Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom
must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."

~ Thomas Paine  

"To disarm the people
is the best and most effectual way
to enslave them."

~ George Mason  

"If the opposition (citizen) disarms, well and good.
If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."

~ Josef Stalin  

"If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will
to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault,
how can you call upon another to do so for you?"

~ Jeffrey R. Snyder  

"Governments need armies to protect them
against their enslaved and oppressed subjects."

~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi  

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms.
The strongest reason for the people
to retain their right to keep and bear arms
is as a last resort to protect themselves
against tyranny in government."

~ Thomas Jefferson (False)  

"Wise men are instructed by reason;
men of less understanding, by experience;
the most ignorant, by necessity;
the beasts, by nature."

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero  

"I heartily accept the motto,
that government is best which governs least ...
Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,
that government is best which governs not at all;
and when men are prepared for it,
that will be the kind of government which they will have."

~ Henry David Thoreau  

"[You have Rights] antecedent to all earthly governments:
Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws;
Rights, derived from the Great Legislator of the universe."

~ John Adams  

"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated
under the shield of law and in the name of justice."

~ Charles-Louis De Secondat  

"There is one, and only one, thing in modern society
more hideous than crime -- namely, repressive justice."

~ Simone Weil  

"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  

"People sometimes rationalize their greed by saying that it is all for the good of their children but this is nothing but an excuse they use to make their despicable actions appear respectable and praiseworthy."

~ Democritus  

"In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business or in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."

~ Edward L. Bernays  

"Provided I do not write about the government, or about religion, or politics, or morals, or those in power, or public bodies, or the Opera, or the other state theatres, or about anybody who is active in anything, I can print whatever I want."

~ Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais