Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Political tags -- such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth -- are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."

~ Robert A. Heinlein  

"I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must,
sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both."

~ Thomas Babington Macaulay  

"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  

"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  

"Democracy...is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike."

~ Plato  

"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  

"In a free society, standards
of public morality can be measured
only by whether
physical coercion --
violence against persons
or property -- occurs.
There is no right
not to be offended
by words, actions or symbols."

~ Richard E. Sincere, Jr.  

"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

~ Alexis de Tocqueville  

"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  

"It is the greatest inequality to try to make unequal things equal."

~ Aristotle  

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

~ Marcus Aurelius  

"I can’t think of anything that would do more toward putting us back on the road to liberty and personal responsibility than for the average American, and for the news media, to come to the understanding that we are not a democracy, nor were we supposed to be."

~ Neal Boortz  

"Remember, democracy never lasts long.
It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.
There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

~ John Adams  

"Were I to define the British constitution, therefore, I should say, it is a limited monarchy, or a mixture of the three forms of government commonly known in the schools, reserving as much of the monarchical splendor, the aristocratical independency, and the democratical freedom, as are necessary that each of these powers may have a control, both in legislation and execution, over the other two, for the preservation of the subject's liberty."

~ John Adams  

"If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interest, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution, in favor of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law, in preference to all private and partial considerations... And that the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of history... To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to exercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen... In popular governments [democracies], minorities [individuals] constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies..."

~ John Adams