Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"If Congress sees fit to impose a capitation, or other direct tax, it must be laid in proportion to the census; if Congress determines to impose duties, imposts, and excises, they must be uniform throughout the United States. These are not strictly limitations of power. They are rules prescribing the mode in which it shall be exercised. ... This review shows that personal property, contracts, occupations, and the like have never been regarded by Congress as proper subjects of direct tax."

~ Salmon P. Chase  

"Every reform, however necessary,
will by weak minds be carried to an excess,
that itself will need reforming."

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge  

"Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?"

~ William O. Douglas  

"The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend
the matter that its possessors are a majority. Unrestrained political
authority, though it be confided to masses, cannot be trusted without
positive limitations, men in bodies being but an aggregation of the
passions, weaknesses and interests of men as individuals."

~ James Fenimore Cooper  

"When money is controlled by a few it gives that few an undue power and control over labor and the resources of the country. Labor will have its best return when the laborer can control its disposal."

~ Leland Stanford  

"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street..."

~ Major General Smedley Darlington Butler  

"Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of."

~ Edward L. Bernays  

"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press. … They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."

~ Oscar Callaway  

"For you see, the world is governed by very different personages
from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."

~ Benjamin Disraeli  

"The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason:
it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it
from the process which currency was meant to serve.
Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice."

~ Aristotle  

"It comes as news to most people to learn that practically all important ethical teachers -- Moses, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohammed, and Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance -- have denounced lending at interest as usury and as morally wrong."

~ Lawrence Dennis  

"Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain
as a perquisite; who made ten thousand people owners of the soil
and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?"

~ David Lloyd George  

"If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare
and can appropriate money for its advancement,
where is the limitation to carrying into execution
whatever can be effected by money?"

~ William Drayton  

"We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like,
but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power."

~ Alan Greenspan  

"Ponder the capriciousness of human nature,
which allows momentary appetites and fleeting attitudes
to set the courses for entire lives and future responsibilities."

~ Ann Gray