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2006 November 24
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"To oppose corruption in government
is the highest obligation of patriotism." |
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison ... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor." |
"Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a cellar." |
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2006 November 23
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"Today the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor
who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody,
at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury." |
"The convoluted wording of legalisms
grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves
the violence we intend toward each other.
Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and
depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree.
You have done violence to him, consumed his energy." |
"It is a part of the function of 'law' to give recognition
to ideas representing the exact opposite of established conduct.
Most of the complications arise from the necessity of pretending
to do one thing, while actually doing another." |
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2006 November 22
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"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." |
"It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest." |
"Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves. When zealous agents of the Government arrest suspected "radicals" without warrant, hold them without prompt trial, deny them access to counsel and admission of bail....we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity..." |
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2006 November 21
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"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." |
"There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another... All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim." |
"During war, the laws are silent." |
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2006 November 20
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"The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man.
There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks." |
"Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do
what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce
their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are
the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny." |
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.
Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment
from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious." |
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