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.more Jessica Mitford quotes |
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.more Norval Morris quotes |
|
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.more New York Times quotes |
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.more Reverend Martin Niemoeller quotes |
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.more Reverend Martin Niemoeller quotes |
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.more Friedrich Nietzsche quotes |
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.more Lyn Nofziger quotes |
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.more Lyn Nofziger quotes |
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.more Charles Eliot Norton quotes |
|
|
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.more Phil Ochs quotes |
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.more Rev. Edmund A. Opitz quotes |
|
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.more Vance Packard quotes |
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.more Thomas Paine quotes |
|
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.more Thomas Paine quotes |
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.more Thomas Paine quotes |
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.more Thomas Paine quotes |
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.more Thomas Paine quotes |
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.more Michael Parenti quotes |
|
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.more Kort E. Patterson quotes |
|
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.more St. Paul quotes |
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.more Dr. Ron Paul quotes |
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.more William Pitt quotes |
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.more Ronald Reagan quotes |
Waiting periods are only a step.
Registration is only a step.
The prohibition of private firearms is the goal.more Janet Reno quotes |
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.more Sheldon Richman quotes |
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?more Sheldon Richman quotes |
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.more David Rockefeller quotes |
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.more David Rockefeller quotes |
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.more Ernst Rohm quotes |
|
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.more George L. Roman quotes |
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.more Franklin D. Roosevelt quotes |
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.more Donald Rumsfeld quotes |
Surely a large part of the zealous repression of radical protest in America has its roots in the fact that millions of men who are apparently “insiders” know how vulnerable the system is because they know how ambiguous their own attachments to it are. The slightest challenge exposes the fragile foundations of legitimacy of the state.more John Scharr quotes |
Americans find it intolerable that one constitutional right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another. America is the land of the free and home of the brave -- we don't need a Patriot Act, because we are already patriots. We know freedom means responsibility, but I am not sure Congress and its domestic enforcement agencies do. More often than not, new security measures enacted by the government have resulted in more violations of the citizenry than terrorists have ever done. The terrorists want us to be afraid -- well, we are not afraid. Stop wasting dollars on this program -- it is not good for America. To give up essential liberty for a little security provides neither. The right to be left alone from government intrusion is the beginning of all freedoms.more Eric Schaub quotes |
|
Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us.more Butler D. Shaffer quotes |
The State…has had a vested interest in promoting attitudes that would tend to make us skeptical of our own abilities, fearful of the motives of others, and emotionally dependent upon external authorities for purpose and direction in our lives.more Butler D. Shaffer quotes |
The idea of creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy, and not expect them to lead to wars, genocides, and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence we can no longer afford to indulge.more Butler D. Shaffer quotes |
The few who could understand the system will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of the people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.more John Sherman quotes |
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ... And if he does know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to decide a single human fate.more C. P. Snow quotes |
These are dangerous times. When we are afraid, we want to
be protected, and since we cannot protect ourselves against such
horrors as mass murder by bombers, we are tempted to run to
the government, a government that is always willing to trade the
promise of protection for our freedom, which left, as always,
the question: How much freedom are we willing to relinquish for
such a bald promise?
Already the President was calling for more power, more power
for the FBI. He wanted a thousand more men. And he wanted to
use the army, no less, in situations like Oklahoma City. And he
wanted more power to tap our phones and to invade our privacy.
He wanted express authority from Congress to infiltrate the fringe
groups and, in short, to snoop and to peer and to spy on the
citizenry, especially those who hold different beliefs from those
that flow in the phlegmatic and murky mainstream of America.
But the question remains, will we really be safer with a thousand
more, or even a hundred thousand more FBI agents armed with
even greater power to more easily tap our phone that are already
so easily tapped and to break into our homes that are no longer
safe under the much-mangled exclusionary rule?more Gerry Spence quotes |
Government is like fire. If it is kept within bounds and under the control of the people, it contributes to the welfare of all. But if it gets out of place, if it gets too big and out of control, it destroys the happiness and even the lives of the people.more Harold E. Stassen quotes |
