Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.:
1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth.
2. Dupes - a large class, no doubt - each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a "free man," a "sovereign"; that this is "a free government"; "a government of equal rights," "the best government on earth," and such like absurdities.
3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change."

~ Lysander Spooner  

"It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting."

~ Tom Stoppard  

"In literature as in love,
we are astonished by what is chosen by others."

~ Andre Maurois  

"Politics is the gentle art of
getting votes from the poor
and campaign funds from the rich,
by promising to protect each from the other."

~ Oscar Ameringer  

"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  

"In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always then. Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local candidates run without any party identification. No American citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political background, and commitments of each individual candidate."

~ Ben H. Bagdikian  

"I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government."

~ Gerrit Smith  

"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

~ H. L. Mencken  

"Free speech is about as good a cause as the world has ever known. But it…gets shoved aside in favor of things which at a given moment more vital…everybody favors free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground."

~ Heywood Broun  

"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values…and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States – and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!"

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  

"As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends. Liberty in the wild and freakish hands of fanatics has once more, as frequently in the past, proved the effective helpmate of autocracy and the twin-brother of tyranny."

~ Otto Hermann Kahn  

"If a law to donate aid to any farmer or cattleman who has had poor crops or lost his cattle comes within the meaning of the phrase “to provide for the General Welfare of the United States,” why should not similar gifts be made to grocers, shopkeepers, miners, and other businessmen who have made losses through financial depression, or to wage earners out of employment? Why is not their property equally within the purview of the General Welfare?"

~ Charles Warren  

"A liberal's like to be lax
When recommending a tax.
With a glut in his heart
And his brain low a quart,
He will give you the shirts off our backs."

~ F. R. Duplantier  

"If one understands that Socialism is not a “share the wealth” program but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super rich men promoting Socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately Socialism, is not a movement of the down-trodden masses but of the economic elite."

~ Gary Allen