent, all under their control... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent. -- Larry P. 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. -- Neil A. McDonald   Freedom is not a fixed and possessed thing. It is a quality of life. And like action itself, it is something experienced only by individuals. -- Neil A. McDonald   Now the truth of the matter is, there is nothing wrong with this country. Please. The message I want to leave with you is that there's nothing wrong with this country that the proper leadership won't cure. We've been here before. In 1787, the economy of our nation was in absolute chaos and as a consequence, they met in Philadelphia to form a new country, and when they did, they did the right things, and in the second State of the Union address, which was written at that time by George Washington, he said the foundations, the economic foundations of our nation are on such sound footing that it would have been a madman would have suspected 3 years ago. The fact is that the chaos that they're creating doesn't mean that America can or has to be in decline. It means that we need to remove them as rapidly as possible and get people that know what to do and America will continue to climb. -- 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. -- Bob McEwen   Now the last time the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the Presidency for four years, was under Jimmy Carter, and so what happened? Exactly the same. That is, we’re all going to run out of this or that or the other thing. We’re all going to run out, we had gas lines, we’re all going to freeze to death. He had his little sweater on and said you had to wear your sweater to ride your bicycle and turn your thermostat down because America’s coming to an end next Tuesday, a week, and there isn’t anything anybody can do about it. Those folks don’t know how to run anything. So therefore, and the night before the election in which Ronald Reagan went on television and said, “There’s nothing wrong with America that the proper leadership won’t cure.” Now the first thing that they did was to take all of those crazy regulations from the oil industry and throw them in the Potomac, and in 24 hours, in 24 hours gas stations that had been closed night after night, for year after year, when I drove back and forth from Ohio to Washington, I knew I had to have a full tank of gas by 4:00 in the afternoon because there wasn’t a single filling station between Washington and Ohio that was open. When we, when my wife and I drove home in March 1981, she was asleep on the seat and we drove up into Hillsborough, Ohio, and there the lights were on at the filling station where they’d been closed for nearly 3 years, and I woke her up, I said, “See sweetheart? Had we not won the election, this never would have happened.” -- Bob McEwen   We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the FED. They are not government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers. -- Louis McFadden   It was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence...The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all. -- Louis McFadden   Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are US government institutions. They are not... they are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the US for the benefit of themselves and their foreign and domestic swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. The sack of the United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will. -- Louis McFadden   Mr. Chairman, I see no reason why citizens of the United States should be terrorized into surrendering their property to the International Bankers who own and control the Federal Reserve. -- Louis McFadden   The men who rule the Democratic Party then promised the people that if they were returned to power there would be no central bank established here while they held the reigns of government. Thirteen months later that promise was broken, and the Wilson administration, under the tutelage of those sinister Wall Street figures who stood behind Colonel House, established here in our free Country the worm-eaten monarchical institution of the "King's Bank" to control us from the top downward, and from the cradle to the grave. -- Louis McFadden   It was not accidental [the 1929 stock-market “crash”]. It was a carefully contrived occurrence. ... The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all. -- Louis McFadden   The Federal Reserve (Banks) are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this Nation is run by the International Bankers. -- Louis McFadden   The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements.... The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking system of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States.... The United States under present conditions will be transformed from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and importing nation with a balance of trade against it. -- Louis McFadden   Open the books … and you will be staggered to see how much American money has been taken from the United States Treasury for the benefit of Russia. Find out what business has been transacted for the State Bank of Soviet Russia, by its correspondent, the Chase Bank of New York [owned by the Rockefellers]. -- Louis McFadden   What is needed here is a return to the Constitution of the United States. We need to have a complete divorce of Bank and State. The old struggle that was fought out here in Jackson's day must be fought over again... The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed and the Federal Reserve Banks, having violated their charters, should be liquidated immediately. Faithless Government officers who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial. Unless this is done by us, I predict that the American people, outraged, robbed, pillaged, insulted, and betrayed as they are in their own land, will rise in their wrath and send a President here who will sweep the money changers out of the temple. -- Louis McFadden   (The Great Depression resulting from the Stock Market crash) was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence....The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all. -- Louis McFadden   When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists...acting together to enslave the world...Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is--the Fed has usurped the government. -- Louis McFadden   I’m going to introduce a resolution to have the postmaster general stop reading dirty books and deliver the mail. -- Gail W. McGee   Those wearing Tolerance for a label, Call other views intolerable. -- Phyllis McGinley   I am not a number, I am a free man! -- Patrick McGoohan   The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher standard. -- George McGovern   I would support a Presidential candidate who pledged to take the following steps: ... At the end of the war in the Persian Gulf, press for ... a 'new world order' based not upon Pax Americana but on peace through law with a stronger U.N. and World Court. -- George McGovern   In May 1998, [Los Angeles Times publisher Mark] Willis told the Wall Street Journal that he wanted to make the Times more appealing to women and minorities by producing stories that were “more emotional, more personal and less analytic.” -- William McGowan   Journalism is a profession that prides itself on its maverick outspokenness and allergic reaction to preconceived notions. Yet, in today’s media some notions are considered beyond scrutiny – including the merits of the diversity agenda. -- William McGowan   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. -- James McGuigan   I think the world is run by 'C' students. -- Al McGuire   Those who create and issue money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people. -- Reginald McKenna   I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people. -- Reginald McKenna   If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on. -- Terence McKenna   We could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was ... there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them. -- William McKinley   In my profession, it is not enough to know your history, speak a language and be widely traveled. Equally important is how to weigh and organize evidence. How to listen. How to see a situation from the other person's point of view. How to deal with complexity and realize that few issues in the world come with just one side. How to learn, not what to think. -- John E. McLaughlin   Most of our diversions do not so much delay death as accustom us to it. -- Mignon McLaughlin   It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time. -- Mignon McLaughlin   Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers. -- Mignon McLaughlin   That distinct sovereignties could exist under one government, emanating from the same people, was a phenomenon in the political world, which the wisest statesmen in Europe could not comprehend; and of its practicability many in our own country entertained the most serious doubts. Thus far the friends of liberty have had great cause of triumph in the success of the principles upon which our government rests. But all must admit that the purity and permanency of this system depend on its faithful administration. The states and the federal government have their respective orbits, within which each must revolve. If either cross the sphere of the other, the harmony of the system is destroyed, and its strength is impaired. It would be as gross usurpation on the part of the federal government, to interfere with state rights, by an exercise of powers not delegated; as it would be for a state to interpose its authority against a law of the union. -- Justice John McLean   All questions of power, arising under the constitution of the United States, whether they relate to the federal or a state government, must be considered of great importance. The federal government being formed for certain purposes, is limited in its powers, and can in no case exercise authority where the power has not been delegated. The states are sovereign; with the exception of certain powers, which have been invested in the general government, and inhibited to the states. No state can coin money, emit bills of credit, pass ex post facto laws, or laws impairing the obligation of contracts, &c. If any state violate a provision of the constitution, or be charged with such violation to the injury of private rights, the question is made before this tribunal; to whom all such questions, under the constitution, of right belong. In such a case, this court is to the state, what its own supreme court would be, where the constitutionality of a law was questioned under the constitution of the state. And within the delegation of power, the decision of this court is as final and conclusive on the state, as would be the decision of its own court in the case stated. -- Justice John McLean   Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity. -- Marshall McLuhan   Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort. -- Marshall McLuhan   American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's-license age than at voting age. -- Marshall McLuhan   Left has come to represent increasing government control. The extreme leftist typically seeks total government. Working their way toward total government power are the Communists, socialists, fascists, and modern liberals who advocate government solutions for every real or imagined problem. -- John F. McManus   Search the Constitution and you will find no power granted to the legislative branch to make laws governing agriculture, housing, medicine, energy, private ownership or weapons, and a great deal more. -- John F. McManus   Whatever the individual motives of the censors may be, censorship is a form of social control. It is a means of holding a society together, of arresting the flux which censors fear. And since the fear cannot be appeased, the demands for censorship mount in volume and intensity. And one form of censorship can easily lead to other forms. -- Carey McWilliams   Censors are infused with the sentiment of moral indignation – a dangerous and misleading sentiment because, by blinding those who voice it to the real reasons for their indignation, it makes them puppets whose fears can be manipulated for ends and purposes they do not foresee or intend. -- Carey McWilliams   I am opposed to censorship in all forms, without any exceptions. As a matter of social philosophy, I do not like the idea of some people trying to protect the minds and morals of other people. In practice, this means that a majority seeks to impose its standards on a minority; hence, an element of coercion is inherent in the idea of censorship. -- Carey McWilliams   That the religious right completely took over the word Christian is a given. At one time, phrases such as Christian charity and Christian tolerance were used to denote kindness and compassion. To perform a "Christian" act meant an act of giving, of acceptance, of toleration. Now, Christian is invariably linked to right-wing conservative political thought -- Christian nation, Christian morality, Christian values, Christian family. -- Peter McWilliams   The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people. -- Peter McWilliams   At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect. Any attempt to level and discard all religion would have been viewed with universal indignation. -- James Meacham   The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society. -- Margaret Mead   Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. -- Margaret Mead   My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school. -- Margaret Mead   It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government. -- George Meany   Freedom is always wise. -- Alexander Meiklejohn   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. Freedom is always wise. -- Alexander Meiklejohn   I used to be employed as a field engineer servicing [a major broadcast network's] distribution equipment, specifically their affiliates' satellite dishes. I've had many talks with TV newsmen. The most telling was one who confessed that he didn't think he could continue his job and live with himself because he daily saw 'the difference between what I am forced to report and what's really happening.' He told me that, at the first meeting with 'corporate's' news director [from the corporate holding company that owned the station, not the network], the ND told them that 'our job as reporters was to shape public opinion.' When someone protested that their job was to discover and report the truth, the ND responded, 'Whatever the public's perception is is the truth and it's your job to make sure that they have the proper perceptions.' That man's statement is always in the back of my mind whenever I see or read anything in the 'news,' that the job of reporters today is not to report hard, verifiable facts but rather to shape public opinion using selected facts presented in carefully arranged fashion. -- Chris Meissen   In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas \\ Unity in things Necessary, Liberty in things Unnecessary, and Charity in all. -- Rupertus Meldenius   It may be your intent to be our masters; how can it be ours to be your slaves? -- Melians   It may be your intent to be our masters; how can it be ours to be your slaves? -- Melians   It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. -- Herman Melville   If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid. -- Herman Melville   It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. -- Herman Melville   In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself -- Herman Melville   We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world. -- Herman Melville   He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor. -- Menander   It is not white hair that engenders wisdom. -- Menander   Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within. Rust destroys iron, moths destroy clothes, the worm eats away the wood; but greatest of all evils is envy, impious habitant of corrupt souls, which ever was, is, and shall be a consuming disease. -- Menander   To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads -- such is the behavior of the multitude. -- Mencius   Let men decide firmly what they will not do, and they will be free to do vigorously what they ought to do. -- Mencius   The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart. -- 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. -- Mencius   Once [William Jennings Bryan] had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards. -- H. L. Mencken   People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. -- H. L. Mencken   No article of faith is proof against the disintegrating effects of increasing information; one might almost describe the acquirement of knowledge as a process of disillusion. -- H. L. Mencken   The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings. -- H. L. Mencken   Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -- H. L. Mencken   The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -- H. L. Mencken   The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence. -- H. L. Mencken   What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. -- H. L. Mencken   The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights. -- H. L. Mencken   The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when the fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression. -- H. L. Mencken   We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. -- H. L. Mencken   It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him. -- H. L. Mencken   No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic. -- H. L. Mencken   I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. -- H. L. Mencken   The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts. -- H. L. Mencken   It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. -- H. L. Mencken   Democracy is a form of religion, it is the worship of jackals by jack asses. -- H. L. Mencken   The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars: the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. -- H. L. Mencken   And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. -- H. L. Mencken   The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. -- H. L. Mencken   Debate, it seems to me, is one of the most useful of human inventions. It is the mother and father of all free inquiry and honest thought. It tests ideas, detects errors and promotes clear thinking. A man cannot stand up before it without exposing his whole intellectual stock of goods. -- H. L. Mencken   The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. -- H. L. Mencken   The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth -- that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. -- H. L. Mencken   Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right. -- H. L. Mencken   Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. -- H. L. Mencken   Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel. -- H. L. Mencken   To die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true. -- 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   Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration. -- H. L. Mencken   No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. -- H. L. Mencken   Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure. -- H. L. Mencken   When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before. -- H. L. Mencken   A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion. -- H. L. Mencken   I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air -- that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H. L. Mencken   The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to prevailing superstition or taboo. -- H. L. Mencken   The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else...Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible. -- H. L. Mencken   That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else. -- 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   Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking. -- H. L. Mencken   I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. -- H. L. Mencken   The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think. -- H. L. Mencken   No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic. -- H. L. Mencken   The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. -- H. L. Mencken   The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. -- H. L. Mencken   For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken   Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. -- H. L. Mencken   Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change...[T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition. -- H. L. Mencken   As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. -- H. L. Mencken   The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself. -- H. L. Mencken   The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it. -- H. L. Mencken   The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society. -- H. L. Mencken   Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority. -- H. L. Mencken   It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly. -- H. L. Mencken   Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. -- H. L. Mencken   There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable. -- H. L. Mencken   Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. -- H. L. Mencken   Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the improbable. -- H. L. Mencken   The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. -- H. L. Mencken   It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly. -- H. L. Mencken   The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. -- 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   Judge: a law student who marks his own papers. -- H. L. Mencken   It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts. -- H. L. Mencken   The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are. -- H. L. Mencken   The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh. -- H. L. Mencken   All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow. -- H. L. Mencken   It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause. -- H. L. Mencken   The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have. -- H. L. Mencken   I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors. -- H. L. Mencken   The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. -- H. L. Mencken   Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself. -- H. L. Mencken   All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man. -- H. L. Mencken   [T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people. -- H. L. Mencken   All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. -- H. L. Mencken   The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it. -- Dr. Joseph Mengele   We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to. -- Karl A. Menninger   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. -- Angela Merkel   Psychologically, it is important to understand that the simple fact of being interviewed and investigated has a coercive influence. As soon as a man is under cross-examination, he may become paralyzed by the procedure and find himself confessing to deeds he never did. In a country where the urge to investigate spreads, suspicion and insecurity grow. -- Joost A. Merloo   Pretty soon, there will not be any debate in this city about overcrowded prisons. AIDS will take care of that. -- Mario Merola   May God prevent us from becoming 'right-thinking men' -- that is to say, men who agree perfectly with their own police. -- Thomas Merton   I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself. If modern people were a little less sane, a little more doubtful, a little more aware of their absurdities and contradictions, perhaps there might be the possibility of their survival. -- Thomas Merton   The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no sins because all the sinners have been wiped out. -- Thomas Merton   What good does it do to ban some guns. All guns should be banned. -- Howard Metzenbaum   The ideal type of the Communist is a man in whom all individual, emotional, and unconscious elements have been reduced to a minimum and subjected to the control of an iron will, informed by a supple intellect. That intellect is totally at the service of a single and compelling idea, made incarnate in the Communist Party: the concept of History as an inexorable god whose ways are revealed ‘scientifically’ through the doctrine and method of Marxism-Leninism. -- Frank Straus Meyer   I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. -- Michelangelo   Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. -- Michelangelo   The historian’s first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth. -- Jules Michelet   While the legislature has power, in the most comprehensive manner, to regulate the carrying and use of firearms, it has no power to constitute it a crime for a person, alien or citizen, to possess a revolver for the legitimate defense of himself and his property, said right being expressly granted by section 5, art. 2, of the State Constitution, to every person. -- Michigan Supreme Court   [Legislation] cannot constitutionally result in the prohibition of the possession of those arms which, by the common opinion and usage of law-abiding people, are proper and legitimate to be kept upon private premises for the protection of person and property. -- Michigan Supreme Court   Religious liberty is primarily a man’s liberty to profess a faith different from that of the dominant religion, and to unite in public worship with those who share his faith. -- Giovanni Miegge   I did not come here to guide lambs. I came here to awaken lions. -- Javier Milei   You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. -- James D. Miles   If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. -- John Stuart Mill   The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. ... Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. -- John Stuart Mill   If any opinion be compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. -- John Stuart Mill   If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that person that he, if he had the power, would be in silencing mankind… If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. -- John Stuart Mill   A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. -- John Stuart Mill   Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. -- John Stuart Mill   The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. -- John Stuart Mill   Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. -- John Stuart Mill   Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. -- John Stuart Mill   Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. -- John Stuart Mill   There is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions... The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. -- 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   The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. -- John Stuart Mill   In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed. -- John Stuart Mill   A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. -- 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 individual is not accountable to society for his actions, insofar as these concern the interests of no person but himself. -- John Stuart Mill   And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities. -- John Stuart Mill   Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works. -- John Stuart Mill   The only freedom which deserves 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. -- John Stuart Mill   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   That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That 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   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   Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. -- John Stuart Mill   Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them. -- 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. -- John Stuart Mill   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. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay   The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom. The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims. -- Arthur Miller   Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men. This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order... A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment - the ruling class - is not supposed to be discussed. -- Arthur S. Miller   Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men (plus a few women). This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order. ... A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment -- the ruling class -- is not supposed to be discussed. -- Arthur S. Miller   This truth is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of Capital to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance. Thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished. -- Sir Denison Miller   The biggest conspiracy has always been the fact that there is no conspiracy. Nobody's out to get you. Nobody gives a shit whether you live or die. There, you feel better now? -- Dennis 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. -- Henry Miller   Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. -- Henry Miller   The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition. -- Henry Miller   Laws do not curb the lawless. After all, that's why we call them 'lawless.' -- Joel Miller   What we have to remember is that not everything is under our control. If people are free in any meaningful sense of the word, that means they are at liberty to foul up their lives as much as make something grand of them. That's a gamble we all take. That's the risk of liberty. Nobody wants others to screw up their lives, but each must be free to do so for themselves. -- Joel Miller   Far from a simple attempt to rid the nation of crime and drugs, our policy against narcotics -- like any public policy -- comes with strings attached. And increasingly these strings are constricting around the necks of Americans' lives and liberties. -- Joel Miller   To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it. -- Olin Miller   And let us remind readers regularly, in editorials, in our promotional advertising, in speeches to civic groups and others, that advertising helps people to live better and saves them money. This fact needs constant selling. -- Paul Miller   The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime. -- Miller v. U.S.   Welcome to the U.S. Capitol: Watch for falling expectations. -- Wiley Miller   You won't find average Americans on the left or on the right. You'll find them at Kmart. -- Zell Miller   The government of the world was [Cecil] Rhodes' simple desire. -- Sarah Gertrude Millin   Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose. -- C. Wright Mills   Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose. -- C. Wright Mills   If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you will do will surely obscure them. If you do not alarm anyone morally, you will yourself remain morally asleep. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift to the coming human hell. -- C. Wright Mills   As a rule, panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works. -- John Mills   Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil - only evil - and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs. -- Roger Quarles Mills   The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. -- A. A. Milne   None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants. -- John Milton   The conquer'd, also, and enslaved by war, Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose. -- John Milton   License they mean when they cry, Liberty! For who loves that, must first be wise and good. -- John Milton   Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. -- John Milton   Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. -- John Milton   No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free. -- John Milton   None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton   There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution. -- 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   The whole freedom of man consists either in spiritual or civil liberty. -- John Milton   For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them; they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. -- 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   For what can war but endless war still breed? -- John Milton   Nations grow corrupt, love bondage more than liberty; bondage with ease than strenuous liberty. -- John Milton   Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. -- Charles Mingus   You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world. -- Octave Mirbeau   Say not, when I have leisure I will study; you may not have leisure. -- The Mishnah   The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms for the defense of his home, person, or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but the legislature may regulate or forbid carrying concealed weapons. -- Mississippi Constitution   That the right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or when lawfully summoned in aid of the civil power, shall not be questioned; but this shall not justify the wearing of concealed weapons. -- Missouri Constitution   Jim Creechan, a University of Alberta sociologist, said some of the love of guns may have its roots in Alberta's pervasive free-enterprise model of behaviour. 'It's the whole idea that the individual is more important than the collective.' -- Alanna Mitchell   Compare this [U.S. taxation] to the plight of medieval serfs. They only had to give the lord of the manor a third of their output and they were considered slaves. So what does that make us. -- Daniel Mitchell   Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is. -- Margaret Mitchell   There is only one remedy for ignorance and thoughtlessness, and that is literacy. Millions and millions of children would today stand in no need of sex education or consumer education or anti-racism education or any of those fake educations, if they had had in the first place 'an' education. -- Richard Mitchell   The feelings, sentiments, values and responses of our children, or of any citizen, are none of the government's damned business. That we must support a government agency that gives itself to the emotional and ideological manipulation of citizens is infamous. -- Richard Mitchell   We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love. -- Richard Mitchell   Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system. -- Richard Mitchell   Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude. -- 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. -- Richard Mitchell   When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees. -- Jessica Mitford   I want gay married people to be able to protect their marijuana plants with guns. -- Tim Moen   Governments lie; bankers lie; even auditors sometimes lie: gold tells the truth. -- Lord Rees Mogg   There is a First Amendment right to speak in an encrypted way… The right to speak P.G.P. is like the right to speak Navajo. The Government has no particular right to prevent you from speaking in a technical manner even if it is inconvenient for them to understand. -- Eben Moglen   The ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr. -- Mohammed   A lie has speed, but truth has endurance. -- Edgar J. Mohn   It is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world. -- Molière   If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows. -- Molière   Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue. -- Molière   If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows. -- Molière   Utopians...consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of mankind’s totalization may flounder. -- Thomas Molnar   Uniformity, therefore, is an essential built-in element of utopian existence, and it is no less important that this uniformity remain permanent. -- Thomas Molnar   [In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places. -- James Monroe   Let us by wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties. -- James Monroe   It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. -- 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. -- James Monroe   Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny. -- 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. -- James Monroe   Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect. -- Thomas S. Monson   It is work, work that one delights in, that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison. -- Ashley Montagu   I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations. -- Mary Wortley Montagu   Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. -- Ashley Montague   Trust is a two way street. If your government does not trust you, how can you trust your government? -- Bruce 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. -- Charles Edward Montague   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. -- Maria Montessori   No one can be free unless he is independent... In reality, he who is served is limited in his independence... -- Maria Montessori   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. -- James Montgomery   I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met. -- Dwight Lyman Moody   If the political-correctness fascists get their way, we can safely assume it will be correct-thinking, “political cleansing” squads deciding what we can or cannot say on the Intenet. These people fear public debate and demand homogenization of “acceptable” attitudes compatible with their emotional, utopian idealism. -- Charles W. Moore   Sitting here, we are not at liberty to add one jot of power to the national government beyond what the people have granted by the constitution; and, on the other hand, we are bound to support that constitution as it stands, and to give a fair and rational scope to all the powers which it clearly contains. -- Houston v. Moore   [T]he income tax is incompatible with a free society. The IRS routinely intrudes on our basic civil liberties and privacy rights -- and its intrusions are getting worse all the time. I want an America where it is no longer the government's business how much money you make and what you do with it. -- Stephen Moore   Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice. -- Thomas Moore   Better to dwell in freedom's hall,\\ With a cold damp floor and mouldering wall,\\ Than bow the head and bend the knee\\ In the proudest palace of slaverie. -- Thomas Moore   We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability, dignity and love. -- Whitney Moore, Jr.   The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. Therefore, when I consider and weigh in my mind these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, I perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men in procuring their own commodities under the name and authority of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible. -- Thomas More   I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of record keeping procedure [gun registration] is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another. -- Charles Morgan   One cannot shut ones eyes to things not seen with eyes. -- Charles Langbridge Morgan   A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face... one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. -- Charles Langbridge Morgan   A man always has two reasons for what he does -- a good one, and the real one. -- J. P. Morgan   Capital must protect itself in every way... Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd. -- J. P. Morgan (Questionable)   Populism is rising because liberals have become unbearable, Okay? And I speak as a liberal… Liberals have become utterly, pathetically illiberal and it’s a massive problem. What’s the point of calling yourself a liberal if you don’t allow anyone else to have a different view? You know, this snowflake culture we operate in, this victimhood culture that everyone, has to think in a certain way, behave a certain way. Everyone has to have a bleeding heart… You say a joke 10 years ago that offended somebody you can never host the Oscars… So what’s happening around the world? Populism is rising because people are fed up with the PC culture. They’re fed up with the snowflake culture. They’re fed up with everyone being offended by everything… They just want to tell people, not just how to lead their life but if you don’t lead it the way I tell you to, It’s a kind of version of fascism. -- Piers Morgan   We can hardly expect the nation-state to make itself superfluous, at least not overnight. Rather what we must aim for is really nothing more than caretakers of a bankrupt international machine which will have to be transformed slowly into a new one. The transition will not be dramatic, but a gradual one. People will still cling to national symbols. -- Henry Morgenthau, Jr.   We've been asleep for about 50 years. Ever since the end of World War II we just steadily handed our future and our bank accounts and now our children, handed them all over to the federal government... -- Michael Moriarty   National Health? Socialized pension funds? State-controlled television? Search and seizure laws? Forfeiture laws? If we're not living in the Soviet Union of the United States we certainly have returned to 1776 and 'taxation without representation.' -- Michael Moriarty   If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.... The beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward to an infinite future, having lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do.... These words are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world. -- Samuel Eliot Morison   If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile. -- Samuel Eliot Morison   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. -- Christopher Darlington Morley   Since people, in a competitive or any other society, are by no means always just to each other, some regulation by the state in its capacity of umpire is unavoidable, What must be kept in mind is that the greatest injustice of all is done when the umpire forgets that he too is bound by the rules, and begins to make them as between contestants in behalf of his own prejudices. -- Felix Morley   [L]iberty, or the absence of coercion, or the leaving people to think, speak, and act as they please, is in itself a good thing. It is the object of a favourable presumption. The burden of proving it inexpedient always lies, and wholly lies, on those who wish to abridge it by coercion, whether direct or indirect. -- John Morley   You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. -- John Viscount Morley   The political spirit is the great force in throwing the love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place. -- John Viscount Morley   The means prepare the end, and the end is what the means have made of it. -- John Viscount Morley   No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character. -- John Viscount Morley   When it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat. -- John Viscount Morley   I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ...no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun. -- Prof. Dean Morris   Each state enjoys sovereign power. -- Gouverneur Morris   The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres. -- Gouverneur Morris   Corruption and some other offenses ought to be impeachable, but the cases ought to be enumerated and defined. -- Gouverneur Morris   The prime function of the criminal law is to protect our persons and our property; these purposes are now engulfed in a mass of other distracting, inefficiently performed, legislative duties. When the criminal law invades the spheres of private morality and social welfare, it exceeds its proper limits at the cost of neglecting its primary tasks. This unwarranted extension is expensive, ineffective, and criminogenic. -- Norval Morris   Whoever controls the media, controls the mind. -- Jim Morrison   Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this. -- Toni Morrison   Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare. -- 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. -- Lance Morrow   The liberal insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make the State his servant. -- Wayne Morse   We owe to democracy, at least in part, the regime of discussion with which we live; we owe it to the principal modern liberties: those of thought, press and association. And the regime of free discussion is the only one which permits the ruling class to renew itself… which eliminates that class quasi-automatically when it no longer corresponds to the interests of the country. -- Gaetano Mosca   If we can just pass a few more laws, we could all be criminals! -- Vinnie Moscaritolo   Once a matter has become, in one way or another, the subject of regulation by the United Nations, be it by resolution or the General Assembly or by convention between member States [Nations] at the insistence of the United Nations, that subject ceases to be a matter being 'essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the member States...' -- Moses Moskowitz   The freedom of any society varies proportionately with the volume of its laughter. -- Zero Mostel   If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press... They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds. -- Bill Moyers   The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare. -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan   When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail. -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan   Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. -- Malcolm Muggeridge   The courts are not bound by mere forms, nor are they to be misled by mere pretences. They are at liberty — indeed, are under a solemn duty — to look at the substance of things, whenever they enter upon the inquiry whether the legislature has transcended the limits of its authority. If therefore, a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is a palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of the courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution. -- Mugler v. Kansas   All truth is safe, and nothing else is safe; and he who keeps back the truth or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward, or a criminal, or both. -- Max Muller   The increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve Banks from 143 Million dollars in 1913 to 45 Billion dollars in 1949 went directly to the private stockholders of the [Federal Reserve] banks. -- Eustace Mullins   Federal Reserve Notes Are Not Dollars. -- Russell Munk   It is important therefore that in these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated, and habits of subordination and obedience formed. One of the greatest blessings which the State can confer upon her children is to instill into their minds at an early period moral and religious truths. ... Thousands of unfortunate children are growing up in perfect ignorance of their moral and religious duties. Their parents equally unfortunate know not how to instruct them, and have not the opportunity or ability of placing them under the care of those who could give them instruction. The State, in the warmth of her affection and solicitude for their welfare, must take charge of those children and place them in schools where their minds can be enlightened and their hearts can be trained to virtue. -- Archibald D. Murphey   Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion all have a double aspect – freedom of thought and freedom of action. -- Frank Murphy   The civil liberties of people of all ideologies are threatened by a government determined to appear tough on terrorism. The government is going to be given broad new powers to investigate people for political activities -- activities on both sides of the political spectrum. -- Laura Murphy   The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces. -- Maureen Murphy   Conscience is that still, small voice that is sometimes too loud for comfort. -- Bert Murray   We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government. -- Charles Alan Murray   We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. -- Edward R. Murrow   I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast industry's planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. -- Edward R. Murrow   If none of us ever read a book that was “dangerous,” had a friend who was “different,” or joined an organization that advocated “change,” we would all be the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants. -- Edward R. Murrow   The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. -- 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. -- Edward R. Murrow   State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. -- Benito Mussolini   The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. -- Benito Mussolini   The Government has been compelled to levy taxes which unavoidably hit large sections of the population. The Italian people are disciplined, silent and calm, they work and know that there is a Government which governs, and know, above all, that if this Government hits cruelly certain sections of the Italian people, it does not so out of caprice, but from the supreme necessity of national order. -- Benito Mussolini   The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. [...] They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results. -- Benito Mussolini   The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production. -- Benito Mussolini   Yet if anyone cares to read over the now crumbling minutes giving an account of the meetings at which the Italian Fasci di Combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers… It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter!... I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism. -- Benito Mussolini   It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission, and welds them into unity. -- Benito Mussolini   Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State. -- Benito Mussolini   Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death... -- Benito Mussolini   The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State -- a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values -- interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. -- Benito Mussolini   Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which diverent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State. -- Benito Mussolini   Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, Liberalism, and Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains; and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was the century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State. It is a perfectly logical deduction that a new doctrine can utilize all the still vital elements of previous doctrines. -- Benito Mussolini   Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual. -- Benito Mussolini   Democracy is talking itself to death. The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them. There is too much foolishness, too much lost motion. I have stopped the talk and the nonsense. I am a man of action. Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day. -- Benito Mussolini   At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying. -- Benito Mussolini   Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere. -- Benito Mussolini   Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power. -- Benito Mussolini (Questionable)   You want to know what fascism is like? It is like your New Deal! -- Benito Mussolini   People are tired of liberty. They have had a surfeit of it. Liberty is no longer a chaste and austere virgin…. Today’s youth are moved by other slogans…Order, Hierarchy, Discipline. -- Benito Mussolini   Against individualism, the fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man... -- Benito Mussolini   There is no way to peace; peace is the way. -- A. J. Muste   The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good. -- A. J. Muste   Under the surface, the Rothschilds long had a powerful influence in dictating American financial laws. The law records show that they were powers in the old Bank of the United States [abolished by Andrew Jackson]. -- Gustavus Myers   When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet. -- Lyle Myhr   When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet. -- Lyle Myhr   In the most civilized and progressive countries freedom of discussion is recognized as a fundamental principle. -- C. E. M. Joad   There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship. -- Ralph Nader   What we have now is democracy without citizens. No one is on the public's side. All the buyers are on the corporation's side. And the bureaucrats in the administration don't think the government belongs to the people. -- Ralph Nader   Is there a number or mark planned for the hand or forehead in a new cashless society? YES, and I have seen the machines that are now ready to put it into operation. -- Ralph Nader   Competition, free enterprise, and an open market were never meant to be symbolic fig leaves for corporate socialism and monopolistic capitalism. -- Ralph Nader   No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him. -- W. A. Nance   There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,\\ And that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all. -- Ogden Nash   Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for. -- Ogden Nash   The artist and the censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body. -- George Jean Nathan   The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism. -- George Jean Nathan   The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. -- National Education Association Resolution   The goal of legalizing drugs is to bring them under effective legal control. If it were legal to produce and distribute drugs, legitimate businessmen would enter the business. There would be less need for violence and corruption since the industry would have access to the courts. And, instead of absorbing tax dollars as targets of expensive enforcement efforts, the drug sellers might begin to pay taxes. So, legalization might well solve the organized crime aspects of the drug trafficking problem. On average, drug use under legalization might not be as destructive to users and to society as under the current prohibition, because drugs would be less expensive, purer, and more conveniently available. -- National Institute of Justice   We feel that an American citizen of voting age and good character should have the right to purchase without restriction a handgun, pistol, revolver, rifle, shotgun, or like item without interference by a government body. -- National Police Officers' Association of America   In Defense Of Freedom ... (more) -- National Press Club   There's no valid evidence whatsoever to indicate that depriving law-abiding American citizens of the right to own firearms would in any way lessen crime or criminal activity. ... The National Sheriffs Association unequivocally opposes any legislation that has as its intent the confiscation of firearms ... or the taking away from law-abiding American citizens their right to purchase, own, and keep arms. -- National Sheriffs Association   We ask that government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within the confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power of financial interest. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand ... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education.... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents.... The government must undertake the improvement of public health -- by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor -- by the greatest possible support for all groups concerned with the physical education of youth. [W]e combat the ... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good. -- National Socialist Party of Germany (NAZI)   A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt about a tragedy. He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.” The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?” The grandfather answered, “The one I feed.” -- Native American Story   The German woman does not smoke! -- Nazi slogan   All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the right to keep and bear arms for security or defense of self, family, home and others, and for lawful common defense, hunting, recreational use, and all other lawful purposes, and such rights shall not be denied or infringed by the state or any subdivision thereof. -- Nebraska Constitution   Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them. -- Suzanne Necker   People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty. -- Richard J. Needham   Of those who say nothing, few are silent. -- Thomas Neill   Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself. -- Harriet Nelson   Gold is still the ultimate store of wealth. It's the world's only true money. And there isn't much of it to go around. All of it ever mined would fit into a small building - a 56 foot cube. The annual world production would fit into a 14 foot cube, roughly the size of an ordinary living room. If each Chinese citizen were to buy just one ounce, it would take up the annual supply for the next 200 years. -- Mark Nestmann   No law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state. -- New Mexico Constitution   It is our opinion that an ordinance may not deny the people the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms, and to that extent the ordinance under consideration is void. -- New Mexico Court of Appeals   If the New World Order agenda is not realized by the terrorist attacks on America and if Americans don’t agree to give up their weapons and relinquish their sovereignty to the New World Order, the next attack will be the use of chemical, biological and/or atomic warfare against the American people. The architects of the New World Order will not hesitate to use as a last resort an atomic or hydrogen bomb in a major American city. -- New York Times   [The Income Tax is] a vicious, inequitable, unpopular, impolitic and socialist act. -- New York Times   Crime does not pay...as well as politics. -- Alfred E. Newman   I have a great deal of sympathy for people who run the printing presses. They are screwed. -- Craig Newmark   ... absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern. -- Gavin Newsom   We were trying to increase the conflict that was already happening... we felt that we would take the conflict to so high a level that some change had to come. -- Huey P. Newton   Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny. -- Huey P. Newton   The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution. -- 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. -- Huey P. Newton   Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up. -- Huey P. Newton   You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution. -- Huey P. Newton   I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images. -- Huey P. Newton   There's no reason for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively -- I am one with the people. -- Huey P. Newton   I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people. -- Huey P. Newton   I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness. -- Huey P. Newton   If you stop struggling, then you stop life. -- Huey P. Newton   We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community. So we used the pig as the rather low-lifed animal in order to identify the police. And it worked. -- Huey P. Newton   We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism. -- Huey P. Newton   Off the Pigs! -- Huey P. Newton   The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life. -- Huey P. Newton   There will be no prison which can hold our movement down... The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people. -- Huey P. Newton   I have the people behind me and the people are my strength. -- Huey P. Newton   The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation. -- Huey P. Newton   Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves. -- Huey P. Newton   My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to, a basis for further mobilization of the community. -- Huey P. Newton   If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. -- Sir Isaac Newton   I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people. -- Issac Newton   -- Parse Next   As a first-time drug law offender, I was sentenced to 27 non-parolable years in prison. The amount of time was based on liquid waste found in the garage and unprocessed chemicals. There were no drugs. -- David A. Nichols   Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. -- Reinhold Niebuhr   Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth. -- Reinhold Niebuhr   Ask the first man you meet what he means by defending freedom, and he'll tell you privately he means defending the standard of living. -- 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. -- Reverend Martin Niemoeller   Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   If you have a strong enough why you can bear almost any how. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   People demand freedom only when they have no power. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Belief means not wanting to know what is true. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual … who … can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual ... who ... can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Even today a crude sort of persecution is all that is required to create an honorable name for any sect, no matter how indifferent in itself. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the state, am the people.'... Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   Socialism itself can hope to exist only for brief periods here and there, and then only through the exercise of the extremest terrorism. For this reason it is secretly preparing itself for rule through fear and is driving the word “justice” into the heads of the half-educated masses like a nail so as to rob them of their reason... and to create in them a good conscience for the evil game they are to play. -- Friedrich Nietzsche   God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless. -- Chester W. Nimitz   Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned. -- Swami Nirmalananda   There are…certain freedoms that are like circuses. Their very existence, so long as they are individual and enjoyed chiefly individually as by spectators, diverts men’s mind from the loss of other, more fundamental, social and economic and political rights. -- Robert Nisbet   What gives the new despotism its peculiar effectiveness is indeed its liaison with humanitarianism, but beyond this fact its capacity for entering into the smallest details of human life. -- Robert Nisbet   Very commonly in ages when civil rights of one kind are in evidence – those pertaining to freedom of speech and thought in, say, theater, press, and forum, with obscenity and libel laws correspondingly loosened – very real constrictions of individual liberty take place in other, more vital areas: political organization, voluntary association, property, and the right to hold jobs, for example. -- Robert Nisbet   The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature. [If a president is successful in bypassing the Congress] it is evident that the people are cheated out of the best ingredients in the government, the safeguards of peace which is the greatest of their blessings. -- Richard M. Nixon   Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too. -- Richard M. Nixon   If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world? -- Richard M. Nixon   It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody. -- Richard M. Nixon   The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power. -- Albert Jay Nock   Many now believe that with the rise of the totalitarian State the world has entered upon a new era of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like circumstances, and it will do precisely the same kind of thing. The State will unfailingly aggrandize itself, if only it has the power, first at the expense of its own citizens, and then at the expense of anyone else in sight. It has always done so, and always will. -- Albert Jay Nock   Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you. -- Albert Jay Nock   [T]he State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation -- that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class -- that is, for a criminal purpose. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient. -- Albert Jay Nock   The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power. -- Albert Jay Nock   It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. ... it does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance. -- Albert Jay Nock   The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery. -- Albert Jay Nock   It can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. -- Albert Jay Nock   The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing. -- Albert Jay Nock   There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means. -- Albert Jay Nock   The mass man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either. -- Albert Jay Nock   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   These things I believe: That government should butt out. \\ That government should butt out.\\ That freedom is our most precious commodity and\\ if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away.\\ That individual freedom demands individual responsibility.\\ That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.\\ That the executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid.\\ That political parties have become close to meaningless.\\ That government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.\\ That government should provide for the national defense\\ and work to insure domestic tranquillity.\\ That foreign trade should be fair rather than free.\\ That America should be wary of foreign entanglements.\\ That the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time\\ with the blood of patriots and tyrants.\\ That guns do more than protect us from criminals;\\ more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government.\\ That states are the bulwark of our freedom.\\ That states should have the right to secede from the Union.\\ That once a year we should hang someone in government\\ as an example to his fellows."\\ -- 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. -- Lyn Nofziger   As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom. -- Lyn Nofziger   Another defining feature of therapeutic ethos, then, is the growing tendency to define a range of human behaviors as diseases or pathologies. -- James L. Nolan   ...the mainstream media's monopoly on information is over. -- Peggy Noonan   The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat. -- Grover Norquist   Home schoolers do not wish to force other parents to home school. Gun owners do not insist that others buy guns, or that hunting be promoted as an alternative lifestyle. It is not the National Rifle Association out lobbying to have government schools read books entitled 'Heather Has Two Hunters' to preschoolers. It is, in fact, the Left that now strives to use state power to impose its morality by forcing all taxpayers to pay for abortions and public "art" that mocks people of faith. It is the Left that forces parents to pay for government schools where they do not wish to send their children. -- Grover G. Norquist   The Democratic Party might be called the Takings Coalition, made up of groups that want the government to take from American citizens -- usually cash -- and keep it for itself. -- Grover G. Norquist   People have a right to the Truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. -- Frank Norris   In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary. -- Kathleen Norris   Where the meaning of the Constitution is clear and unambiguous, there can be no resort to construction to attribute to the founders a purpose or intent not manifest in its letter. -- Norris v. Baltimore   I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme. -- Col. Oliver North   Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. -- Northwest Ordinance, Article III, 1787   There never was a good war," said Franklin. There have indeed been many wars in which a good man must take part, and take part with grave gladness to die if need be, a willing sacrifice, thankful to give life for what is dearer than life, and happy that even by death in war he is serving the cause of peace. But if a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime. -- 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. -- Charles Eliot Norton   The essence of a free life is being able to choose the style of living you prefer free from exclusion and without the compulsion of conformity or law. -- Eleanor Holmes Norton   The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with. -- Eleanor Holmes Norton   An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed. -- Norton vs. Shelby County   We are human and our lot is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds. -- Novalis   The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults. -- Robert Nozick   Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. -- Robert Nozick   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. -- Ted Nugent   I think that our American people will welcome a Russian military force for peace-keeping purposes. -- Sam Nunn   '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. -- Nunn vs. State   The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art. -- Sandra Day O'Connor   The prima facie evidence provision in this case ignores all of the contextual factors that are necessary to decide whether a particular cross burning is intended to intimidate. The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut. -- Sandra Day O'Connor   Your depth of commitment, your quality of service, the product of your devotion -- these are the things that count in life. -- Scott O'Grady   All businesses require capital, management and labor, and business executives, wanting to grow and maintain profitable enterprises, have a strong incentive to keep costs, including labor, as low as possible. -- Kevin O'Leary   Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind. -- Austin O'Malley   When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone. -- George O'Neil   Most of us tend to think of “speech” and “press” in the relatively traditional modes of the spoken and printed word… We should bear in mind that – whatever the Framers of the Bill of Rights may have expected – the First Amendment has adapted over the years to telephones, motion pictures, radio and television broadcasting, fax, cable, and is now just beginning to take measure of digital communication. -- Robert M. O'Neil   Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and will always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot. -- Eugene O'Neill   If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every  government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Bill [Clinton] hates them [refugees] and fears them, especially the Cubans. Bill knows the Cubans are crazy. Only crazy people would flee from a country with free medical care, guaranteed employment for life, and first-rate gun control. The president and his sanctimonious twit of a wife have worked for decades to build a society like this, and here people are taking their lives in their hands to get away from it. ... Let's face facts about our disgusting political opponents. We've been nice to the liberals for too long. They're thugs. The liberal dream is to control people, to oppress and exploit them for some "higher" goal. And how are the liberals ever going to be able to control people brave enough to sail to Florida in a rum carton? ... A civilized society should no more tolerate the presence of a liberal than the presence of a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, it may be argued that liberalism is worse than the KKK, insofar as Klansman only hate some people while liberals hate them all. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else. -- P. J. O'Rourke   You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have. -- P. J. O'Rourke   If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. -- P. J. O'Rourke   There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any over-large concentration of like-minded individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Politics doesn't work. Look at the parts of America where government has had the most power, where government has spent the most money. Look at the housing projects we've got the poor people in. -- P. J. O'Rourke   The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop. -- P. J. O'Rourke   A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. -- P. J. O'Rourke   A nation with a goofy foreign policy needs a very serious policy of defense. -- P. J. O'Rourke   The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 -- to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And that message is clear and concise: Go to Hell. -- P. J. O'Rourke   The term consumerism has been current since the middle 1960s, about the same length of time as the Department of Transportation itself. Literally interpreted, the word means 'an ideology based on the opposite of being productive.' This ideology has caused enormous changes in the American economy. At one time complaining was a cottage industry. The typical maker of complaints gave them to (or traded them with) friends and family members. Sometimes the complaints were sent to newspapers or included in prayers. Friends, family, the press and God then ignored the complaints. In the sixties, however, various consumer advocates began to help complainers find a market for their wares. There is only one organization that is required to take everyone -- and their complaints -- seriously. So the government became the foremost grumble customer. And it is, of course, the government's bureaucratic agencies who have to do the buying. -- P. J. O'Rourke   The three branches of government number considerably more than three and are not, in any sense, 'branches' since that would imply that there is something they are all attached to besides self-aggrandizement and our pocketbooks. ... Government is not a machine with parts; it's an organism. When does an intestine quit being an intestine and start becoming an asshole? -- P. J. O'Rourke   Whatever it is the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. -- P. J. O'Rourke   If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert, and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Government isn't a good way to solve problems ... [G]overnment is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. ... [G]overnment is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. ... [G]overnment is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame. -- P. J. O'Rourke   When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Now majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But, like other precious, sacred things…it’s not only worth dying for, it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Think of what big governments have gotten up to in this century : not one, but two world wars, the gulag, the holocaust, aerial bombing of civilian population centers, the Berlin Wall, nuclear explosions, the post office. A wicked individual might want these, but he wouldn't have the cash and connections to get them. A villainous corporation could afford them but has to market the products. The Vietnam draft would be a tough sell for even the most fiendish businessmen. "Get shot! Get killed! Get diseases from foreign women who despise you in their hearts! -- P. J. O'Rourke   Whatever it is that government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy. -- P. J. O'Rourke   The main reason to be opposed to political control of smoking is to keep power --even the smallest and silliest kind of power -- out of the hands of ... members of a dangerous class --the class that knows what´s good for us better than we do. -- P. J. O'Rourke   You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -- P. J. O'Rourke   When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state ... this violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people. -- 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   When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators. -- 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. -- P. J. O'Rourke   Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey. Recognizing that we each swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and affirming that we are guardians of the Republic, of the principles in our Declaration of Independence, and of the rights of our people, we affirm and declare the following:\\\\ 1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.\\ 2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people.\\ 3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" or to subject them to military tribunal.\\ 4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.\\ 5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.\\ 6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.\\ 7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.\\ 8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to "keep the peace" or to "maintain control."\\ 9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.\\ 10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances. -- Oath Keepers   Of course, there's been a real debate about where to invest and where to cut, and I'm committed to working with members of both parties to cut our deficits and debt. But we can't simply cut our way to prosperity. -- 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. -- Barack Hussein Obama   [J]ust because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right... -- Barack Hussein Obama   [P]art of people’s concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn’t holding and we’re not quite yet to where we need to be in terms of a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity, that’s based on economies that work for all people. -- Barack Hussein Obama   The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents -- number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome -- so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic. -- Barack Hussein Obama   When Michelle and I decided that I would run for President, it was because of a shared belief in the power of community and connection, a commitment to the idea that we are our brothers' keepers. -- Barack Hussein Obama   The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. ... Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. -- Barack Hussein Obama   Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency previously declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States. Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2010. -- Barack Hussein Obama   I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right. -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez   We never experienced, really, a time of true economic prosperity in the United States. -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez   Show me the prison, Show me the jail,\\ Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale.\\ And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why\\ And there, but for fortune, go you or I. -- Phil Ochs   Should we believe self-serving, ever-growing drug enforcement/drug treatment bureaucrats, whose pay and advancement depends on finding more and more people to arrest and "treat"? More Americans die in just one day in prisons, penitentiaries, jails and stockades than have ever died from marijuana throughout history. Who are they protecting? From what? -- Dr. Fred Oerther   No external force will ever succeed in making you 'want what you do not want and believe what you do not believe'. A man may take my life, but not my faith. -- Gerhard Oestreich   I have been reading a German book. We must draft a decree at once... Communal physical exercises. ... This is very important. The health of the nation depends on it. -- The Emperor of Azania   Under the Equal Protection clause, not to mention the First Amendment itself, government may not grant the use of a forum to people whose views it finds acceptable, but deny use to those wishing to express less favored or more controversial views. -- Supreme Court Of The United States   We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. -- Charlton Ogburn, Jr.   As hard as modern man strives to be free he is a slave chained to the past. -- Suso Ohno   A theory that a conspiracy has been working consciously for many centuries is not very plausible unless one attributes to them a religious unity. That is tantamount to regarding them as Satanists engaged in the worship and service of supernatural evil. The directors of the conspiracy must see or otherwise directly perceive manifestations which convince them of the existence and power of Lucifer. And since subtle conspirators must be very shrewd men, not likely to be deceived by auto-suggestion, hypnosis, or drugs, we should have to conclude that they probably are in contact with a force of pure evil. -- Revilo P. Oliver   The paternalist project for our civil courts runs something as follows. After the revolution -- which perhaps has already taken place—the average citizen will enjoy a vast array of wonderful new rights to sue other people. You will be empowered to haul your neighbors and fellow citizens to court if you feel they have fallen short of good faith and fair play. You will be entitled to sue them for unlimited damages, punitive as well as compensatory, even over behavior that had previously been thought not subject to liability at all. Everyone will be under a vague but stringent obligation to look out for your safety and welfare, enforceable by legal action. You will enjoy a cornucopia of contention opportunities, a smorgasbord of suing options, a Lotus-land of litigability. -- Walter Olsen   Sometimes, when leading families or merchants organized a government for their city, they not only provided for some power sharing through voting but took pains to reduce the probability that the government's chief executive could assume autocratic power. For a time in Genoa, for example, the chief administrator of the government had to be an outsider -- and thus someone with no membership in any of the powerful families in the city. Moreover, he was constrained to a fixed term of office, forced to leave the city after the end of his term, and forbidden from marrying into any of the local families. In Venice, after a doge who attempted to make himself autocrat was beheaded for his offense, subsequent doges were followed in official processions by a sword-bearing symbolic executioner as a reminder of the punishment intended for any leader who attempted to assume dictatorial power. -- Mancur Olson   The modern press itself is a new phenomenon. Its typical unit is the great agency of mass communication. These agencies can facilitate thought and discussion. They can stifle it…. They can play up or down the news and its significance, foster and feed emotions, create complacent fictions and blind spots, misuse the great words and uphold empty slogans. -- Commission On Freedom Of The Press   Protection against government is now not enough to guarantee that a man who has something to say shall have a chance to say it. The owners and managers of the press determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public. -- Commission On Freedom Of The Press   If we can revolutionize opinion about social organization so that we can rid ourselves of arbitrary political interventions in economic and social life, we won’t need a world police force; if we can’t change opinion in this area in favor of a strictly limited government, a world police force would either be helpless to prevent war or would be the worst tyranny history has known. -- Reverend Edmund Opitz   No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. -- Rev. Edmund A. Opitz   There is a place for government in the affairs of men, and our Declaration of Independence tells us precisely what that place is. The role of government is to protect individuals in their God-given individual rights. Freedom is the natural birthright of man, but all that government can do in behalf of freedom is to let the individual alone, and it should secure him in his rights by making others let him alone. -- Rev. Edmund A. Opitz   They can only set free men free ... And there is no need of that: Free men set themselves free. -- James Oppenheim   As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress. -- J. Robert Oppenheimer   There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. -- J. Robert Oppenheimer   In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law, and the facts under the direction of the Court as to the law, and the right of new trials as in civil cases. -- Oregon Constitution   This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention, the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State; that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long-run sustains, nourishes and impels human destinies. -- José Ortega y Gasset   Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort. -- José Ortega y Gasset   I am I plus my circumstances. -- José Ortega y Gasset   Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without but an equilibrium which is set up from within. -- José Ortega y Gasset   If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell   At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts. -- George Orwell   Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. -- George Orwell   If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell   The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. -- George Orwell   Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidarity to pure wind. -- George Orwell   Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. -- George Orwell   Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. -- George Orwell (False)   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 nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. -- George Orwell   That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. -- George Orwell   Freedom is Slavery -- 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   It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime ... -- George Orwell   All animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others. -- George Orwell   Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. -- George Orwell   The Party is not interested in the overt act. The thought is all we care about. -- George Orwell   Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- George Orwell   In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act. -- George Orwell   In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. -- George Orwell   To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle. -- George Orwell   The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. -- George Orwell   At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is “not done”… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. -- 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   If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. -- George Orwell   Loss of liberty is inimical to all forms of literature... The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition. -- George Orwell   Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. -- George Orwell   The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders. -- George Orwell   Every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered...History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. -- George Orwell   The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it. -- George Orwell   Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull. -- George Orwell   The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. -- George Orwell   Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice. -- John Osborne   Being Politically Correct means always having to say you're sorry. -- Charles Osgood   There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please. -- James Otis   Taxation without representation is tyranny. -- James Otis   If it would be wrong for the government to adopt an official religion, then, for the same reasons, it would be wrong for the government to adopt official education policies. The moral case for freedom of religion stands or falls with that for freedom of education. A society that champions freedom of religion but at the same time countenances state regulation of education has a great deal of explaining to do. -- James R. Otteson   Petty laws breed great crimes. -- Ouida   In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes. -- P. D. Ouspensky   The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm. -- P. D. Ouspensky   Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these. -- Ovid   It is annoying to be honest to no purpose. -- Ovid   Video meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor. (I see the better way, and approve it; I follow the worse.) -- Ovid   For by this unjust plan they must of necessity eliminate the valuable members and retain only the improvident, unskilled and vicious. -- Robert Dale Owen   Can anybody point me to that one time in history where the side that was demanding censorship, segregation, propaganda, radical education, papers to move freely in society, plus government forces going door to door to demand compliance were the good guys? -- Candace Owens   Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed? -- Count Axel Oxenstierna   The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded. -- Vance Packard   It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation. -- Camille Paglia   Alcohol didn’t cause the high crime rates of the ‘20s and ‘30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today’s alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does.... Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was. -- Judge James Paine   I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. -- Thomas Paine   These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. 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   This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still. -- Thomas Paine   He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -- Thomas Paine   Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions. -- Thomas Paine   Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. -- Thomas Paine   I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. -- Thomas Paine   When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel ... for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon. -- 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   But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? -- Thomas Paine   Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself. -- Thomas Paine   Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system. -- Thomas Paine   When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. -- Thomas Paine   Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. -- Thomas Paine   All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. -- Thomas Paine   If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. -- Thomas Paine   Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. -- Thomas Paine   Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy. -- 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   When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. -- Thomas Paine   A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either. -- Thomas Paine   The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance. -- Thomas Paine   For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever. -- Thomas Paine   Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. -- Thomas Paine   Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world? -- Thomas Paine   Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived. -- Thomas Paine   Character is much easier kept than recovered. -- Thomas Paine   The most formidable weapons against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall. -- Thomas Paine   The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them... -- Thomas Paine   As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith. -- Thomas Paine   Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. 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 ... -- Thomas Paine   Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good. -- 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. -- Thomas Paine   An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. -- Thomas Paine   Though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire. -- Thomas Paine   Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. -- Thomas Paine   The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax. -- Thomas Paine   Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. -- 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   The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defense. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside... Horrid mischief would ensue were (the good) deprived of the use of them ... the weak will become a prey to the strong. -- Thomas Paine   Time makes more converts than reason. -- Thomas Paine   Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. -- Thomas Paine   The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind. -- Thomas Paine   Age after age has passed away, for no other purpose than to behold their wretchedness. -- Thomas Paine   A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal. -- Thomas Paine   From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms!\\ Through the land let the sound of it flee;\\ Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer,\\ In defense of our Liberty Tree. -- Thomas Paine   Beware the greedy hand of government, thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry. -- Thomas Paine   A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either. -- Thomas Paine   Reason obeys itself; and ignorance does whatever is dictated to it. -- Thomas Paine   There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the `end of time,’ or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. ... Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. -- Thomas Paine   Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. -- Thomas Paine   There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes. -- 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   It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. -- 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. -- Thomas Paine   L'individualisme est une doctrine qui, au lieu de subordonner l'individu à la collectivité, pose en principe que l'individu a sa fin en lui-même; qu'en fait et en droit il possède une valeur propre et une existence autonome, et que l'idéal social est le plus complet affranchissement de l'individu. L'individualisme ainsi compris est la même chose que ce qu'on appelle encore la philosophie sociale libertaire. -- Georges Palante   Natural liberty is the right of common upon a waste; civil liberty is the safe, exclusive, unmolested enjoyment of a cultivated enclosure. -- William Paley   Television, I would say, isn't an advertising medium. It's a selling medium. -- William S. Paley   Socialism is workable only in Heaven where it isn’t needed, and in Hell where they've got it. -- Cecil Palmer   [L]et me point out that libertarians defend a tradition of liberty that is the fruit of thousands of years of human history. -- Tom G. Palmer   If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command? -- Tom G. Palmer   Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position. -- Mario Palmieri   Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position. -- Mario Palmieri   The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war. -- Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit   Capital punishment is when Washington comes up with a new tax. -- Van Panopoulos   Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn math and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities. -- Seymour Papert   Thoughts are free and are subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature. -- Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus   When you sit down to negotiate on what you already have, you lose. -- Marie J. Parente   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. -- Michael Parenti   If Big Brother (of Orwell's 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed. -- Michael Parenti   The enormous gap between what U.S. leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology. -- Michael Parenti   The end and aim of all education is the development of character. -- Francis W. Parker   This leftist political strategy to win office and power relies on something very powerful: the desire to increase the number of Americans who are dependent on getting money that is taken from other citizens.  Sadly, this strategy has worked for half a century! And now it works because Americans who are trapped in this nightmare do not want their government money taken away from them! -- Star Parker   Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. -- C. Northcote Parkinson   With the monetary system we have now, the careful saving of a lifetime can be wiped out in an eyeblink. -- Larry Parks   If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states, then the juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty. -- Justice Theophilus Parsons   If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states, then the juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty. -- Justice Theophilus Parsons   But, sir, the people themselves have it in their power effectually to resist usurpation, without being driven to an appeal of arms. An act of usurpation is not obligatory; it is not law; and any man may be justified in his resistance. Let him be considered as a criminal by the general government, yet only his fellow-citizens can convict him; they are his jury, and if they pronounce him innocent, not all the powers of Congress can hurt him; and innocent they certainly will pronounce him, if the supposed law he resisted was an act of usurpation. -- Theophilus Parsons   The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family. -- Blaise Pascal   Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal   Justice without force is impotent, force without justice is tyranny. Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just. -- Blaise Pascal   All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth. -- Blaise Pascal   The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts. -- Blaise Pascal   It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf. -- Blaise Pascal   The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first. -- Blaise Pascal   The art of revolutionizing and overturning states is to undermine established customs, by going back to their origin, in order to mark their want of justice. -- Blaise Pascal   Never trust governments absolutely and always do what you can to prevent them from doing too much harm. -- John Arthur Passmore   The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman. -- Boris Pasternak   When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves. -- George Pataki   A tax supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state. -- Isabel Paterson   Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you or pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect your pupils by compulsion? -- Isabel Paterson   Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends. -- Isabel Paterson   ... in all countries where personal freedom is valued, however much each individual may rely on legal redress, the right of each to carry arms -- and these the best and the sharpest -- for his own protection in case of extremity, is a right of nature indelible and irrepressible, and the more it is sought to be repressed the more it will recur. -- James Paterson   What is a Constitution? It is the form of government, delineated by the mighty hand of the people, in which certain first principles of fundamental law are established. The Constitution is certain and fixed; it contains the permanent will of the people, and is the supreme law of the land; it is paramount to the power of the Legislature, and can be revoked or altered only by the authority that made it. -- William Paterson   The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing. -- William Paterson   I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money. I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue. -- Wright Patman   We have what is known as the Federal Reserve Bank System. That system is not owned by the Government. Many people think that it is because it says “Federal Reserve.” It belongs to private banks, private corporations. So we have farmed out to the Federal Reserve Banking System that which is owned exclusively, wholly, one hundred percent to the private banks—we have farmed out to them the privilege of issuing the Government’s money! -- Wright Patman   The dollar represents a one dollar debt to the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve Banks create money out of thin air to buy Government Bonds from the U.S. Treasury...and has created out of nothing a ... debt which the American people are obliged to pay with interest. -- Wright Patman   [I]t is absolutely wrong for the Government to issue interest-bearing obligations. It is not only wrong: it is extravagant. It is not only extravagant, it is wasteful. It is absolutely unnecessary. -- Wright Patman   You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right. -- Alan Paton   All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf -- that book I abhor -- then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us. -- Katherine Patterson   According to Gestapo records…they had little need to engage in direct spying on the citizens since the citizens themselves were more than willing to do their spying for them. -- Kort E. Patterson   Some informants spied on their neighbors because they actually believed the propaganda… Some denounced their enemies in order to settle personal grudges. Some were driven by their own fears to attempt to deflect attention away from themselves…Some were motivated by the sense of power turning in their neighbors gave them. -- Kort E. Patterson   I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. -- General George S. Patton, Jr.   It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. -- 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.   Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what you want them to achieve, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -- General George S. Patton, Jr.   No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. -- General George S. Patton, Jr.   Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash. -- General George S. Patton, Jr.   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. -- St. Paul   Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. -- St. Paul   For when they shall say, 'Peace and Safety', then sudden destruction comes upon them, as travail upon a women with child; and they shall not escape. -- St. Paul   Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. -- St. Paul   For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. -- St. Paul   Individuality is to be preserved and respected everywhere, as the root of everything good. -- Jean Paul   Those in society who are in charge of schools must never forget that the parents have been appointed by God himself as the first and principal educators of their children and that their right is completely inalienable. -- Pope John Paul II   Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong. -- 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   You can't save free markets by socialism, I don't know where this idea ever came from. You save free markets by promoting free markets and sound money and balanced budgets. The whole reason why nobody wants to address the real problem is, we're spending a trillion dollars a year overseas running an empire, and it's coming to an end. This country is bankrupt, and we won't admit it. Eventually though, the dollar will go bust, and we will bring our troops home, and we will live within our means, but we ought to do it sensibly, rather than waiting for the collapse of the dollar, and this is what we're doing, we're on the verge of destroying our dollar. And then, you think we have problems now, problems then will be a lot worse, it'd look like the Weimar Republic, or a third world nation. And a lot of people know that, and they're scared to death, but we don't need to be making the problem worse by just propping up everything with more government programs, more inflation, and more helicopters, it won't work. -- Dr. Ron Paul   When we finally decide that drug prohibition has been no more successful than alcohol prohibition, the drug dealers will disappear. -- Dr. Ron Paul   What we need to do in this country is make sure the majority of the American people really want their freedoms back again, We have to have people once again believe in liberty, foreign policy that defends America, but is not the policeman of the world. We don’t have the right nor the facilities to throw our weight around and tell the rest of the world how to live. -- Dr. Ron Paul   The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation. It is this one-two punch -- Congress spending more than it can tax or borrow, and the Fed printing money to make up the difference -- that threatens to impoverish us by further destroying the value of our dollars. -- Dr. Ron Paul   We have depended on government for so much for so long that we as people have become less vigilant of our liberties. As long as the government provides largesse for the majority, the special interest lobbyists will succeed in continuing the redistribution of welfare programs that occupies most of Congress's legislative time. -- Dr. Ron Paul   When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers. -- Dr. Ron Paul   The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. -- Dr. Ron Paul   The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. -- 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   -- Dr. Ron Paul   You have to remember, rights don’t come in groups we shouldn’t have ‘gay rights’; rights come as individuals, and we wouldn’t have this major debate going on. It would be behavior that would count, not what person belongs to what group. -- Dr. Ron Paul   We have a lot of goodness in this country. And we should promote it, but never through the barrel of a gun. We should do it by setting good standards, motivating people and have them want to emulate us. But you can't enforce our goodness, like the neocons preach, with an armed force. It doesn't work. -- Dr. Ron Paul   It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control. [...] This idea that the government has services or goods that they can pass on is a complete farce. Governments have nothing. They can't create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept. -- Dr. Ron Paul   Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand-in-hand. -- 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. -- Dr. Ron Paul   Welfarism and excessive spending and deficits and socialism divide us, because everybody has to go to Washington. Those who have the biggest clout, those who are the best lobbyists, those who go and they grab. And whether it's the medical industrial complex, or the banking industry, or the military industrial complex, that's who ends up controlling our government... For so long, conservatives and constitutionalists have lost the argument, they lost the moral high ground. Because those who want to give things away, not talking about where they steal it from, but they want to give things and take care of people, they get the moral high ground and they come by as being compassionate. And we who believe in liberty, we lack compassion. But the truth is, there's only one compassionate system known to man, and that is freedom and personal responsibility, then there's enough wealth, and then we will all have personal responsibility to use this compassion that we have, first to take care of our families and friends and neighbors, and there would be so much wealth that we could spread this wealth around the world. -- Dr. Ron Paul   I am absolutely convinced, you never have to give up any of your freedoms in order to be secure. -- Dr. Ron Paul   Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism! -- Dr. Ron Paul   You don't have a right to the fruits of somebody else's labor. You don't have a right to a house, you don't have a right to a job, you don't have a right to medical care. You have a right to your life, you have your right to your liberty, you have a right to keep what your earn. And that's what produces prosperity. So you want equal justice. And this is not hard for me to argue, because if you really are compassionate and you care about people, the freer the society the more prosperous it is, and more likely that you are going to have medical care... When you turn it over to central economic planning, they're bound to make mistakes. The bureaucrats and the special interests and the Halliburtons are going to make the money. Whether it's war, or Katrina, these noncompetitive contracts, the bureaucrats make a lot of money and you end up with inefficiency. -- Dr. Ron Paul   Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms. -- Dr. Ron Paul   Strictly speaking, it probably is not “necessary” for the federal government to tax anyone directly; it could simply print the money it needs. However, that would be too bold a stroke, for it would then be obvious to all what kind of counterfeiting operation the government is running. The present system combining taxation and inflation is akin to watering the milk; too much water and the people catch on. -- Dr. Ron Paul   [W]e have to realize that the real problem is that the American people have been too submissive. We have been too submissive. It has been going on for a long time. ... [T]he bill that I have introduced ... is very simple. It is one paragraph long. It removes the immunity from anybody in the Federal government that does anything that you or I can't do. If you can't grope another person and if you can't X-ray people and endanger them with possible X-rays, [and] you can't take nude photographs of individuals, why do we allow the government to do it? We would go to jail. He would be immediately arrested, if an individual citizen went up and did these things, and yet we just sit there and calmly say, 'oh, they are making us safe.' And besides, the argument from the executive branch is that when you buy a ticket, you have sacrificed your rights and it is the duty of the government to make us safe. That isn't the case. You never have to sacrifice your rights. The duty of the government is to protect our rights, not to use them and do what they have been doing to us. -- Dr. Ron Paul   The theory of the IRS is rather repugnant to me because the assumption is made that I, the government, owns 100% of your income and I permit you to keep 5%, 10% or 20%. You're vulnerable, you've sold out. The government can take 80% if they want, which they did at one time. -- Dr. Ron Paul   When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists. -- Dr. Ron Paul   They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil. -- Paul the Apostle   Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles. -- Pat Paulsen   All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian. -- Pat Paulsen   The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. -- Cesare Pavese   To know the world one must construct it. -- Cesare Pavese   We can't spend more than we have. ... This is no longer a matter of right versus left, liberal versus conservative, we can prove our conclusion on this by basic mathematics. The United States Federal Government from all sources, for all purposes, takes in $2.2 trillion a year. Keep that number in mind. $2.2 trillion a year. We have total unfunded liabilities of $65 trillion, $2.2 trillion in revenue, $65 trillion in total unfunded liabilities. That is more than 30 to 1 leverage. If the United States Federal Government were a bank regulated by itself, they would shut themselves down. We live in a nation where not long ago our United States Secretary of State [Hillary Clinton] was on rhetorical bended knee in communist China pleading with the Chinese to continue to buy our debt, because if they don’t buy our debt and other foreign sovereign wealth funds don’t buy our debt our beloved United States of America can’t pay its bills. The United States of America my friends is not a beggar nation. -- Gov. Tim Pawlenty   ....it is always easier to tell people what to do than to find out what is happening... -- Martin Pawley   Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. -- J. H. Payne   What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions; life is plurality, death is uniformity. -- Octavio Paz   [Transcription of some of the signs in Washington during the peace march January 18, 2003] -- Peace March Signs   The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. -- Norman Vincent Peale   We live in a world that has popularized Black people showing the same hate towards white people that people like Martin Luther King Jr. died fighting to overcome. It’s sad. Sad as hell. -- CJ Pearson   Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects. -- Lester B. Pearson   Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. -- M. Scott Peck   Did I say "republic?" By God, yes, I said "republic!" Long live the glorious republic of the United States of America. Damn democracy. It is a fraudulent term used, often by ignorant persons but no less often by intellectual fakers, to describe an infamous mixture of socialism, graft, confiscation of property and denial of personal rights to individuals whose virtuous principles make them offensive. -- Westbrook Pegler   He who does not bellow out the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers. -- Charles Peguy   Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property -- so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property. -- Leonard Peikoff   Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation’s economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property—so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property. -- Leonard Peikoff   You demonize...we call it the wrap-up smear, you smear somebody with falsehoods and all the rest, and then you merchandise it and then you write it and say, "See, it's reported in the press that this, this, and this..." so they have that validation that the press reported the smear and then it's called a wrap-up-smear and the merchandise is the press' report on the smear we made. It's a tactic, and it's self-evident. -- Nancy Pelosi   Let the people think they govern and they will be governed. -- William Penn   Justice is the insurance we have in our lives, and obedience is the premium we pay for it. -- William Penn   To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals. -- William Penn   Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants. -- William Penn   A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it. -- William Penn   The loyalists in the beginning of the late war objected to associating, arming and fighting, in defense of our liberties, because these measures were not constitutional. A free people should always be left... with every possible power to promote their own happiness. -- Pennsylvania Gazette   The provision in the Constitution granting the right to all persons to bear arms is a limitation upon the power of the Legislature to enact any law to the contrary. The exercise of a right guaranteed by the Constitution cannot be made subject to the will of the sheriff. -- People vs. Zerillo   Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers. -- Erik Pepke   One has the right to be wrong in a democracy. -- Claude Pepper   Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. -- Pericles   Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. -- Pericles   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. -- Darren Perkins   Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self esteem. If you need encouragement, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge. -- Fritz Perls   Is any man free except the one who can pass his life as he pleases? [Lat., An quisquam est alius liber, nisi ducere vitam Cui licet, ut voluit?] -- Persius   Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. -- St. Peter   While [false teachers] promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. -- St. Peter   Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status. -- Laurence J. Peter   A free press is one that prints a dictator’s speech but doesn’t have to. -- Laurence J. Peter   Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. -- Laurence J. Peter   A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to. -- Laurence J. Peter   Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy. -- Charles Peters   If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade. -- Tom Peters   The American people are bound to the people of the Soviet Union in the great alliance of the United Nations. We are determined that nothing shall stop us from sharing with you all that we have. -- Howard C. Peterson   We are good citizens, and we cannot protect ourselves because you allow the criminals to run wild. ... I'd like you to come and live in the inner city for a week and see the importance of having a weapon. ... Go after the criminals and not the good people. -- Jesse Lee Peterson   One should not associate with controversy; one should always reach for the highest ratings; one should never forget that there is safety in numbers; one should always remember that comedy, adventure, and escapism provide the best atmosphere for selling. -- Peter G. Peterson   ... the key question is: can we define 'income' in a fair and reasonably straightforward manner? Unfortunately we have not yet succeeded in doing so. -- Shirley Peterson   Eight decades of amendments... to (the) code have produced a virtually impenetrable maze... The rules are unintelligible to most citizens... The rules are equally mysterious to many government employees who are charged with administering and enforcing the law. -- Shirley Peterson   If oppression and wrong should gain the ascendancy, and injustice stalk abroad in the land, and all else fail him; nevertheless his humblest roof, and all things that are sheltered beneath it, would find, somehow, someway, a final refuge and protection in the Supreme Court of the United States. -- Edward J. Phelps   A large body of people, sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right? Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right? ... I maintain on the principles of '76 that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. ... You can never make such a war popular. ... The North never will endorse such a war. -- Wendell Phillips   Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories. -- Wendell Phillips   No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents. -- Wendell Phillips   The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth. -- 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. -- Wendell Phillips   Let us always remember that he does not really believe his own opinion, who dares not give free scope to his opponent. -- Wendell Phillips   Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat; but liberty dates from it though Warren lay dead on the field. -- Wendell Phillips   Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. -- Wendell Phillips   Money, it has been said, is the cause of good things to a good man, of evil things to a bad man. -- Philo of Alexandria   A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself. -- Francis Picabia   Art is an instrument in the war against the enemy. -- Pablo Picasso   All the progress we have made in philosophy… is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom. -- Charles S. Pierce   Every child in America who enters school at the age of five is mentally ill, because he comes to school with an allegiance toward our elected officials, toward our founding fathers, toward our institutions, toward the preservation of this form of government that we have. Patriotism, nationalism, and sovereignty, all that proves that children are sick because a truly well individual is one who has rejected all of those things, and is truly the international child of the future. -- Dr. Chester Pierce   I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity, ... [it] would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded. -- Franklin Pierce   The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded. -- Franklin Pierce   The constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those … who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy. ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded. -- Franklin Pierce   Socialism is after all, the Viagra of politics... -- Michael Pierce   Congress has doubled the IRS budget over the past 10 years -- making that agency one of the fastest growing non-entitlement programs. It has increased its employment by 20 percent. The IRS’s powers to investigate and examine taxpayers transcend those of any other law enforcement agency. Virtually all of the constitutional rights regarding search and seizure, due process, and jury trial simply do not apply to the IRS. -- Daniel Pilla   Today, of course, the redistributive powers of Congress are everywhere -- except in the Constitution. The result is the feeding frenzy that is modern Washington, the Hobbesian war of all against all as each tries to get his share and more of the common pot the tax system fills. ... It is unseemly and wrong. More than that, it is unconstitutional, whatever the slim and cowed majority on the New Deal Court may have said. -- Roger Pilon   The growth of federal power and programs over this century -- involving the regulation of business, the expansion of "civil rights," the production of environmental goods, and much else -- has taken place in large measure through the power of Congress to regulate "commerce among the states." That power has been read so broadly by the modern Court that Congress today can regulate anything that even "affects" commerce, which in principle is everything. As a result, save for the restraints imposed by the Bill of Rights, the commerce power is now essentially plenary, which is hardly what the Framers intended when they enumerated Congress’s powers. Indeed, if they had meant for Congress to be able to do anything it wanted under the commerce power, the enumeration of Congress’s other powers -- to say nothing of the defense of the doctrine of enumerated powers throughout the Federalist Papers -- would have been pointless. The purpose of the commerce clause quite simply, was to enable Congress to ensure the free flow of commerce among the states. Under the Articles of Confederation, state legislatures had enacted tariffs and other protectionist measures that impeded interstate commerce. To break the logjam, Congress was empowered to make commerce among the states "regular." In fact, the need to do so was one of the principal reasons behind the call for a new constitution. -- Roger Pilon   Indeed, it was the enumeration of powers, not the enumeration of rights in the Bill of Rights, that was meant by the Framers to be the principal limitation on government power. -- Roger Pilon   Over the 20th century, the federal government has assumed a vast and unprecedented set of powers. Not only has the exercise of those powers upset the balance between federal and state governments; run roughshod over individuals, families, and firms; and reduced economic opportunity for all; but most of what the federal government does today -- to put the point as plainly and candidly as possible -- is illegitimate because done without explicit constitutional authority. The time has come to start returning power to the states and the people, to relimit federal power in our fundamental law, to restore constitutional government. -- Roger Pilon   Unfortunately, over the course of this century Congress has largely ignored the constitutional limits on its power. And the courts, especially after Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the Supreme Court with six additional members, have only abetted the resulting growth of government by fashioning constitutional doctrines that have no basis whatever in the Constitution. As a consequence, many of the programs Congress oversees today are without constitutional foundation, having resulted from acts that Congress had no authority. -- Roger Pilon   [T]he vast regulatory structure the federal government has erected in the name of the commerce power cannot be ended overnight, in many cases, but the pretense that such programs are constitutional can be ended, even as the programs themselves are phased out over time. -- Roger Pilon   Under our Constitution, the federal government has delegated, enumerated and thus limited powers. Power is delegated by the founding generation or through subsequent amendment (that makes it legitimate); enumerated in the constitution (that makes it legal); and limited by that enumeration. As the 10th Amendment says, if a power hasn’t been delegated, the federal government doesn’t have it. For 150 years, that design held for the most part. When faced with a welfare bill in 1794, for example, James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, rose in the House to say that he could find no constitutional authority for the bill. A century later, when Congress passed a similar measure, President Cleveland vetoed it as beyond Congress’ authority. That all changed during the New Deal as both congress and the president sought to expand federal power. When the Supreme court objected, rather than amend the Constitution, Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court with six additional members. The scheme failed, but the threat worked. Thereafter, the court started reading the Constitution’s General Welfare and Commerce Clauses so broadly that the doctrine of enumerated powers was essentially destroyed—and with it limited government. -- Roger Pilon   The legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion nor touching or abridging the liberty of the press. -- Charles Pinckney   Sept. 9, 2004, will be remembered as a paradigm-shifting day in media history. That was the day the 'blogosphere' took down CBS News. -- James Pinkerton   Honesty demands that we boldly pursue ideas tested by time, defended by reason, validated by experience, and confirmed by revelation. We will only find truth when we place our confidence in it and not in ourselves. We will only learn when we love truth enough to measure all ideas with a measuring rod outside of those things being measured and are willing to discard those ideas we find to be "intolerable," inferior, and useless. -- Everett Piper   History has taught us time and again that political power always raises its angry fist when timeless principles are lost. We know that without the scale of "self-evident truths" grounded in the "laws of nature and nature's God," every culture eventually finds itself subject to the rule of the gang or the tyranny of the individual. Recognizing this, scholars of all ages have confidently given their hearts and minds to the words, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. -- Everett Piper   Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer. -- H. Beam Piper   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. -- William Pitt   Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt   Unlimited Power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it. -- William Pitt, Sr.   Henceforth it will be the task of this Sacred Congregation not only to examine carefully the books denounced to it, to prohibit them if necessary, and to grant permission for reading forbidden books, but also to supervise, ex officio, books that are being published, and to pass sentence on such as deserve to be prohibited. -- Pope Pius X   One Galileo in two thousand years is enough. -- Pope Pius XII   Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. -- Plato   Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments. -- Plato   Do not expect justice where might is right. -- Plato   We see many instances of cities going down like sinking ships to their destruction. There have been such wrecks in the past and there surely will be others in the future, caused by the wickedness of captains and crews alike. For these are guilty men, whose sin is supreme ignorance of what matters most. -- Plato   A tyrant…is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. -- Plato   One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato   Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule. -- Plato   The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness… This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs, when he first appears he is a protector. -- Plato   Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell. -- Plato   Only the dead have seen the end of war. -- Plato   Democracy…is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. -- Plato   Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. -- Plato   Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehood's school. And the one man who dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool. -- 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   When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. -- Plato   The worst of all deceptions is self-deception. -- Plato   Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -- Plato   Kings … will … take possession of the children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; these they will train in their own habits and laws. -- Plato   Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired. -- Titus Maccius Plautus   Patience is the best remedy for every trouble. -- Titus Maccius Plautus   No man is wise enough by himself. -- Titus Maccius Plautus   I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. -- Pledge of Allegiance   Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. -- Plutarch   The first destroyer of the liberties of a people is he who first gave them bounties and largess. -- Plutarch   An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. -- Plutarch   The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits. -- Plutarch   What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. -- Plutarch   The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. -- Plutarch   [T]he next time you read or hear about a murder victim, a rape victim or an assault victim, I want you to preface it with the word 'unarmed' so that murder victims become 'unarmed murder victims'; this is especially true in rape. How many times have you read, 'An unidentified woman, heavily armed with a semi-automatic weapon was raped by a man wielding a knife.' No answer is necessary, right? -- The Liberty Pole   Great popular support and enthusiasm for the United Nations policies should be built up, well organized and fully articulate. But it is necessary to do more than that. The opposition must be rendered so impotent that it will be unable to gather any significant support in the Senate against the United Nations Charter and the treaties which will follow. -- Political Affairs   The freedom to make and admit mistakes is at the core of the scientific process. If we are asked to forswear error, or worse, to say that error means fraud, then we cannot function as scientists. -- Robert Pollack   When libertarian moral theory is combined with economic theory a compelling conception of the good society emerges. -- Lansing Pollock   We get lost in a fog of abstractions and easily forget that man is a bloodhound sniffing out the real. -- Robert C. Pollock   [A] public policy of simply discouraging people from owning or using firearms is not, in and of itself, a constitutionally permissible objective, any more than discouraging people from religious observance would be permissible to some oh-so-progressive government that considered religion as hopelessly declassé as progressives nowadays consider the right to keep and bear arms .... And any statute or regulation that burdens the right to keep and bear arms on the ground that guns are a public health hazard should enjoy the same frosty reception in court that would be given a statute or regulation that burdened the free exercise of religion as a mental hazard. -- Daniel D. Polsby   [There can be no] rational administration of government when good men are held in the same esteem as bad ones. -- Polybius   The object of this clause [the right of the people to keep and bear arms] is to secure a well-armed militia.... But a militia would be useless unless the citizens were enabled to exercise themselves in the use of warlike weapons. To preserve this privilege, and to secure to the people the ability to oppose themselves in military force against the usurpations of government, as well as against enemies from without, that government is forbidden by any law or proceeding to invade or destroy the right to keep and bear arms. -- John Norton Pomeroy   We turn sacred cows into hamburger. -- Lowell Ponte   Give me again my hollow tree A crust of bread, and liberty! -- Alexander Pope   Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread. -- Alexander Pope   Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few. -- Alexander Pope   A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. -- Alexander Pope   Oh what a tangled web we weave\\ When first we practise to deceive;\\ But when we’ve practised quite a while,\\ How vastly we improve our style. -- J. R. Pope   There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions… It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory. -- 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. -- Sir Karl Popper   Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant… then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. […] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. -- Karl R. Popper   Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance. -- Bruce D. Porter   MacKinnon's treatment of the central issue of pornography as she herself poses it -- the harm that pornography does to women -- is shockingly causal. Much of her evidence is anecdotal, and in a nation of 260 Million people, anecdotes are a weak form of evidence. -- Judge Richard Posner   I do not know what has caused MacKinnon to become, and, more surprisingly, to remain, so obsessed with pornography, and so zealous for censorship. But let us not sacrifice our civil liberties on the altar of her obsession. -- Judge Richard Posner   Now that eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, it is obvious that they must be allowed the freedom to form their political views on the basis of uncensored speech before they turn eighteen, so that their minds are not a blank when they first exercise the franchise. And since an eighteen-year-old’s right to vote is a right personal to him rather than a right to be exercised on his behalf by his parents, the right of parents to enlist the aid of the state to shield their children from ideas of which the parents disapprove cannot be plenary either. People are unlikely to become well-functioning, independent-minded adults and responsible citizens if they are raised in an intellectual bubble. -- Richard Posner   It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches. ... A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers. -- Richard Posner   Violent video games played in public places are a tiny fraction of the media violence to which modern American children are exposed. Tiny -- and judging from the record of this case not very violent compared to what is available to children on television and in movie theaters today. -- Richard 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. -- Judge Richard Allen Posner   Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone’s language as ‘sexist’ involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it. -- Neil Postman   The American notion of freedom transcended the political realm and in fact extended to every major category of human relationships, including those between employer and employee, clergyman and layman, husband and wife, parent and child, public official and citizen. Americans believed that, as of July 4, 1776, all men were created equal, and that any impairment of a man’s equality was destructive of his liberty also. -- David M. Potter   It is clear in our criminal justice system that the jury has the power to nullify -- that is, the power to acquit or to convict on reduced charges despite overwhelming evidence against the defendant. ... In a criminal trial, the court cannot direct a verdict of guilty, no matter how strong the evidence. In addition, if the jury acquits, double jeopardy bars the prosecution from appealing the verdict or seeking retrial. Similarly, if the jury convicts the defendant of a less serious offense than the one charged, the prosecution cannot again try the defendant on the more serious charge. This result occurs regardless of whether the jury consciously rejects the law, embraces a merciful attitude, or is simply confused concerning the law or facts. Thus, nullification -- with or without authority, intended or not -- is part of our system. -- Anne Bowen Poulin   The power of nullification plays an important role in the criminal justice system. ... Because an accused criminal is restricted in the defenses he or she can raise, the law recognizes only certain defenses and justification, and correspondingly, limited evidence. The jury’s power to nullify provides an accommodation between the rigidity of the law and the need to hear and respond to positions that do not fit legal pigeonholes, such as claims of spousal abuse before the battered-spouse syndrome received acceptance. Jury nullification permits the jury to respond to a position that does not have the status of a legally recognized defense. The power to nullify guarantees that the jury is free to speak as the conscience of the community. -- Anne Bowen Poulin   Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand. -- Ezra Pound   The phase of the usury system which we are trying to analyze is more or less Patterson's perception that the Bank of England could have benefit of all the interest on all the money that it creates out of nothing. ... Now the American citizen can, of course, appeal to his constitution, which states that Congress shall have power to coin money or regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. Such appeal is perhaps quixotic. -- Ezra Pound   I think an alliance with Stalin's Russia is rotten. -- Ezra Pound   Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt. -- Ezra Pound   Sovereignty inheres in the right to issue money. And the American sovereignty belongs by right to the people, and their representatives in Congress have the right to issue money and to determine the value thereof. And 120 million, 120 million suckers have lamentably failed to insist on the observation of this quite decided law. ... Now the point at which embezzlement of the nation's funds on the part of her officers becomes treason can probably be decided only by jurists, and not by hand-picked judges who support illegality. -- Ezra Pound   Liberty is not a right but a duty. -- Ezra Pound   That text is known to them that have the patience to read it, possibly one one-hundredth of one percent of the denizens. They forget it, all save a few Western states. I think somebody in Dakota once read it. The Constitution. -- Ezra Pound   Jury lawlessness is the greatest corrective of law in its actual administration. -- Roscoe Pound   The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling. -- Paula Poundstone   Those who believe themselves to be masters of all they survey are mistaken. There is no such thing as absolute power and the delusion that one is in possession of such power constitutes absolute corruption. This delusion leads, resolutely, to the downfall of its adherents. -- Daniel Pouzzner   The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to limit what the federal government could do. Any interpretation of a provision of the Bill of Rights as a grant of federal power is ipso facto wrong. -- L. A. Powe, Jr.   Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return. -- General Colin Powell (False)   So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world. We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home ... to live our own lives in peace. -- General Colin Powell   One of the fondest expressions around is that we can't be the world's policeman. But guess who gets called when somebody needs a cop. -- General Colin Powell   I will not surrender responsibility for my life and my actions. -- John Enoch Powell   The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal. -- Lewis F. Powell   Let therefore every man, that, appealing to his own heart, feels the least spark of virtue or freedom there, think that it is an honor which he owes himself, and a duty which he owes his country, to bear arms. -- Thomas Pownhall   To the students and faculty of our high school: I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.\\\\ I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.\\\\ First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.\\\\ The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity -- your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans.\\\\ If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-American nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America, one of its three central values -- e pluribus unum, "from many, one." And this school will be guided by America's values.\\\\ This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness.\\\\ Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism -- an unhealthy preoccupation with the self -- while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interesting in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.\\\\ Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united America's citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other languages here -- it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English -- but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.\\\\ Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning's elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.\\\\ Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school's property -- whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can't speak without using the f-word, you can't speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as [the 'N' word], even when used by one black student to address another black, or 'bitch,' even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.\\\\ Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way -- the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago -- by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.\\\\ Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue. There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately lucky -- to be alive and to be an American.\\\\ Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you. -- Dennis Prager   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. -- Hugh Prather   Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. -- Elvis Presley   Given the opportunity, the IRS will take the easy way out and grab whatever it can... the IRS does not really care about you and what your future... may be. -- Santo Presti   Fear is the key element for the IRS in achieving its mission. Without fear, the IRS would have a difficult time maintaining our so-called system of voluntary compliance ... -- Santo Presti   You are not what you think you are; What you think – you are. -- Red Pritchard   Socialism needs two legs on which to stand; a right and a left.  While appearing to be in complete opposition to one another,  they both march in the same direction. -- Paul Proctor   Jena by this time was a center of antitobacco activism -- mainly through the labors of Karl Astel, director of the new institute [Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research] and president, since the summer of 1939, of the University of Jena. Astel was head of the Thuringia's office of Racial Affairs and a notorious antisemite and racial hygienist (he had joined the Nazi party and the SS in July of 1930) ... Astel was also a militant antismoker and teetolater who once characterized opposition to tobacco as a 'national socialist duty.' On May 1, 1941, he banned smoking in all buildings and classrooms of the University of Jena, and the following spring, as head of Thuringia's Public Health Office, he announced a smoking ban in all regional schools and health offices. Tobacco in his view had to be fought 'cigar by cigar, cigarette by cigarette, and pack by pack' -- hence his notoriety for snatching cigarettes from the mouth of students who dared to violate his Jena University tobacco ban. -- Robert N. Proctor   One topic that has only recently begun to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest antismoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe -- Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -- were all non-smokers. -- Robert N. Proctor   Riding a bike is 113 times more dangerous than hunting with all those “gun nuts”! The NSC [National Safety Council] reports that out of 100,000 bicyclists 905 had injuries requiring hospital treatment. Out of the same number of fisherman, 141 required treatment and out of 100,000 golfers 104 were injured. Please compare that to the 8 hunters out of 100,000 who were injured in 1991 (last year for data). -- The Proponent   To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so...\\ To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. -- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon   Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth!  They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government. -- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon   We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can make for us or spare us. -- Marcel Proust   Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark. -- Proverb   Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are. -- Proverb   Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. -- Proverb   Observation, and not old age, brings wisdom. -- Proverb   The wise learn from the experience of others, most from their own experience, and fools not at all. -- Proverb   A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is never sure. -- Proverb   An honest answer is the sign of true friendship. -- Proverb   Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. -- Proverb   The wise do freely, early and in good time, what fools do later out of necessity. -- Proverb   Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind. -- Bulgarian Proverb   Outside noisy, inside empty. -- Chinese Proverb   The believer is happy, the doubter is wise. -- Hungarian Proverb   Where the tongue slips, it speaks the truth. -- Irish Proverb   You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. -- Navajo Proverb   It is better to live one day as a lion, than one hundred years as a sheep -- Roman Proverb   The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going. -- Proverbs   The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. -- Proverbs   An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. -- Joseph Pulitzer   Our republic and its press will rise and fall together. -- Joseph Pulitzer   A deranged psychopath is no match for a well-focused psychotic. -- The Punisher   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. -- Vladimir Putin   There is no inherent misdirection in holding unorthodox views. Indeed, the autonomous individual, free from compulsive conformance and unquestioned assumptions, is likely to be unorthodox... They stimulate the climate of controversy without which political democracy becomes an empty formalism. -- Snell Putney   If a government were trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of a population, what would it do?\\ 1. The use of indirect rather than direct taxes, so that the tax is hidden in the price of goods. \\ 2. Inflation, by which the state reduces the value of everyone else's currency. \\ 3. Borrowing, so as to postpone the necessary taxation. \\ 4. Gift and luxury taxes, where the tax accompanies the receipt or purchase of something special, lessening the annoyance of the tax.\\ 5. “Temporary” taxes, which somehow never get repealed when the emergency passes.\\ 6. Taxes that exploit social conflict, by placing higher taxes on unpopular groups.\\ 7. The threat of social collapse or withholding monopoly government services if taxes are reduced.\\ 8. Collection of the total tax burden in relatively small increments over time, rather than in a yearly lump sum.\\ 9. Taxes whose exact incidence cannot be predicted in advance, thus keeping the taxpayer unaware of just how much he is paying.\\ 10. Extraordinary budget complexity to hide the budget process from public understanding. 11. The use of generalized expenditure categories to make it difficult for outsiders to assess the individual components of the budget.\\ -- Amilcare Puviani   A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns. -- Mario Puzo   The weapon of the dictator is not so much propaganda as censorship. -- Terence H. Qualter   To understand a man, you must know his memories. The same is true of a nation. -- Anthony Quayle   I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that will change. -- Dan Quayle   The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. -- Carroll Quigley   In 1891, [Cecile] Rhodes organized a secret society with members in a "Circle of Initiates" and an outer circle known as the "Association of Helpers" later organized as the Round Table organization. In 1909-1913, they organized semi-secret groups known as Round Table Groups in the chief British dependencies and the United States. In 1919, they founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Similar Institutes of International Affairs were established in the chief British dominions and the United States where it is known as the Council on Foreign Relations. After 1925, the Institute of Pacific Relations was set up in twelve Pacific area countries. They were constantly harping on the lessons to be learned from the failure of the American Revolution and the success of the Canadian federation of 1867 and hoped to federate the various parts of the empire and then confederate the whole with the United Kingdom.\\ ...\\ There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates to some extent in the way the Radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known." -- Carroll Quigley   The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the American Branch of a society which originated in England... (and) ...believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years, and was permitted in the early 1960's to examine its papers and secret records. … I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known. -- Carroll Quigley (False)   The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world. -- Carroll Quigley   I am now quite sure that 'Tragedy and Hope' was suppressed although I do not know why or by whom. -- Carroll Quigley   For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century. -- Carroll Quigley (False)   Under God we are determined that, wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever, we shall be called upon to make our exit, we will die freemen. -- Josiah Quincy, Jr.   Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a "halter" intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men. -- Josiah Quincy, Jr.   Lawyers [are] operators of the toll bridge across which anyone in search of justice has to pass. -- Jane Bryant Quinn   Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish. -- Marcus Fabius Quintilianus   Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be. -- Don Quixote   Those who swallow down usury cannot arise except as one whom Satan has prostrated by his touch does rise. That is because they say, trading is only like usury; and Allah has allowed trading and forbidden usury. To whomsoever then the admonition has come from his Lord, then he desists, he shall have what is already passed, and his affairs are in the hands of Allah; and whoever returns to it - these are the inmates of the fire; they shall abide in it..." -- Qur'an   Most new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later comes to be regarded as obvious. -- Isidor Issac Rabi   Our government has found that the most effective way to control a person is not by the ballot or the bullet, but rather by the 'bucket'. Today, in a country that fought a revolution to rid itself of a repressive government and excessive taxes, government takes 40 percent of everything we earn in the form of taxes. -- Byron C. Radaker   To have freedom is only to have that which is absolutely necessary to enable us to be what we ought to be, and to possess what we ought to possess. -- Ibn Rahel   [It is a basic principle of a tyrant] to unarm his people of weapons, money, and all means whereby they resist his power. -- 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. -- Sir Walter Raleigh   Heresy hunters are intolerant not only of unorthodox ideas; worse than that, they are intolerant of ideas -- of any ideas which are really alive and not empty cocoons. -- Philip Lee Ralph   Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it -- at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens. -- Ayn Rand   The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced. -- Ayn Rand   ...there is no such entity as 'the public' - since the public is merely a number of individuals - the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others. -- Ayn Rand   [S]tatism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power -- to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed. ... Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production. -- Ayn Rand   The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights... -- Ayn Rand   The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.  If service and self-sacrifice are a moral ideal, and if the "selfishness" of human nature prevents men from leaping into sacrificial furnaces, there is no reason -- no reason that a mystic moralist could name -- why a dictator should not push them in at the point of bayonets -- for their own good, or the good of humanity, or the good of posterity, or the good of the latest bureaucrat's five-year plan.  There is no reason that they can name to oppose any atrocity.  The value of a man's life?  His right to exist?  His right to pursue his own happiness?  These are concepts that belong to individualism and capitalism -- to the antithesis of the altruist morality. -- Ayn Rand   There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. -- Ayn Rand   Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. -- Ayn Rand   When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper which should have been gold, are a token of honor—your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. -- Ayn Rand   America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to "the common good," but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way. -- Ayn Rand   Creation comes before distribution or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. -- Ayn Rand   Do you think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the 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. -- Ayn Rand   When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion -- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing -- when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -- when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you -- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice -- you may know that your society is doomed. -- Ayn Rand   Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: "Account Overdrawn. -- Ayn Rand   When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are. -- 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   Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals -- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government -- that it is not a charter _for_ government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection _against_ the government. -- 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   The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.\\\\ If service and self-sacrifice are a moral ideal, and if the "selfishness" of human nature prevents men from leaping into sacrificial furnaces, there is no reason -- no reason that a mystic moralist could name -- why a dictator should not push them in at the point of bayonets -- for their own good, or the good of humanity, or the good of posterity, or the good of the latest bureaucrat's five-year plan.  There is no reason that they can name to oppose any atrocity.  The value of a man's life?  His right to exist?  His right to pursue his own happiness?  These are concepts that belong to individualism and capitalism -- to the antithesis of the altruist morality. -- Ayn Rand   Needless to say, under either system [socialism or fascism], the inequalities of income and standard of living are greater than anything possible under a free economy -- and a man’s position is determined, not by his productive ability and achievement, but by political pull and force. Under both systems, sacrifice is invoked as a magic, omnipotent solution in any crisis -- and “the public good” is the altar on which victims are immolated. -- Ayn Rand   Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to "society," to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests.  The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force -- and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism. -- Ayn Rand   Individualism regards man -- every man -- as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.  Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights -- and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. -- Ayn Rand   A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. -- 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   Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the following question: If one had a “time machine” and transported the united labor chieftains of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century—would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets? -- Ayn Rand   Collectivism is a doctrine that holds that the individual has no rights, and the ultimate standard of value is the group to which 'he belongs.' Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas -- or of inherited knowledge -- which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men. Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination. -- Ayn Rand   Let me explain this.  There are, fundamentally, only two causes of the progress of the nineteenth century -- the same two causes which you will find at the root of any happy, benevolent, progressive era in human history.  One cause is psychological, the other existential -- or: one pertains to man's consciousness, the other to the physical conditions of his existence.  The first is reason, the second is freedom.  And when I say "freedom," I do not mean poetic sloppiness, such as "freedom from want" or "freedom from fear" or "freedom from the necessity of earning a living."  I mean "freedom from compulsion -- freedom from rule by physical force."  Which means: political freedom. -- Ayn Rand   Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel. -- Ayn Rand   When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. -- Ayn Rand   Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns—or dollars. Take your choice -- there is no other -- and your time is running out. -- Ayn Rand   It is a policeman’s duty to protect men from criminals -- criminals being those who seize wealth by force. It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not the protection, but the plunder of property -- then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman. -- Ayn Rand   Make no mistake about it -- and tell it to your Republican friends: capitalism and altruism cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society.  Tell it to anyone who attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of the "public good" or the "general welfare" or "service to society" or the benefit it brings to the poor.  All these things are true, but they are the by-products, the secondary consequences of capitalism -- not its goal, purpose or moral justification.  The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man -- every man -- is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, not a sacrificial animal serving anyone's need. -- Ayn Rand   The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal. -- Ayn Rand   It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for. -- Ayn Rand   In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. -- Ayn Rand   It is a matter of record that in the German Election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis - with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government. -- Ayn Rand   The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, [but that his use of brutality was] the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced. -- Ayn Rand   Let me explain this.  There are, fundamentally, only two causes of the progress of the nineteenth century -- the same two causes which you will find at the root of any happy, benevolent, progressive era in human history.  One cause is psychological, the other existential -- or: one pertains to man's consciousness, the other to the physical conditions of his existence.  The first is reason, the second is freedom.  And when I say "freedom," I do not mean poetic sloppiness, such as "freedom from want" or "freedom from fear" or "freedom from the necessity of earning a living."  I mean "freedom from compulsion -- freedom from rule by physical force."  Which means: political freedom. -- 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   Make no mistake about it -- and tell it to your Republican friends: capitalism and altruism cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society. Tell it to anyone who attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of the "public good" or the "general welfare" or "service to society" or the benefit it brings to the poor.  All these things are true, but they are the by-products, the secondary consequences of capitalism -- not its goal, purpose or moral justification.  The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man -- every man -- is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, not a sacrificial animal serving anyone's need. -- Ayn Rand   The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force. -- Ayn Rand   The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time. -- Ayn Rand   Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads. -- Ayn Rand   Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial society -– and the solution is laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State. -- Ayn Rand   The power of morality is the greatest of all intellectual powers -– and mankind’s tragedy lies in the fact that the vicious moral code men have accepted destroys them by means of the best within them. -- Ayn Rand   We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high. -- Ayn Rand   The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. -- Ayn Rand   There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power 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. -- Ayn Rand   We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. -- Ayn Rand   There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns. -- Ayn Rand   Do you wish to know when that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by Compulsion -- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing -- when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you -- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice -- you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. -- Ayn Rand   Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people’s savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments. -- Ayn Rand   It was not the tycoons of big business, it was not the working classes, it was the intellectuals who reversed the trend toward political freedom and revived the doctrines of the absolute State, of totalitarian government rule, of the government's right to control the lives of the citizens in any manner it pleases.  This time, it was not in the name of the "divine right of kings," but in the name of the divine right of the masses.  The basic principle was the same: the right to enforce at the point of a gun the moral doctrines of whoever happens to seize control of the machinery of government. -- Ayn Rand   If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty  to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth -- any man of integrity. -- Ayn Rand   I refuse to apologize for my ability -- I refuse to apologize for my success -- I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. -- Ayn Rand   The three values which men held for centuries and which have now collapsed are: mysticism, collectivism, altruism. Mysticism -- as a cultural power -- died at the time of the Renaissance. Collectivism -- as a political ideal -- died in World War II. As to altruism -- it has never been alive. It is the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization, and men survived it only to the extent to which they neither believed nor practiced it. ... -- Ayn Rand   Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. -- Ayn Rand   Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. -- Ayn Rand   The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities. -- Ayn Rand   The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave. -- Ayn Rand   It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money -- and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it. Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. -- Ayn Rand   There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction. -- Ayn Rand   ...and we must consider," Austen Heller was saying unemotionally, "that since--unfortunately--we are forced to live together, the most important thing for us to remember is that the only way in which we can have any law at all is to have as little of it as possible. I see no ethical standard to which to measure the whole unethical conception of a State, except in the amount of time, of thought, of money, of effort and of obedience, which a society extorts from its every member. Its value and its civilization are in inverse ratio to that extortion. There is no conceivable law by which a man can be forced to work on any terms except those he chooses to set. There is no conceivable law to prevent him from setting them--just as there is none to force his employer to accept them. The freedom to agree or disagree is the foundation of our kind of society--and the freedom to strike is a part of it. I am mentioning this as a reminder to a certain Petronius from Hell’s Kitchen, an exquisite bastard who has been rather noisy lately about telling us that this strike represents a destruction of law and order. -- Ayn Rand   So long as [men] hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged 'good' can justify it -- there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations. -- Ayn Rand   Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureucrat's  tool is fear. -- Ayn Rand   Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the “rights” of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights. -- Ayn Rand   The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. -- Ayn Rand   Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force? -- Ayn Rand   My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. -- Ayn Rand   The goal of the “liberals”—as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle the country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time. Never permitting their direction to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the “conservative” was only to retard that process.) -- Ayn Rand   One can ignore reality, but one cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. -- Ayn Rand   For years, the intellectual posture of America's political leaders has been a long, pleading, appeasing, self-abasing whine of apology for this country's greatness - an apology addressed to every advocate or perpetrator of collectivism's horrors and failures anywhere on earth. -- Ayn Rand   Don't forget that pure democracy is a form of collectivism -- it readily sacrifices individual rights to majority wishes. Since it involves no constitutional bill of rights, or at least, no working and effective one, the majority-of-the-moment can and does vote away the rights of the minority-of-the-moment, even of a single individual.  This has been called 'mob rule,' the 'tyranny of the majority' and many other pejorative names.  It is one of the greatest threats to liberty, the reason why America's founding fathers wrote so much so disparagingly of pure democracy. -- Bert Rand   Anyone who confuses liberty lovers with nazis or other fascists is waaaayy too stupid (or evil) to deserve respect. -- Bert Rand   Take a look at how the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies have totally snookered the politically-correct media and liberal establishments into fighting a 'War on Smoking' for them. After all, absolutely none of their anxiety drugs can quell anxiety or panic attacks anywhere near as cheaply, quickly or thoroughly as a cigarette can. -- Bert Rand   Any person or any so-called 'political spectrum' that equates live-and-let-livers with control freaks is even more evil than the worst control freaks themselves. -- Bert Rand   A people who mean to continue free must be prepared to meet danger in person; not rely upon the fallacious protection of mercenary armies. -- Edmund Randolph   The general object was to produce a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origins, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy. -- Edmund Randolph   The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it. -- John Randolph   We all know our duty better than we discharge it. -- John Randolph   You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. -- Jeannette Rankin   The United Nations is the greatest fraud in all History. Its purpose is to destroy the United States. -- John E. Rankin   We have plenty of freedom in this country but not a great deal of independence. -- John W. Raper   Socialism is: \\ The taking of money (taxes) from some people who work for it and giving it to others who don't work for it. On a grand scale. \\ The vast expansion of freebies doled out by central government. In order to create and sustain dependence. \\ The government protection of favored persons and corporations, permitting them and aiding them to expand their fortunes without limit, regardless of what crimes they commit in the process. (Monsanto would be a fine example.) \\ The squeezing out of those who would compete with the favored persons and corporations. \\ The dictatorship by and for the very wealthy, pretending to be the servant of the masses. \\ The lie that the dictatorship is being run by the masses. \\ The gradual lowering of the standard of living for the overwhelming number of people. \\ The propaganda claiming socialism is the path to a better world for all. \\ \\ In other words, socialism is a protection racket and a long con and a heartless system of elite control, posing as the greatest good. It is just another form of top-down tyranny---as old as the hills. -- Jon Rappoport   From the moment the first leader of the first clan in human history took charge, he busied himself with this question: 'What can I say and do that will make my people react the way I want them to.' He was the first Pavlov. He was the first psychologist, the first propagandist, the first mind-control boss. His was the first little empire. Since then, only the means and methods have changed. -- Jon Rappoport   War, what is it good for? With the same "socialist" elites backing both sides, it's good for business. It's good for creating chaos and destruction. It's good for launching new global organizations, in the aftermath; organizations that exert a level of control and reach that didn't exist before. It's good for launching organizations like the United Nations and the European Union and the World Trade Organization---dedicated to Globalism, which in turn is dedicated to planned civilization, in which the individual is demeaned and the group is All. Freedom is demeaned; and dominance by the few over the many is hailed as peace in our time. -- Jon Rappoport   Under the surface of this global civilization, a great and secret war is taking place. The two opponents hold different conceptions of Reality. On one side, those who claim that humans operate purely on the basis of stimulus-response, like machines; on the other side, those who believe there is a gigantic thing called freedom. Phase One of the war is already over. The stimulus-response people have won. In Phase Two, people are waking up to the far-reaching and devastating consequences of the Pavlovian program. -- Jon Rappoport   There is an irreducible thing. It's called freedom. It is native to every individual. Sometimes it rears its head in the middle of the night, and the dreamer awakes. And he asks himself: what is my freedom for? And then he begins a voyage that no device can record, measure, or analyze. If he pursues it long enough, it takes him out of the labyrinth. -- Jon Rappoport   Think about the agendas behind universal vaccination, climate change, universal psychiatric treatment, GMO food, and other 'science-based' frauds. They all imply a false collectivist model, in which individuals give up their power in exchange for 'doing good' and becoming members of the largest group in the world: 'disabled' people with needs that must be addressed and satisfied. Instead of supporting the liberation of the individual, the controllers want to squash it. Why? Because they fear individual power. It is forever the unpredictable wild card. They want a society in which every thought an individual thinks connects him to a greater whole---and if that sounds attractive, understand that this Whole is a fiction, intentionally faked to resemble a genuine oceanic feeling. -- Jon Rappoport   The Council on Foreign Relations is “the establishment.” Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also announces and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state of a one-world dictatorship. -- John Rarick   A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism (no final say); it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will. -- Jonathan Rauch   The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both. -- William Rawle   The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one, analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. -- John Rawls   The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. -- Dr. John Joseph Ray   The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word 'Nazi' is a German abbreviation for 'National Socialist' (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was 'The National Socialist German Workers' Party' (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). -- Dr. John Joseph Ray   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. -- Leonard E. Read   What, actually, is the difference between communism and fascism?  Both are forms of statism, authoritarianism.  The only difference between Stalin’s communism and Mussolini’s fascism is an insignificant detail in organizational structure. -- Leonard E. Read   What, actually, is the difference between communism and fascism? Both are forms of statism, authoritarianism. The only difference between Stalin’s communism and Mussolini’s fascism is an insignificant detail in organizational structure. -- Leonard E. Read   Oh, joy to the world! the hour is come,\\ When the nations to freedom awake,\\ When the royalists stand agape and dumb,\\ And monarchs with terror shake!\\ Over the walls of majesty\\ "Upharsin is writ in words of fire,\\ And the eyes of the bondsman, wherever they be\\ Are lit with wild desire.\\ Soon shall the thrones that blot the world,\\ Like the Orleans, into the dust be hurl'd,\\ And the word roll on like a hurricane's breath,\\ Till the farthest slave hears what it saith--\\ Arise, arise, be free! -- Thomas Buchanan Read   What a state of society is this in which freethinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin? -- William Winwood Reade   It was the Republican Party that demolished the shining city on the hill my father built. It was the Republican Party that was 100 percent responsible for the end of the Reagan Revolution...[T]he Republican Party abandoned the trail leading to that shining city on the hill to become itself a quasi-Left-wing organization which looks at the Democrats’ welfare programs and says ‘me too’. -- Michael Reagan   Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. -- Ronald Reagan   There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit. -- 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   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   Our coins bear the words 'In God We Trust'. We take the oath of office asking His help in keeping that oath. And we proclaim that we are a nation under God when we pledge allegiance to the flag. But we can't mention His name in a public school or even sing religious hymns that are nondenominational. Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas. -- Ronald Reagan   Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. -- Ronald Reagan   Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the people.' 'We the people' tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. 'We the people' are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the people' tell the government what it is allowed to do. 'We the people' are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I've tried to do these past eight years. -- Ronald Reagan   We developed at the local school district level probably the best public school system in the world. Or it was until the Federal government added Federal interference to Federal financial aid and eroded educational quality in the process. -- 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   We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him. . . . But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure. -- 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   Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer. It´s so hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever substitute for millions of individuals working night and day to make their dreams come true. The fact is, bureaucracies are a problem around the world. -- Ronald Reagan   The taxpayer; that's someone who works for the federal government, but doesn´t have to take a civil service examination. -- 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 you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. -- Ronald Reagan   Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people. We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should. Happy Fourth of July. -- Ronald Reagan   We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development. -- Ronald Reagan   If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. -- Ronald Reagan   How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin. -- 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   Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. -- Ronald Reagan   No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! -- Ronald Reagan   The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization. The West will not contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written. -- Ronald Reagan   It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history.... [It is] the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism- Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people. -- Ronald Reagan   Common sense told us that to preserve the peace, we'd have to become strong again after years of weakness and confusion. So, we rebuilt our defenses, and this New Year we toasted the new peacefulness around the globe. Not only have the superpowers actually begun to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons...but the regional conflicts that rack the globe are also beginning to cease. -- Ronald Reagan   In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis -- a crisis where the demands of the economic order are colliding directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union.... [Communism will be] left on the ash heap of history. -- Ronald Reagan   Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. -- Ronald Reagan   As we celebrate Thanksgiving ... we should ask what we can do as individuals to demonstrate our gratitude to God for all He has done. Such reflection can only add to the significance of this precious day of remembrance. Let us recommit ourselves to that devotion to God and family that has played such an important role in making this a great Nation, and which will be needed as a source of strength if we are to remain a great people. -- Ronald Reagan   Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, prosperous, progressive and free. -- Ronald Reagan   Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. -- Ronald Reagan   Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem. -- Ronald Reagan   Are you entitled to the fruits of your labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend? -- Ronald Reagan   The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away. -- Ronald Reagan   There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of standardized mediocrity. -- Ronald Reagan   Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive, [it] reeks with injustice and is fundamentally un-American... it has earned a rebellion and it's time we rebelled. -- 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   Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. -- Ronald Reagan   Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. -- Ronald Reagan   When you start talking about government as 'we' instead of 'they,' you have been in office too long. -- Ronald Reagan   There are some who've forgotten why we have a military. It's not to promote war; it's to be prepared for peace. -- Ronald Reagan   Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? ... Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp. -- 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   Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets. -- 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   Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book. -- Ronald Reagan   Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! -- Ronald Reagan   Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves. -- Ronald Reagan   One definition of an economist is somebody who sees something happen in practice and wonders if it will work in theory. -- 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   I think the best possible social program is a job. -- Ronald Reagan   No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. -- Ronald Reagan   It would seem that not only is religion lacking in the schools -- so is common sense. I wonder what a teacher is supposed to say if a kid asks about those four words on a dime -- 'In God We Trust.' Or maybe that's why they aren't being taught how to read these days. -- 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. -- Ronald Reagan   Tyranny, like fog in the well known poem, often creeps in silently 'on little cat feet.' -- Ronald Reagan   The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution. -- Ronald Reagan   History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. -- Ronald Reagan   Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it.  If it keeps moving, regulate it.  And if it stops moving, subsidize it. -- Ronald Reagan   It is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work -- work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. ... We shall reflect the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen, and loving them, not reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they are sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory? ... We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each Inauguration Day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer. -- Ronald Reagan   Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.... We've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of government himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price. -- Ronald Reagan   In an atmosphere of liberty, artists and patrons are free to think the unthinkable and create the audacious; they are free to make both horrendous mistakes and glorious celebrations. -- Ronald Reagan   There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder. -- 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   We've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. -- Ronald Reagan   I was pleased last year to proclaim 1983 the Year of the Bible. But, you know, a group called the A.C.L.U. severely criticized me for doing that. Well, I wear their indictment like a badge of honor. -- Ronald Reagan   Former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart noted (in his dissent of Abington Township, 1963) ‘if religious exercises are held to be impermissible activity in schools, religion is placed at an artificial and state-created disadvantage. Permission for such exercises for those who want them is necessary if the schools are truly to be neutral in the matter of religion. And a refusal to permit them is seen not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism.' -- Ronald Reagan   We even had to pass a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago to allow student prayer groups the same access to school rooms after classes that a Young Marxist Society … would already enjoy. -- Ronald Reagan   Well-meaning Americans in the name of freedom have taken freedom away. For the sake of religious tolerance, they’ve forbidden religious practice. -- Ronald Reagan   As we struggle to teach our children … we dare not forget that our civilization was built by men and women who placed their faith in a loving God. If Congress can begin each day with a moment of prayer … so then can our sons and daughters. -- Ronald Reagan   The classical Liberal, during the Revolutionary time, was a man who wanted less power for the king and more power for the people. He wanted people to have more say in the running of their lives and he wanted protection for the God-given rights of the people. He did not believe those rights were dispensations granted by the king to the people, he believed that he was born with them. Well, that today is the Conservative. -- Ronald Reagan   If what we read today can result in a subpoena or a search warrant tomorrow, fear replaces freedom. We presented three witnesses who said there would, in fact, be a chilling effect if the Tattered Cover was forced to turn over the information. -- Dan Recht   Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. -- Ambrose Redmoon   [S]ince 1933 those in control of the Government, realizing that the power to tax is the power to destroy, have appeared before the Committee on Ways and Means with the proposal to tax firearms. While they narrowed it down to machine guns on the ground that it would prevent bandits from using firearms of a certain size, yet the thought was there of getting control of the private firearms of this country. I know that our chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and others on that committee were on the alert, sensed the danger, and accordingly went no further than partial taxation and regulation, but I think every member of the committee saw the purpose and the motive of the proposed tax. -- Daniel A. Reed   It constantly amazes me that defenders of the free market are expected to offer certainty and perfection while government has only to make promises and express good intentions. Many times, for instance, I’ve heard people say, "A free market in education is a bad idea because some child somewhere might fall through the cracks," even though in today’s government school, millions of children are falling through the cracks every day. -- 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. -- Dr. Lawrence W. Reed   After the 16th Amendment was ratified, an income tax was imposed starting in 1913 with rates ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent with the top rate applying only to incomes in excess of $500,000. By 1916 that top rate had risen to 15 percent, on income in excess of $2,000,000. The top rate exceeded 90 percent at its peak in the early 1950s. The first 1040 form -- instructions and all -- took up only four pages. Today there are some 4,000 pages of tax forms and instructions. American workers and business are forced to spend more than 5.4 billion man-hours every year figuring out their taxes. Since those hours could be put to a more productive use, and almost surely would be in the absence of today’s incomprehensible tax code, the result is a large dead-weight output loss of some $200 billion each year. ... The IRS now has more enforcement personnel than the EPA, BATF, OSHA, FDA, and DEA combined. With its 115,000-man workforce, it has the power to search the property and financial documents of American citizens without a search warrant and to seize property from American citizens without a trial. It routinely does both. Economist James L. Payne has written a most revealing analysis of the IRS, a 1993 book entitled Costly Returns. He arrives at a stunning conclusion, the total cost to collect our federal taxes, including the effects on the economy as a whole adds up to an amazing 65 percent of all the tax dollars received annually. The U.S. tax system, says Payne, has produced hundreds of thousands of victims of erroneous IRS penalties, liens, levies, and tax advice. In answering taxpayer questions, for example, the IRS telephone information service has in previous years given about one-third of all callers -- as many as 8.5 million Americans -- the wrong answers to their questions. A 1987 General Accounting Office study found that 47 percent of a random sample of IRS correspondence -- including demands for payments -- contained errors. Incredibly a GAO audit of the IRS in 1993 found widespread evidence of financial malfeasance and gross negligence at the agency. The IRS could not account for 64 percent of its congressional appropriation! -- Dr. Lawrence W. Reed   Federal regulations alone are estimated to cost Americans more than $600 billion yearly. We pay government in lives shortened or lost because of delays in new drug approvals. Because of a raft of restrictive barriers to enterprise, we pay for government in terms of businesses stymied or never started and jobs never created. A government education monopoly that often fails to educate exacts a terrible price by stunting careers and squandering immense human potential. One cost of government that can’t be reckoned in dollars and cents -- a diminution of the individual’s basic freedom to act and speak on his own -- has been deemed important enough to spark a revolution from time to time. -- Dr. Lawrence W. Reed   The nation relies upon public discussion as one of the indispensable means to attain correct solutions to problems of social welfare. Curtailment of free speech limits this open discussion. Our whole history teaches that adjustment of social relations through reason is possible when free speech is maintained. -- Stanley Forman Reed   One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. -- Thomas B. Reed   The value of paper money is precisely the value of a politician's promise, as high or low as you put that; the value of gold is protected by the inability of politicians to manufacture it. -- Sir William Rees-Mogg   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   Washington, of course, aside from being one of the most mismanaged, crime-ridden cities on the planet, is a place where 535 federal legislators and about 38,000 lobbyists work at confiscating and redistributing the incomes of the American 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. -- Charley Reese   Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die. -- Charley Reese   Some lawyers and judges may have forgotten it, but the purpose of the court system is to produce justice, not slavish obedience to the law. -- Charley Reese   If Americans wish to preserve a country they will recognize, then the first step is to recognize the enemy. Public education is the enemy. The entertainment industry is the enemy. The corporate culture is the enemy. The advertising industry is the enemy. And most of the politicians in both parties are the enemy. An enemy is defined as anybody, or any organization, which is attacking the traditional beliefs of Americans. -- Charley Reese   American tyranny has come gradually, like a slowly rising river. Each of us does not realize the danger until the water comes in our door. Until then, it is merely someone else's problem and a problem that we fool ourselves into thinking won't reach us. -- Charley Reese   [N]o American should retreat an inch on the right of jurors to acquit if they perceive the law or its administration to be unjust. -- Charley Reese   If you look at Washington, you see permanently camped on the banks of the Potomac spread around in concentric circles an army representing thousands of selfish interests. The sole purpose of their presence is to plunder, by hook or crook, the public treasury for the benefit of their particular people or corporations. -- Charley Reese   Unless they can pass the same test that immigrants must pass to become citizens, people shouldn't be allowed to vote. The idea that there is some public benefit in ignoramuses and morons pulling levers next to names on a ballot is one of the evil myths of post-modern America. The purpose of voting, in our country, is to select men and women with the competence and integrity to operate the mechanics of government fixed by our Constitution. For this process to have any public benefit requires that the choices be made on an intelligent, knowledgeable and reasoned basis. -- Charley Reese   If we could manage our own finances the way the Congress does the nation’s, we’d all be living in high cotton and eating high on the hog. -- Charley Reese   The Constitution requires that Congress treat similarly situated persons similarly, not that it engages in gestures of superficial equality. -- William H. Rehnquist   We start with first principles. The Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers. -- William H. Rehnquist   The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant. ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. ...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress. -- Robert Reich   Restraint of government is the true liberty and freedom of the people. -- John P. Reid   For the average family, all these taxes now eat 38 percent of gross income, a higher rate of taxation than ever before in the peacetime history of the United States. By comparison, the typical two-income family in the mid-1950s paid 28 percent of their income for taxes. We’re now at the absurd point where the typical family works until noon of every working day to satisfy the taxman, paying more in taxes than they spend for food, clothing and housing combined. -- Ralph Reiland   It ain’t over on April 15! If you stop, for example, for a $10 pizza on Thursday night to celebrate being done with the IRS for another year, the taxman will be right there to grab a slice or two. On top of paying the sales tax, you’ll also be picking up a major chunk of what the government charges the pizza shop owner for local property taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, federal payroll taxes, federal and state and local income taxes, and worker’s compensation taxes. Altogether, according to a study by the Americans for Tax Reform, that comes to $3.80 on a $10 pizza for the omnipresent taxman. If you pick up a Bud six-pack to go with the pizza, there’s another 43 cents of each beer dollar that goes straight to the taxman for excise taxes, income taxes, property taxes, etc. For something stronger, say Jack Daniels, the taxman’s share is $7.20, on average, out of every $10. Go lighter and just drink Pepsi and it’s 35 percent of what you pay that goes for taxes at all levels. Add some Marlboros and its 75 percent of the retail price that’s funneled directly into the state’s coffers. Get home and hit the light switch and another $26 out of every $100 on the electric bill goes for government rather than electricity. If you’re flying the next day, the taxman is up early and waiting at the aiport, pocketing $40 on every $100 airline ticket. And he’s there in the hotel lobby when you land, snatching $43 on every $100 of the hotel bill. Go out to dinner and it’s another $28 of every $100 of the tab that ends up with the government rather than with the restaurant, the farmers, truckers and everyone else who worked together to produce the meal. -- Ralph Reiland   At the start of this nation’s unique experiment with individual sovereignty and limited government, “Taxation without representation is tyranny” was the watchword of the American Revolution. For our Founding Fathers, a level of taxation of only a few cents on a dollar, siphoned off to a faraway and arrogant bureaucracy, was enough to ignite a revolution enough to grab the trusty musket off the wall. Today, in contrast, if we dare to startle the more panicky among us by buying a good rabbit gun, the government’s there at the cash register to check our papers and seize $46 on every $100. -- Ralph Reiland   At each and every stop, in items large and small, the greedy hand of government has its sticky fingers in every pocket. With bread, a recent study by Price Waterhouse shows that 30 different taxes imposed on the production and sale of a loaf of bread account for 27 percent of the average retail price. Buy some new tires and it’s $36 on every $100 that goes to the taxman. On the price of a new car, an Americans for Tax Reform study shows that the total taxes reach 45 percent of the showroom sticker price. Add some gas and 54 percent of what you pay for a fill-up goes for 43 different federal, state and local taxes rather than to the oil producer and retailer. -- Ralph Reiland   The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other. -- David Reisman   Aside from the collective gain that comes from that free interchange of ideas, there is a direct personal value for the individual concerned. Each of us should have the right to speak his thoughts and to hear the thoughts of others… -- Charles Rembar   To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes. -- Ernest Renan   The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving any excuse. -- Jules Renard   In all men is evil sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men. -- Mary Renault   Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal. -- Janet Reno   Gun registration is not enough. -- Janet Reno   The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner. -- Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary   Anyone who decries a State flag belittles himself before all civilized citizens, and commits an unlawful act. But one who decries the red flag ... thereby excludes himself from the community of all honest people. -- Resolution of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party   A government is the only vessel known to leak from the top. -- James Reston   The rising power of the United States in world affairs ... requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism ... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side ... but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities. -- James Reston   A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence. -- Jean-Francois Revel   Democracy tends to ignore, even deny, threats to its existence because it loathes doing what is needed to counter them. It awakens only when the danger becomes deadly, imminent, evident. By then, either there is too little time left for it to save itself, or the price of survival has become crushingly high. -- Jean-Francois Revel   A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence. -- Jean-Francois Revel   To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles. -- Jean-Francois Revel   As the interned American citizens of Japanese descent learned, the Bill of Rights provided them with little protection when it was needed. -- Glenn Harlan Reynolds   [T]he people as ultimate sovereigns, retain the ultimate power -- and even the duty -- to overthrow any government that fails to respect their authority. -- Glenn Harlan Reynolds   A 'well regulated militia' was thus one that was well-trained and equipped, not one that was 'well-regulated' in the modern sense of being subjected to numerous government prohibitions and restrictions. -- 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. -- Glenn Harlan Reynolds   In the early and mid-1970’s, public advice was to cooperate with robbers and rapists in order to minimize personal injury. Appeasement, in other words. While this may be good advice in some circumstances, as general behavior it makes crime more rewarding. A nation of sheep is nice for wolves. -- Morgan Reynolds   The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. -- Rhode Island Constitution   The constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. -- Rhode Island Declaration of Rights Article I, Section I   We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories. -- Cecil Rhodes   Why should we not form a secret society with but one object, the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire? -- Cecil Rhodes   Africa is still lying ready for us. It is our duty to take it. -- Cecil Rhodes   We need a common enemy to unite us. -- Condoleezza Rice   Separation of powers is a problem for foreign policy. -- Condoleezza Rice   But, clearly, the prime minister has laid down some ground rules which any functioning democratic state would insist upon, having to do with, you know, arms belonging to the state, not to -- not in private hands. The current circumstances come out of what I think is a very important and indeed appropriate action that the Iraqi government has taken. -- Condoleezza Rice   Lying is done with words and also with silence. -- Adrienne Rich   I've never had a problem with drugs.  I've had problems with the police. -- Keith Richards   When a legislature decides to steal some of our rights and plans to use police force to accomplish it, what's the real difference between them and the thief? Darn little! They hide behind the excuse that they're legislating democratically. The fact they do it by a majority vote has no moral significance whatsoever. Numerical might does not constitute right, no more than a lynch mob can justify its act because a majority participated. -- H. L. Richardson   For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse. -- Samuel Richardson   If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him. -- Cardinal Richelieu   Among other grand achievements, F. A. Hayek had a remarkable career pointing out the flaws in collectivism.  One of his keenest insights was that, paradoxically, any collectivist system necessarily depends on one individual (or small group) to make key social and economic decisions. In contrast, a system based on individualism takes advantage of the aggregate, or 'collective,' information of the whole society; through his actions each participant contributes his own particular, if incomplete, knowledge—information that could never be tapped by the individual at the head of a collectivist state. -- Sheldon Richman   Apologists for activist government never tire of telling us that the benevolent state is our protector and that without it we'd be at the mercy of monsters. It is about time that we understood that the U.S. government does more to endanger the American people than any imagined monsters around the world…by pursuing its Grand Foreign Policy of meddling anywhere and everywhere. -- Sheldon Richman   Some conservatives are surprised to find people on the Left supporting the war in Afghanistan. It's not surprising at all…It is hard for the government to prosecute a war and not expand…Conservatives may think they can support war and oppose the expansion of the state, but that is like trying to square the circle. What makes them think they can contain the expansion? -- Sheldon Richman   Today, the people who would use guns to violate rights have little trouble getting them, while those who would use them to defend their rights have increasing trouble getting them. ... Gun control is in effect a subsidy for criminals. -- Sheldon Richman   It is embarrassing to have to remind people of this in the United States of America. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson singled out three natural rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The last phrase, appearing instead of "property," has prompted much discussion. I cannot say what Jefferson was thinking. But here's a plausible theory: Property is already implicit in liberty. If you are free, you can use your belongings as you see fit. But by specifying the pursuit of happiness Jefferson might have been pointing out that the blessing of liberty need not be justified through selfless service to others. One's life and happiness on earth are justification enough. -- Sheldon Richman   Perhaps the deterioration of American education is illustrated by the high correlation between the number of years a person has attended school and his inability to understand the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says. -- 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. -- Sheldon Richman   The media, far from being a conspiracy to dull the political sense of the people, could be viewed as a conspiracy to disguise the extent of political indifference. -- David Riesman   Economic necessity cannot justify a disregard of cardinal constitutional guarantee. -- Riley v. Carter   The man who lives under the servitude of laws takes, without being aware of it, the soul of a slave. -- Georges Ripert   Confronted with such a tight regulation, can man pretend to be free because the tyranny he is subjected to derives from the law? Of course, the legal power is not called "tyranny" since it appears to be established by the general will in the common interest, and since, in any event, occurrences of arbitrary power are infrequent. But a master's equity does not mean that his subjects are not slaves. ... And when their servitude lasts and their thoughts follow their behavior, the state becomes totalitarian and subjection is complete. Since it is legal servitude, the regime is still said to be democratic. Such is the hypocrisy of political language. -- Georges Ripert   We continue to claim that nobody is supposed to ignore the law. But we must give some credit to those who know it. -- Georges Ripert   The history of war is the history of powerful individuals willing to sacrifice thousands upon thousands of other people’s lives for personal gains. -- Michael Rivero   Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all. -- Michael Rivero   Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one’s self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all. -- Michael Rivero   One of the greatest problems that we as a free people face today is that for the past 100 years trial judges in the U.S. have routinely misinformed jurors that they were bound to accept the judge’s opinion of what the law is; which law to apply; and whether or not they had to find a defendant guilty. In so doing these judges have welded shut this all important safety valve, which our Founders so wisely provided our society -- and the result has been an explosive one. -- Mike Robbins   Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. -- Tom Robbins   Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it. -- Tom Robbins   Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of liberty. -- Henry Martyn Robert   For more than a century, this Court has recognized that the admission and exclusion of foreign nationals is a 'fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control.' -- Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.   The tax that was supposed to soak the rich has instead soaked America. The beneficiary of the income tax has not been the poor, but big government. The income tax has given us a government bureaucracy that outnumbers the manufacturing work force. It has created welfare dependencies that have entrapped millions of Americans in an underclass that is forced to live a sordid existence of trading votes for government handouts. -- Paul Craig Roberts   If liberals can seize our guns because they are dangerous, we have no chance of holding on to our cars and our homes. The total number of accidental fatalities (the majority of which are hunting accidents) of all types of firearms is infinitesimal compared to the number of fatalities from car and home accidents. More children die from playing with cigarette lighters than from playing with loaded guns. -- Paul Craig Roberts   I don’t know why liberals want to disarm the law-abiding population, but I do know that not a single argument proffered stands the light of facts. Armed citizens deter far more crimes than the police, and far more lives are saved by the intended victim being armed than are lost in firearm accidents. -- Paul Craig Roberts   In U.S. politics, 'compassion' means giving money and privileges to well organized interest groups at everyone else's expense. -- Paul Craig Roberts   BATF is a bureaucracy that has outlived its mission. Prohibitionist ended a half century ago. Eliot Ness is no longer needed to chase down gangsters and their untaxed profits from bootlegging. Today no one smuggles tobacco. Treasury agents no longer have anything to do but harass innocent gun owners. The committee [Senate Judiciary Committee] concluded that BATF was a rogue operation that trampled all over the Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. Following the congressional hearings, the Treasury Department was so embarrassed by the documented abuses that it drew up plans to abolish the agency. However, it was unable to do so, because neither the customs Bureau nor the Secret Service would accept the transfer of discredited BATF agents into their organization. -- Paul Craig Roberts   According to the Tax Foundation, the average American worker works 127 days of the year just to pay his taxes. That means that government owns 36 percent of the average American’s output—which is more than feudal serfs owed the robber barons. That 36 percent is more than the average American spends on food, clothing and housing. In other words, if it were not for taxes, the average American’s living standard would at least double. -- Paul Craig Roberts   I spent three years getting my law degree at Yale Law School. From the moment I enrolled, I was assigned huge, leather-bound editions of legal cases to study and discuss. I read what lawyers and judges, professors and historians said about the Constitution. But never once was I assigned the task of reading the Constitution itself...Over the last decade, however, I have become a student of the Constitution, searching each line for its meaning and intent. Studying the Constitution is like studying the Bible. It is amazing how much more you will learn when you quit studying about it and pick it up to read it for yourself. -- Pat Robertson   In 1883, a small group of Socialists met in London, announcing their intentions of converting the British economic system from capitalism to socialism. This group chose the name 'Fabian Society.' One of the leading members of the Fabian Society, author George Bernard Shaw, perhaps summed it up best when he said, quote: '... Socialism means equality of income or nothing... under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.' -- Edgar Wallace Robinson   If the people will lead, eventually the leaders will follow. -- Florence Robinson   Poltical campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration (thinking) man can normally muster. -- James Harvey Robinson   The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists. -- Joan Robinson   For liberalism, the individual is the end, and society the means. For fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. -- Alfredo Rocco   Bilderberger Meeting: The world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government... (more) -- David Rockefeller   This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long. We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order. -- David Rockefeller (False)   Everything is in place - after 500 years - to build a true 'new world' in the Western Hemisphere... And what happens if we don't pass NAFTA? I truly don't think that 'criminal' would be too strong a word for rejecting NAFTA. -- David Rockefeller   My congratulations on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution. -- David Rockefeller   This present window of opportunity which during a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built will not be open for too long. Already there are powerful forces at work that threaten to destroy all of our hopes and efforts. -- David Rockefeller   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. -- John D. Rockefeller, Jr.   The combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return. -- John D. Rockefeller, Sr.   In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.      We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen -- of whom we have an ample supply.      The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. -- John D. Rockefeller, Sr.   If something is wrong for you or me, it is also wrong for the cop, the soldier, the mayor, the governor, the general, the Fed chairman, the president. Theft does not become acceptable when they call it taxation, counterfeiting when they call it monetary policy, kidnapping when they call it the draft, mass murder when they call it foreign policy. We understand that it is never acceptable to wield violence nor the threat of violence against the innocent, whether by the mugger or the politician. -- 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. -- Lew Rockwell   American money was never more sound, or banking more free, than 200 years ago. Since then, it’s been a long steady decline from the gold standard and competitive banking to our Fed-run system of inflated paper currency, deposit insurance, and perpetually shaky banks on the dole. -- Lew Rockwell   Repeal the entire Banking Act of 1933, and Austrian School economists will cheer, especially if the current system were replaced by a 100%-reserve competitive banking with no central bank. That banking reform would give us a sound money system, meaning no more business cycle, bailouts, or inflation. -- Lew Rockwell   Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state.  That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals. -- Lew Rockwell   The only reason for a government service is precisely to provide financial support for an operation that is otherwise unsustainable, or else there would be no point in the government’s involvement at all. -- Lew Rockwell   If you think you're too small to make a difference, you haven't been in bed with a mosquito. -- Anita Roddick   You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. -- Dr. Adrian Rogers   I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning. -- Carl Rogers   The issues can be stated very briefly: Who will be controlled? Who will exercise control? What type of control will be exercised? Most important of all, toward what end or purpose, or in the pursuit of what value, will control be exercised? -- Carl Rogers   Your mothers get mighty shocked at you girls nowadays, but in her day, her mother was just on the verge of sending her to reform school. -- Will Rogers   We are always yapping about the 'Good Old Days' and how we look back and enjoy it, but I tell you there is a lot of hooey to it.   There is a whole lot of all our past lives that wasn't so hot. -- Will Rogers   I see where they are going to be more strict with these robbers; when they catch 'em from now on, they're going to publish their names. -- 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   An economist is a man that can tell you...what can happen under any given condition, and his guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's too. -- Will Rogers   I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him 'father'. -- Will Rogers   On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only people in the world that has to keep a government four years no matter what it does. -- Will Rogers   All one has to do to get one's stuff in the Congressional Record is to find a stenographer that can stay awake long enough to take it down. Then you mark in the 'Applause' and 'Laughter' parts yourself. -- Will Rogers   Those tax-exempt bonds were put in so that a town or a state or a government could sell more bonds than it ought to. -- Will Rogers   The United States investigates everything -- usually after it's dead. -- Will Rogers   We are sure living in a peculiar time. You get more for not working than you will for working, and more for not raising a hog than for raising it. -- Will Rogers   This stuff they are talking here in Congress costs the people of the United States $44 a page. That's beside what it costs to ship it to the asylums where it's read. -- Will Rogers   Hurray! Congress is to adjourn! Only four more days of Congressional burglary on the Treasury! -- Will Rogers   I guess truth can hurt you worse in an election than about anything that can happen to you. -- Will Rogers   If we have Senators and Congressmen there that can't protect themselves against the evil temptations of lobbyists, we don't need to change our lobbies, we need to change our representatives. -- 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   There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. -- Will Rogers   I bet you, if I had met Trotsky, and had had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I have never yet met a man I didn't like. -- Will Rogers   America has a very unique record. We never lost a war or won a conference... -- Will Rogers   Ammunition beats persuasion when you are looking for freedom. -- Will Rogers   There is two types of Larceny, Petty and Grand. They are supposed to be the same in the eyes of the law, but judges always put a little extra on you for Petty, which is kind of a fine for stupidness. -- Will Rogers   Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. -- Will Rogers   Of course nothing is ever done about a [presidential] commission report, except, they say, once a man at the state prison for the criminally insane actually read one once clear through. Then he did something about it. He made a bonfire that lasted a week. -- Will Rogers   Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln. -- Will Rogers   We are the only nation in the world that waits till we get into a war before we start getting ready for it. -- Will Rogers   If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, 'America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership'. -- Will Rogers   It sure did kick up some excitement in the Senate when one Senator called the other Senators 'sons of Wild jackasses.' Well, if you thought it made the Senators hot, you wait till you see what happens when the jackasses hear how they have been slandered. -- 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   Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate? -- Will Rogers   A foreigner coming here and reading the Congressional Record would say that the President of the United States was elected solely for the purpose of giving Senators somebody to call a horse thief. -- Will Rogers   Elections are a good deal like marriages, there's no accounting for anyone's taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it's the same with Public Officials. -- Will Rogers   Tomorrow is Labor Day, I suppose set by Act of Congress. Everything we do nowadays is either by, or against, Acts of Congress. How Congress knew anything about Labor is beyond us. -- Will Rogers   Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous. -- Will Rogers   Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches. -- Will Rogers   That's what a Congressman or a Senator is for -- to see that too much money don't accumulate in the national Treasury. -- Will Rogers   Nothing makes a man, or a body of men, as mad as the truth. If there is no truth in it, they laugh it off. -- Will Rogers   This thing about getting rid of a man in the Cabinet is all right, but there is one bad feature to it that few people realize. That is, that unfortunately every one of them is replaced by someone else. If it wasn't for that, this resignation business would be great. -- 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. -- Will Rogers   Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it. -- Will Rogers   You shake a slogan at an American and it's just like showing a hungry dog a bone. -- Will Rogers   If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. -- Will Rogers   The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer. -- Will Rogers   Will somebody please tell me what they do with all the Vice-Presidents a bank has? Why the United States is the biggest business institution in the world, and they got only one Vice-President and nobody has ever found anything for him to do. -- Will Rogers   You see, in Washington they have these bodies, Senate and the House of Representatives. That is for the convenience of the visitors. If there is nothing funny happening in one, there is sure to be in the other, and in case one body passes a good bill, why, the other can see it in time and kill it. -- Will Rogers   I doubt if a charging elephant, or a rhino, is as determined or hard to check as a socially ambitious mother. -- Will Rogers   Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy until you can find a rock. -- Will Rogers   Don't let yesterday use up too much of today. -- Will Rogers   You can have all the advanced war methods you want, but, after all, nobody has ever invented a war that you don't have to have somebody in the guise of soldiers to stop the bullets. -- Will Rogers   On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. -- Will Rogers   Income taxes have made more liars out of the American people than golf. -- Will Rogers   How is the government going to get the extra taxes? Out of the rich -- or just out of the poor, as usual? -- Will Rogers   Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth! -- Will Rogers   If we took Congress seriously, we would be worrying all the time. -- Will Rogers   Farmers, get out your sense of humor! Congress meets to relieve you again next week. -- Will Rogers   I don't make jokes -- I just watch the government and report the facts. -- Will Rogers   Things in our country run in spite of the government, not by the aid of it. -- Will Rogers   The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best. -- Will Rogers   One of these days they are going to remove so much of the 'hooey' and the thousands of things the schools have become clogged up with, and we will find that we can educate our broods for about one-tenth of the price and learn 'em something that they might accidentally use after they escape. -- Will Rogers   Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. -- Will Rogers   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. -- Felix Rohatyn   Since I am an immature and wicked man, war and unrest appeal to me more than good bourgeois order. Brutality is respected, the people need wholesome fear. They want to fear someone. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive. -- Ernst Rohm   The relative openness or closedness of a mind cuts across specific content; that is, it is not restricted to any one particular ideology, or religion, or philosophy, or scientific viewpoint. -- Milton Rokeach   O liberty! O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name! -- Madame Jeanne-Marie Roland   The test for whether one is living in a police state is that those who are charged with enforcing the law are allowed to break the laws with impunity. -- Jon Roland   We make money the old fashioned way. We print it. -- Art Rolnick   I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control. -- George L. Roman   Felix qui nihil debet. (Happy is he who owes nothing.) -- Roman Proverb   Give me control over a man's economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional heroes, I'll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to. -- Benjamin A. Rooge   Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people. -- Eleanor Roosevelt   We do not move forward by curtailing people’s liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say. -- Eleanor Roosevelt   Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money. -- Eleanor Roosevelt   Smearing good people like Lauchlin Currie [former administrative assistant to President Roosevelt], Alger Hiss and others is, I think, unforgiveable... Anyone knowing Mr. Currie or Mr. Hiss, who are the two people whom I happen to know fairly well, would not need any denial on their part to know they are not Communists. Their records prove it. -- Eleanor Roosevelt   Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church. -- 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. -- Eleanor Roosevelt   It is not that you set the individual apart from society but that you recognize in any society that the individual must have rights that are guarded. -- Eleanor 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. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance, we must provide a safe place for their perception. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   It is a good thing to demand liberty for ourselves and for those who agree with us, but it is a better thing and a rarer thing to give liberty to others who do not agree with us. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   [The commerce clause was written] in the horse-and-buggy age ... since that time … we have developed an entirely different philosophy. ... We are interdependent, we are tied in together. And the hope has been that we could, through a period of years, interpret the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution in the light of these new things that have come to the country. It has been our hope that under the interstate commerce clause we could recognize by legislation and by judicial decision that a harmful practice in one section of the country could be prevented on the theory that it was doing harm to another section of the country. That was why the Congress for a good many years, and most lawyers, have had the thought that in drafting legislation we could depend on an interpretation that would enlarge the constitutional meaning of interstate commerce to include not only those matters of direct interstate commerce, but also those matters which indirectly affect interstate commerce. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   I do not believe in communism any more than you do, but there is nothing wrong with the communists in this country. Several of the best friends I have are Communists. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   We all know that books will burn -- yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   I tell the American people solemnly that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   The saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities -- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion. -- 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. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   Knowledge -- that is, education in its true sense -- is our best protection against unreasoning prejudice and panic-making fear, whether engendered by special interest, illiberal minorities, or panic-stricken leaders. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   The truth is found when men are free to pursue it. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt   No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse. -- Theodore Roosevelt   All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights. -- Theodore Roosevelt   'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law. -- 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   Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free. -- Theodore Roosevelt   Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted. -- Theodore Roosevelt   In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard. -- Theodore Roosevelt   To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. -- Theodore Roosevelt   In strict confidence … I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one. -- Theodore Roosevelt   Freedom is not a gift which can be enjoyed save by those shown themselves worthy of it. -- Theodore Roosevelt   No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community. -- Theodore Roosevelt   No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency. -- Theodore Roosevelt   No triumph of peace can equal the armed triumph of war. -- Theodore Roosevelt   To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American. -- Theodore Roosevelt   All privileges based on wealth, and all emnity to honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-American. -- Theodore Roosevelt   Any man who tries to incite class hatred, sectional hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our community, though he may affect to do so in the interest of the class he is addressing, is in the long run with absolute certainty that class’s own worst enemy. -- Theodore Roosevelt   Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. ... Every man who parrots the cry of “stand by the President” without adding the proviso “so far as he serves the Republic” takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude. -- Theodore Roosevelt   Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. -- 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   To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society. -- Theodore Roosevelt   When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'present' or 'not guilty.' -- 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. -- Theodore Roosevelt   To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -- Theodore Roosevelt   There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. -- Theodore Roosevelt   To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. -- Theodore Roosevelt   The one absolute certain way to bring this nation to ruin ... would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities. -- Theodore Roosevelt   It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. -- Theodore Roosevelt   Nannyism is fascism on training wheels. -- R. L. Root   Lottery tickets are the only consumer products actively promoted and sold by the state. The state does not sell toothpaste, or even promote brushing your teeth. But it tells people they should gamble. The main marketing concern is how to attract new players, who otherwise wouldn't gamble. -- I. Nelson Rose   No man suffers injustice without learning, vaguely but surely, what justice is. -- Isaac Rosenfeld   But it became clear as time went on that in Mr. Bush’s mind the New World Order was founded on a convergence of goals and interests between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, so strong and permanent that they would work as a team through the U.N. Security Council. -- A. M. Rosenthal   During the last dozen years the tales of suppression of free assemblage, free press, and free speech, by local authorities or the State operating under martial law have been so numerous as to have become an old story. They are attacked at the instigation of an economically and socially powerful class, itself enjoying to the full the advantages of free communications, but bent on denying them to the class it holds within its power... -- Edward Alsworth Ross   Although it had its share of strenuous Christians... the gathering at Philadelphia was largely made up of men in whom the old fires were under control or had even flickered out. Most were nominally members of one of the traditional churches in their part of the country.. and most were men who could take their religion or leave it alone. Although no one in this sober gathering would have dreamed of invoking the Goddess of Reason, neither would anyone have dared to proclaim his opinions had the support of the God of Abraham and Paul. The Convention of 1787 was highly rationalist and even secular in spirit. -- Clinton Rossiter   The Americans of 1776 were among the first men in modern society to defend rather than to seek an open society and constitutional liberty.... Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of this political theory sits in its deep-seated conservatism. However radical the principles of the Revolution may have seemed to the rest of the world, in the minds of the colonists they were thoroughly preservative and respectful of the past. -- Clinton Lawrence Rossiter III   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.   A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity -- as liberals do. A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population -- as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and overtaxes the nation’s citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state -- as liberals do. -- 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. -- Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.   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 curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus. -- Murray N. Rothbard   We must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people.  But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.  No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact. -- Murray N. Rothbard   It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any outcropping of what is now called 'a conspiracy theory of history.' For a search for 'conspiracies,' as misguided as the results often are, means a search for motives, and an attribution of individual responsibility for the historical misdeeds of ruling elites. If, however, any tyranny or venality, or aggressive war imposed by the State was brought about not by particular State rulers but by mysterious and arcane 'social forces,' or by the imperfect state of the world -- or if, in some way, everyone was guilty -- then there is no point in anyone's becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, a discrediting of 'conspiracy theories' will make the subjects more likely to believe the 'general welfare' reasons that are invariably put forth by the modern State for engaging in aggressive actions. -- 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. -- Murray N. Rothbard   It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright. -- Murray N. Rothbard   The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State. -- Murray N. Rothbard   Since the State necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the state is profoundly and inherently anti-capitalist. -- Murray N. Rothbard   It's ours to right the great wrong done,\\ Ten thousand years ago -- \\ The State, conceived in blood and hate, \\ Remains our only foe! \\ Oh, join us, brothers, join us, sisters,\\ Victory is nigh!\\ Come meet your fate, destroy the State,\\ And raise black banners high! -- Murray N. Rothbard   Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws. -- Mayer Amschel Rothschild   Fortunately, political freedom and economic progress are natural partners.  Despite capitalism's lingering reputation as the source of all the world's evils, the fact remains that every single democracy is a capitalist country.  Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed because it is a policy of unrestrained intervention.  It tries to fix what is 'wrong' with the spontaneous, self-organizaing phenomenon called capitalism.  But, of course, a natural process cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon. -- Michael Rothschild   Either the application for renewal of the charter (for the First Bank of the United States) is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war. -- Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild   I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, ...The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply. -- Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild   Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom for in that way one captures volition itself. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man’s innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom for in that way one captures volition itself. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau   The surest way to ruin a promising career in economics, whether professional or academic, is to venture into the 'cranks and crackpots' world of suggestions for reform of the financial system. -- Michael Rowbotham   This assumption about religion being necessary for morality is recognized and used as a justification for religion. When atheists provide arguments showing that religious beliefs are incorrect and illogical, a frequent response is that religion is still good because it's needed for morality. The question of truth is dismissed as less important than the question of usefulness. If morality is a good thing, then atheist arguments fall on deaf ears. And more, the act of willfully ignoring evidence or argument is performed with a sense of moral pride. This position rests on the myth that morality requires religion, and that you have to accept religion despite any flaws or abandon morality. This justification of religion is just one more consequence of the myth. -- Joseph Rowlands   Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew. -- Kenneth W. Royce   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. -- Robert L. Ruble   The blame for [the national debt] lies with the Congress and the President, with Democrats and Republicans alike, most all of whom have been unwilling to make the hard choices or to explain to the American people that there is no such thing as a free lunch. -- Warren Rudman   Ruff's Third Law of Economic Dynamics: "An economy in motion tends to stay in motion, and an economy at rest tends to stay at rest. A free market is constantly in motion. A centrally planned market slows until it eventually dies completely. -- Mike Ruff   I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. -- Richard Rumbold   Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression. -- 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. -- Rudolph J. Rummel   The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide. ... In total, during the first eighty-eight years of this century, almost 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners. The dead could conceivably be nearly 360 million people. It is as though our species has been devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a plague of Power, not of germs. -- Rudolph J. Rummel   The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic freedom. -- Rudolph J. Rummel   What will follow will not be a repeat of any other conflict. It will be of a force and scope and scale that has been beyond what has been seen before. -- Donald Rumsfeld   Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights -- Dr. Benjamin Rush   Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us. -- Dr. Benjamin Rush   The only foundation for... a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. -- Dr. Benjamin Rush   Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error. -- Dr. Benjamin Rush   Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught, at the same time, that he must forsake, and even forget them, when the welfare of his country requires it. -- Dr. Benjamin Rush   Freedom of speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. -- Salman Rushdie   Free societies…are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom’s existence. -- Salman Rushdie   The worst, most insidious effect of censorship is that, in the end, it can deaden the imagination of the people. Where there is no debate, it is hard to go on remembering, every day, that there is a suppressed side to every argument. -- Salman Rushdie   To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education. -- 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   Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons. -- 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. -- John Ruskin   Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor. -- John Ruskin   Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, -- strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance. -- John Ruskin   The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it. -- John Ruskin   There is no wealth but life. -- John Ruskin   That treacherous phantom which men call Liberty. -- John Ruskin   Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindness in favour of systematic hatred. -- Bertrand Russell   Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. -- Bertrand Russell   It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -- Bertrand Russell   The argument against the persecution of opinion does not depend upon what the excuse for persecution may be. The argument is that we none of us know all truth, that the discovery of new truth is promoted by free discussion and rendered very difficult by suppression. -- Bertrand Russell   The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. -- Bertrand Russell   Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. -- Bertrand Russell   In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. -- Bertrand Russell   What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. -- Bertrand Russell   I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology. ...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda ...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. -- Bertrand Russell   To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. -- Bertrand Russell   The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being viewed dogmatically, they are held tentatively, with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. -- Bertrand Russell   Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked. -- Bertrand Russell   It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to earn a living. -- Bertrand Russell   The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell   Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure. -- Bertrand Russell   There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. -- Bertrand Russell   Man has existed for about a million years. He has possessed writing for about 6,000 years, agriculture somewhat longer, but perhaps not much longer. Science, as a dominant factor in determining the belief of educated men, has existed for about 300 years; as a source of economic technique, for about 150 years. In this brief period it has proved itself an incredibly powerful revolutionary force. When we consider how recently it has risen to power, we find ourselves forced to believe that we are at the very beginning of its work in transforming human life. -- Bertrand Russell   These men - ..., the politicians, ... - use their position, their knowledge, and their power of disseminating misinformation to arouse and stimulate the latent instinct for bloodshed. When they have succeeded, they say they are reluctantly forced to war by the pressure of public opinion. -- Bertrand Russell   What's the difference between a bright, inquisitive five-year-old, and a dull, stupid nineteen-year-old? Fourteen years of the British educational system. -- 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. -- Bertrand Russell   Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires. -- Bertrand Russell   Envy is the basis of Democracy. -- Bertrand Russell   If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships. -- Bertrand Russell   We may define a Puritan as a man who holds that certain kinds of acts, even if they have no visible bad effects upon others than the agent, are inherently sinful, and, being sinful, ought to be prevented by whatever means is most effectual - the criminal law if possible, and, if not that, then public opinion backed by economic pressure. -- Bertrand Russell   The laws in question can, therefore, only be justified by the theory of vindictive punishment, which holds that certain sins, though they may not injure anyone except the sinner, are so heinous as to make it our duty to inflict pain upon the delinquent. This point of view, under the influence of Benthamism, lost its hold during the nineteenth century. But in recent years, with the general decay of Liberalism, it has regained lost ground, and has begun to threaten a new tyranny as oppressive as any in the Middle Ages. -- Bertrand Russell   The practical objection to Puritanism, as to every form of fanaticism, is that it singles out certain evils as so much worse than others that they must be suppressed at all costs. The fanatic fails to recognise that the suppression of a real evil, if carried out too drastically, produces other evils which are even greater. -- Bertrand Russell   Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power. Consequently those who live under the dominion of Puritanism become exceedingly desirous of power. Now love of power does far more harm than love of drink or any of the other vices against which Puritans protest. Of course, in virtuous people love of power camouflages itself as love of doing good, but this makes very little difference to its social effects. It merely means that we punish our victims for being wicked, instead of for being our enemies. In either case, tyranny and war result. Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda. -- Bertrand Russell   The earth becomes more crowded, and our dependence upon our neighbours becomes more intimate. In these circumstances life cannot remain tolerable unless we learn to let each other alone in all matters that are not of immediate and obvious concern to the community. We must learn to respect each other's privacy, and not to impose our moral standards upon each other. The Puritan imagines that his moral standard is the moral standard; he does not realize that other ages and other countries, and even other groups in his own country, have moral standards different from his, to which they have as good a right as he has to his. Unfortunately, the love of power which is the natural outcome of Puritan self-denial makes the Puritan more executive than other people, and makes it difficult for others to resist him. Let us hope that a broader education and a wider knowledge of mankind may gradually weaken the ardour of our too virtuous masters. -- Bertrand Russell   I pray that no child of mine would ever descend into such a place as a library. They are indeed most dangerous places and unfortunate is she or he who is lured into such a hellhole of enjoyment, stimulus, facts, passion and fun. -- Willy Russell   With lies you may get ahead in the world - but you can never go back. -- Russian proverb   Teachers are directed to instruct their pupils... and to awaken in them a sense of their responsibility toward the community of the nation. -- Bernhard Rust   It is in the American interest to put an end to Nationhood. That is the goal in global government. America must get out of the United Nations or our sovereign Republic will not survive. -- Walt Rustow   You just can't beat the person who never gives up. -- Babe Ruth   It was not by accident or coincidence that the rights to freedom in speech and press were coupled in a single guaranty with the rights of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition for redress of grievances. All these, though not identical, are inseparable. They are cognate rights, and therefore are united in the first Article’s assurance. -- Judge Wiley B. Rutledge   Individual rights must take a back-seat to the collective. -- Harvey Ruvin   [T]he Swiss people are the best practitioners of the ideals of non-aggression. The Swiss national government posts are parttime positions. Most decisions are made at the canton (state) level. Swiss per capita income is the highest in the world, showing that non-aggression pays. How did the Swiss come to adopt a relatively non-aggressive constitution in an aggressive world? In the mid-1800s, they imitated our constitution and stuck with it! -- 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. -- Dr. Mary J. Ruwart   In 1847, Marx and Engels proposed ten steps to convert the Western nations to Communist countries without firing a shot. Most of these ideas have been successfully implemented in our own country with little, if any, resistance! ... One of the ten steps called for "centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly" just like our own Federal Reserve! ... Another of the ten steps called for instituting "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax" just like our own federal income tax! ... Another step proposed by Marx and Engels was "abolition of all right of inheritance," which we come ever closer to as inheritance taxes increase. Taking wealth at gunpoint, if necessary that one person has created and given to another person is theft. Whether the wealth creator is alive or dead, the act and the impact are the same. Another step was "free education for all children in public schools." Although our country still has many private schools in addition to the public ones, the content of both is dictated by aggression-through-government, to teach aggression. Marx and Engels also recommended the "extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state." In the past century, more and more services have become exclusive, subsidized government monopolies (e.g., garbage collection, water distribution, mass transit, etc.). As a result, we pay twice as much for lower quality service! Marx also called for the "centralization of the means of communications and transport in the hands of the state." Television and radio stations are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. A station that does not pursue programming considered "in the public interest" is stopped at gunpoint, if necessary from further broadcast. ... Radio stations have an elite ownership as well. Those who benefit from aggression-through-government have little incentive to tell the public that licensing is a tool of the rich! ... Another of the ten steps calls for "confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels" ... [O]ur law enforcement agents can seize the wealth of anyone suspected of drug crimes without a trial! [T]he Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has also been seizing the assets of taxpayers without a trial if the IRS thinks they might have underpaid their taxes! The wealth we have created can be taken from us at gunpoint, if necessary without a formal accusation or a chance to defend ourselves! ... In addition, Marx and Engels called for "abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes." In other words, land would not be privately owned. No homesteading would be permitted. Our federal and local governments have title to 42% of the land mass of the United States. Most of the remaining land is under government control as well. For example, today's homeowners can pay off their mortgages, but must still pay property taxes to the local government. If they stop payments, their property is taken from them. They are, in essence, renting their home from the local government. -- 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! -- Dr. Mary J. Ruwart   When marijuana was legalized in Alaska, consumption went down. The Netherlands had a similar experience. In Amsterdam, heroin addiction is half that of the U.S. rate, and crack is not widely available. When we honor our neighbor’s choice, he or she will often act differently than we would have predicted. ... The excessive profit that comes from prohibitive licensing would not exist in the self-regulating marketplace ecosystem. Alcohol and cigarettes, which are illegal for minors, are less of a problem because they are less profitable. If recreational drugs were legal, their medicinal properties could be more easily studied and employed. Today, red tape discourages physicians from giving marijuana to their patients, even though it can slow the progress of glaucoma, keep cancer patients from being nauseated by chemotherapy, and help treat multiple sclerosis. Until it became illegal, marijuana was listed in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia for some of these purposes. Instead, our enforcement agents seized the marijuana plants of a retired postal worker suffering from cancer. Robert Brewser had used them to control the pain and nausea from his radiation therapy. The agents also took -- without trial -- the van his wife used to take him to the hospital for treatment! How much universal love do we show our neighbors when we support laws that make this possible? ... Aggression-through-government sets the stage for drug problems. When we discriminate against disadvantaged workers through minimum wage and licensing laws, we frustrate their economic goals. Getting high is certainly more attractive when other parts of one’s life don’t seem to be working. Selling drugs certainly seems like a lucrative career for a ghetto youth banned from legitimate paths of creating wealth. In addition to the other deleterious effects of licensing laws, they may well contribute to the drug problem. Drug prohibition is counterproductive. We resist this conclusion, however, because we want to control other people’s choices. Some people will indeed make what we consider to be poor choices for themselves. People who overeat, drink heavily, or engage in dangerous activities may prefer a shorter, more exciting, and intense life to a longer one with different rewards. They may prefer gratification over longevity. It is their life and their choice -- if only we would honor it. -- Dr. Mary J. Ruwart   Forcing people to be more 'unselfish' creates animosity instead of good will. Trying to control selfish others is a cure worse than the disease. ... In trying to control others, we find ourselves controlled. We point fingers at the dictators, the Communists, the politicians, and the international cartels. We are blithely unaware that our desire to control selfish others creates and sustains them. Like a stone thrown in a quiet pond, our desire to control our neighbors ripples outward, affecting the political course of our community, state, nation, and world. Yet we know not what we do. We attempt to bend our neighbors to our will, sincere in our belief that we are benevolently protecting the world from their folly and short-sightedness. We seek control to create peace and prosperity, not realizing that this is the very means by which war and poverty are propagated. In fighting for our dream without awareness, we become the instruments of its destruction. If we could only see the pattern! -- Dr. Mary J. Ruwart   In countries with subsidized national health insurance, people demand care for minor ailments they used to treat themselves. As a result, patients wait for critical care. In Newfoundland, a patient needing cardiac surgery waits an average of 43 weeks. Affluent Canadians cross the border to our Cleveland Clinic; the poor suffer. The waiting lists for all surgeries have doubled since 1967. Canadians don’t have better health care for less money, they just have less health care! This is not the solution we seek! In Britain, the availability of health care may be even more limited. British doctors see five times as many patients as their American counterparts. Thirty-five percent of kidney dialysis centers refuse to treat patients over 55 years of age! While the elderly are denied access to health care, the poor are neglected as well. Studies in Britain, Sweden, Canada, and New Zealand indicate that people with high social standing receive 2-6 times more health care than the less affluent. National health programs even fail to deliver equal care! -- Dr. Mary J. Ruwart   ... real anarchism, feasible and actual, as opposed to mere emotional statements, is simply the [classical] liberal economy, and everything that goes with it: political democracy, civil (and not only civic) liberty, free, unsubsidized, unplanned culture. It is only the liberal economy that can favor the "withering away of the state" and of politics – their withering away or at least their limitation; centralized socialism cannot achieve this. -- Raymond Ruye   Blind submission to the Administration of the government is not devotion to the country or the Constitution. The administration is not the government. -- Edward G. Ryan   Prev pageNext page	Daily Quotes Ready to be inspired? Sign up for a daily dose of Liberty Quotes! 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