Quotations

Arms and the Second Amendment

“The principal foundations of all states are good laws and good arms; and there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms.”—Machiavelli

“The United States should get rid of its militias.”—Joseph Stalin

“What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty…Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”—Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814), Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Member of the Constitutional Convention, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789

“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

“The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the high powers delegated directly to the citizen, and ‘is excepted out of the general powers of government.’ A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power.” — Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex.394, at 401-402 (1859)

“We want to take as many of their rights as we can. We want to put them in prison; we want to take away their right to vote; we want to take away their right to own a gun.” — Mr. Wayne Pacelle, from his presentation on the final day of sessions — employed by the Humane Society of the United States — the Animal Rights 2001 Conference

“The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” — Samuel Adams

“The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that is good.” — George Washington

“There is no doubt in my mind that millions of lives could have been saved if the people had not been ‘brainwashed’ about gun ownership and they had been well armed. Hitler’s thugs and goons were not very brave when confronted by a gun. Gun haters always want to forget the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which is a perfect example of how a ragtag, half starved group of Jews took up 10 handguns and made asses out of the Nazi’s.” — Theodore Haas, former prisoner of the infamous Dachau prisoner concentration camp

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.” — Adolph Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1961

“The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the 2nd amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as it’s interpretation by every major commentator and court in the 1st half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner” — Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session, 2/82

“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.” — John F. Kennedy

“The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.” — Gouverneur Morris

Washington proclaimed firearms to be “the people's liberty teeth.”

“The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.” —Patrick Henry

Conspiracy

“It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any outcropping of what is now called ‘a conspiracy theory of history.’ For a search for ‘conspiracies,’ as misguided as the results often are, means a search for motives, and an attribution of individual responsibility for the historical misdeeds of ruling elites. If, however, any tyranny or venality, or aggressive war imposed by the State was brought about not by particular State rulers but by mysterious and arcane ‘social forces,’ or by the imperfect state of the world—or if, in some way, everyone was guilty—then there is no point in anyone’s becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, a discrediting of ‘conspiracy theories’ will make the subjects more likely to believe the ‘general welfare’ reasons that are invariably put forth by the modern State for engaging in aggressive actions.”—Murray N. Rothbard, (1926-1995) Dean of the Austrian School of Economics, For a New Liberty (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p. 6

“I am concerned for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”—General Douglas MacArthur.

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet it was planned that way.”—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“...those who formally rule take their signals and commands, not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men (plus a few women). This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied; it is one of the secrets of the American social order. A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment - the ruling class - is not supposed to be discussed.”—Arthur S. Miller, The Secret Constitution and The Need For Constitutional Change, Greenwood Press, New York, 1987, prologue, p. 3.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”—Thomas Jefferson

“Is there not some chosen curse, Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin?”—Joseph Addison, Cato

“Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”—Sir John Harrington, Epigrams

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and thus clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken

“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrations) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.” — Thomas Jefferson.

“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen....At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually runs the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.” — New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922

“The government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semi-occult power which....pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I.” — British military historian, Major General J. F. C. Fuller, l941

“The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans.” — British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1876

“A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.” — Eric Hoffer

“A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime… Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.” — William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.

“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.” — U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so inter-locked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” — Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, The New Freedom, 1913

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined; by those who are behind the scenes.” — Benjamin Disraeli, 1844, Prime Minister of England

“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scene.” — supreme Court justice, Felix Frankfurter

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” — Herbert Spencer

“We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world.” — Professor Arnold Toynbee in a June l931 speech before the Institute for the Study of International Affairs, Copenhagen

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.” — Norman Thomas, perennial Socialist Party presidential candidate and one of the founders of the ACLU

“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries.” — David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address before that organization, June, 1991

“The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser’s intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture’s dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.” — Ayn Rand

“Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing ‘the new elite’ at the top of a new hierarchy of power.”-- M. N. Rothbard

“A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public.”--Mark Twain

Constitution

“Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”—James Madison

“The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind…In this field every person must be his own watchman for the truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the truth from the false for us.”—Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516 (1945)

“The arguments in favor of the constitutionality of legal tender paper currency tend directly to break down the barriers which separate a government of limited powers from a government resting in the unrestrained will of Congress. Those limitations must be preserved, or our government will inevitably drift from the system established by our Fathers into a vast, centralized, and consolidated government.”— supreme Court Justice Stephen Field, dissenting opinion in Dooley vs. Smith, 1872

“[E]ach of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is its duty under the constitution without regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.”—Thomas Jefferson, 1819

“[W]e are in danger of forgetting that a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change.”—Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes

“Good men must not obey the laws too well.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The ultimate right of the parties to the constitutional compact to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated must extend to all violations by one delegated authority as well as by another; by the judiciary as well as by the executive or the legislature.”—James Madison, describing the position of the states

“The true barriers of our liberty in this country are our state governments, and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man is that of which our Revolution and present government found us possessed. Distinct states, amalgamated into one as to their foreign concerns, but single and independent as to their internal administration.”—Thomas Jefferson

“The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution.” — Reid v Covert, 354 US l (1957)

“The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.” — John Adams, 1754

“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.” — West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, 319 US 624

“The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism.” — supreme Court Justice David Davis, Ex Parte Milligan (1866)

The oath of office for Congress reads: “I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.” — Daniel Webster

Democracy

“Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.”—Karl Marx

“A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion…as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.”—H. L. Mencken, 1918

“All democracies turn into dictatorships—but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea...That’s the issue that I’ve been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire...and how does a democracy become a dictatorship?”—Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas

“Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage…Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance…Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.”—H. L. Mencken

“It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.”—Thomas Jefferson

“Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.”—F.A. Hayek

“If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.”—Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)

“Democracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making, absolutist shape which we have given to it is, it is clear, the time of tyranny’s incubation.”—Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), p. 15.

“Democracy, in fact, is always inventing class distinctions, despite its theoretical abhorrence of them. The baron has departed, but in his place stands the grand goblin…Democratic man is quite unable to think of himself as a free individual; he must belong to a group, or shake with fear and loneliness—and the group, of course, must have its leaders.—H.L. Mencken

“Democracy is the road to socialism.”—Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 1874

“Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”— John Marshall, Chief Justice of the supreme Court, 1801 to 1835

“... all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”—H.L. Mencken, journalist and satirist (1880 - 1956) from the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

“Without checks and balances, monarchy becomes despotism, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy becomes mob rule, chaos, and dictatorship.”—Dr. Will Durant, summarizing one statement of Cicero, and Durant quotes Cicero verbatim about the leader usually chosen under a democracy as “someone bold and unscrupulous…who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property.”

“Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.”—Seneca

On May 31, 1787, Edmund Randolph told his fellow members of the newly assembled Constitutional Convention that the object for which the delegates had met was “to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy…”

“Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for supper.”—unknown

“It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience had proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”—Alexander Hamilton, June 21, 1788

“I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.”—Thomas Babington Macaulay

“If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditures. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.”—Benjamin Disraeli, 1850

“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.”—James Russell Lowell

“De Tocqueville once warned us that: ‘If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event will arise from the unlimited tyranny of the majority.’ But a majority will never be permitted to exercise such ‘unlimited tyranny’ so long as we cling to the American ideals of republican liberty and turn a deaf ear to the siren voices now calling us to democracy. This is not a question relating to the form of government. That can always be changed by constitutional amendment. It is one affecting the underlying philosophy of our system—a philosophy which brought new dignity to the individual, more safety for minorities and greater justice in the administration of government. We are in grave danger of dissipating this splendid heritage through mistaking it for democracy.”—Archibald E. Stevenson

“The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goosestep.”—H. L. Mencken

“The adoption of Democracy as a form of Government by all European nations is fatal to good Government, to liberty, to law and order, to respect for authority, and to religion, and must eventually produce a state of chaos from which a new world tyranny will arise.”—The Duke of Northumberland, in The History of World Revolution, 1931

“Only a few prefer liberty—the majority seek nothing more than kind masters.”—Sallust, Histories

James Madison’s Federalist Paper #10 discusses the issue of Democracies: “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 deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions and their passions.”

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” — John Adams

THE FALL OF THE ATHENIAN REPUBLIC...At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander ‘Tyler’, a Scottish history professor had this to say about “The Fall of the Athenian Republic” some 2,000 years prior: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship… The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.” [VLRC Caveat: This widely-circulated quote from “Alexander Tyler” is possibly a fictitious composite from Tytler’s writings. His name was actually Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813), a Scottish historian who wrote several books in the late 1700s and early 1800s. According to one researcher, there seems to be no record of The Fall of the Athenian Republic or The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic in the Library of Congress, which has several other titles by Tytler. The quote has also been cited as being from Tytler’s Universal History or from his Elements of General History, Ancient and Modern, books that do exist. These may be source of the quote, as they contain discussions of the political systems in historic civilizations, including Athens, although it is possible the quote comes from another source, such as a private letter. Fictitious or not, the quote accurately reflects the Founder’s understanding and warnings about Democracies.]

Education

“Can we truly expect those who aim to exploit us to be trusted to educate us?”—Eric Schaub, The Common Man

“And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.”—H. L. Mencken

“That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”—H L. Mencken

“The common [public] schools will have created a numerous ‘public’ of readers one-quarter or one-tenth cultivated: and the sure result will be the production for their use of a false, shallow, socialistic literature, science, and theology infinitely worse than blank ignorance.”—Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney

“Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.”—Adolph Hitler

“It [education] is favourable to liberty. Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights, and where learning is confined to a few people, liberty can be neither equal nor universal.”— Dr. Benjamin Rush, 1786

“Any society which suppresses the heritage of its conquered minorities, prevents their history, and denies them their symbols, has sewn the seed of its own destruction.”—Sir William Wallace, 1281

“A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district—all studied and appreciated as they merit—are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty.”—Benjamin Franklin

“By removing the Bible from schools we would be wasting so much time and money in punishing criminals and so little pains to prevent crime. Take the Bible out of our schools and there would be an explosion in crime.”—Benjamin Rush

“Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.”—Eric Hoffer, First Things, Last Things

“Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.” —Joseph Addison

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” — Hosea 4:6

“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” — Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

“The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.” — Karl Marx (1848)

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” — H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

“Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.” — Benjamin Disraeli (1874)

“State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly alike one another; ... in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.” — John Stuart Mill (1859)

“Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent overeducation from happening. The average American (should be) content with their humble role in life, because they’re not tempted to think about any other role.” — U.S. Commissioner of Education, William T. Harris, 1889

“The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone would be interdependent.” — John Dewey, 1899

“Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations.” — John Dewey, educational philosopher, proponent of modern public schools, 1896

“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.” — Will and Ariel Durant

“When you control someone’s information you control that person’s fate. Ignorance is pure evil!” — Dr. Louis Turi

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” — Herbert Spencer

Government

“Fascism finds it necessary, at the outset, to take away from the ordinary human being what he has been taught and has grown to cherish the most: personal liberty. And it can be affirmed, without falling into exaggeration, that a curtailment of personal liberty not only has proved to be, but necessarily must be, a fundamental condition of the triumph of Fascism.”—Mario Palmieri, The Philosophy of Fascism (1936)

“According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, with this need of raising the State to its rightful position.”—Mario Palmieri

“Corruptisima republica plurimae leges.”—Tacitus (The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.)

“Americans, both politicians and voters, may have become corrupted by big government beyond redemption. A virtuous government requires a virtuous people. A frugal government requires a self-reliant people. A free country requires people who value liberty more than money.”—Charley Reese

“If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the united States hold their existence as a nation.”—James Madison (1751-1836)

“A politician who portrays himself as ‘caring’ and ‘sensitive’ because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money—if a gun is held to his head.”—P. J. O’Rourke, Rolling Stone Magazine

“Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are the most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.”—H.L. Mencken

“There cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason. Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.”—John Locke

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”—Daniel Webster

“Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.”—Harry S. Truman, speech, Columbia University, April 28, 1959

“The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property.”—John Locke

“Your representative owes you not his industry only but his good judgment. And he betrays instead of serves you if he sacrifices his judgment to your opinion.”—Irish statesman Edmund Burke, 1774

“A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles—whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled—is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these ‘anti-conditions,’ your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.”—Ryszard Kapuscinski

“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”—Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Historians and economists are very good at creating and perpetuating myths that justify increasing the power placed in the hands of government.”—Reuven Brenner

“Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?”—H. L. Mencken

“The politician will do the right thing when there are no other options available.”—Mart Laar, former Prime Minister of Estonia

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”—G. K. Chesterton

“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-by to the Bill of Rights.”—H. L. Mencken

“My opinion with respect to immigration is, that except of some useful mechanics and some particular description of men and professions, there is no use of encouragement.”—George Washington, 1794

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”—Mark Twain

“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”—Aesop

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.” — Barry Goldwater, “The Conscience of a Conservative”

On November 2, 1800, John Adams became the first president to move into the White House. As he was writing a letter to his wife, he composed a beautiful prayer, which was later engraved upon the mantel in the state dining room: “I pray Heaven to bestow THE BEST OF BLESSINGS ON THIS HOUSE and All that shall hereafter Inhabit it, May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof.”

“Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of all free government, but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society.” — John Adams, August 28, 1811

“The Westminster Review for April 1860, contained an article entitled "Parliamentary Reform: the Dangers and the Safeguards.” In that article I ventured to predict some results of political changes then proposed: Reduced to its simplest expression, the thesis maintained was that, unless due precautions were taken, increase of freedom in form would be followed by decrease of freedom in fact. Nothing has occurred to alter the belief I then expressed. The drift of legislation since that time has been of the kind anticipated. Dictatorial measures, rapidly multiplied, have tended continually to narrow the liberties of individuals; and have done this in a double way. Regulations have been made in yearly-growing numbers, restraining the citizen in directions where his actions were previously unchecked, and compelling actions which previously he might perform or not as he liked; and at the same time heavier public burdens, chiefly local, have further restricted his freedom, by lessening that portion of his earnings which he can spend as he pleases, and augmenting the portion taken from him to be spent as public agents please.” — The Man versus the State, Herbert Spencer, 1884

“It would be a dangerous delusion if we did not fear for the safety of our rights, but entrusted these rights to the men we elect to public office.” — Thomas Jefferson

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” — James Madison

“It has long been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression… that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the Constitution of our Federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today, and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. To this I am opposed; because, when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated… ” — Thomas Jefferson, Master Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, published by the Bar of the State of New York, 1907

“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in hope that truth may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relating of campaigns and battles, and generals or other individuals, but that which shows principles. The principles for which the South contended were government by the people; that is, government by the consent of the governed, government limited and local, free of consolidated power. Those principles justified the South’s struggle.” — Robert E. Lee

“The States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.” — Thomas Jefferson

“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the acts.” — Will Rogers

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” — Pericles (430 B.C.)

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” — George Bernard Shaw

“Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” — Frederic Bastiat

“What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.” — Adolf Hitler

“Adherence to men, is often disloyalty to principles.” — John Taylor of Caroline

The Ten Cannots:

“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

You cannot establish security on borrowed money.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” — Rev. William John Henry Boetcker, 1873 [Often falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln]

“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” — John Adams, June 21, 1776

“When I was a kid I was told anyone could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.” — Thomas Sowell

“There is no distinctly native American criminal class, save Congress.” Mark Twain

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” — Mark Twain

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government...” — Thomas Jefferson.

“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.” — Thomas B. Reed, 1886

“It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” — George Washington

“If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its patriots to its ruin.” — Samuel Adams, 1780

“‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’” — G. K. Chesterton

“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature… If the next centennial does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.” — James Garfield, 1877

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” — George Washington

“No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” — Mark Twain, 1866

“The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.” — Thomas Paine

“The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” — Communist tyrant, Josef Stalin

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”— Benito Mussolini, from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams, October 11, 1798, address to the military

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” — Plato

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” — Thomas Jefferson

“The three branches of government…are not, in any sense, ‘branches’ since that would imply that there is something they are all attached to besides self-aggrandizement and our pocketbooks.” — P. J. O’Rourke

Greens

“The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes—thank God these people don’t actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already.”—P. J. O’Rourke, 1991, Dirt of The Earth: The Ecologists

“The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity. The pain and suffering it is inflicting on families in developing countries must no longer be tolerated.”—Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder

“Make no mistake: ‘progress’ is the lust for power and nothing besides, and we must unmask its method as a sick, destructive joke…This destructive urge takes many forms: progress is devastating forests, exterminating animal species, extinguishing native cultures, masking and distorting the pristine landscape with the varnish of industrialism, and debasing the organic life that still survives…Like an all-devouring conflagration, ‘progress’ scours the earth, and the place that has fallen to its flames, will flourish nevermore, so long as man still survives.”—Ludwig Klages, German ecologist and intellectual pacemaker for the Third Reich from his Man and Earth speech given at the Hohe Meissner gathering of the Wandervogel, 1913

“Consider that the United States spends tens of billions of dollars on frenzied programs to upgrade and improve the technology of bombers and fighter planes to counter an increasingly remote threat to our national security, but we are content to see hundreds of millions of automobiles using an old technological approach not radically different from the one first used decades ago in the Model A Ford. We now know that their cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy we are ever again likely to confront. Though it is technically possible to build high-mileage cars and trucks, we are told that mandating a more rapid transition to more efficient vehicles will cause an unacceptable disruption in the current structure of the automobile industry. Industry officials content that it is unfair to single out their industry while ignoring others that also contribute to the problem; I agree, but their point only illustrates further the need for a truly global, comprehensive, and strategic approach to the energy problem. I support new laws to mandate improvements in automobile fleet mileage, but much more is needed. Within the context of the SEI [Strategic Environment Initiative], it ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five-year period.” — then-Senator Al Gore, from his book, Earth in the Balance, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992

“When we make critical habitat designations, we just designate everything as critical, without an analysis of how much habitat an evolutionary significant unit [ESU] needs.” — Donna Darm, the acting NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) Regional Administrator for the Northwest, in a 1998 intra-agency memorandum

“This is as good a way to get rid of them as any.” — Charles Wursta, Chief Scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, commenting on the likelihood of millions dying from a global ban on DDT (also quoted in Toxic Terror)

“Giving society cheap, abundant energy...would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun” — green godfather Paul Ehrlich

“Insurance companies are in the business of reducing given risks and transferring them, for a price. Non-profit advocacy groups are in the business of maximizing fears from given risks, in order to attract the donations that keep them going. Yet because the latter’s income is not called by the dreaded word ‘profit,’ they are considered to be doing something more noble.” — Thomas Sowell, June 11, 2003

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.” — Dave Foreman, Founder of Earth First!

“In 30 years of implementing the Endangered Species Act, the Service has found that the designation of critical habitat provides little additional protection to most listed species, while preventing the Service from using scarce conservation resources for activities with greater conservation benefits. In almost all cases, recovery of listed species will come through voluntary cooperative partnerships, not regulatory measures such as critical habitat. Habitat is also protected through cooperative measures under the Endangered Species Act including Habitat Conservation Plans, Safe Harbor Agreements, Candidate Conservation Agreements and state programs. In addition, voluntary partnership programs such as the Service’s Private Stewardship Grants and Partners for Fish and Wildlife program also restore habitat. Habitat for endangered species is provided on many national wildlife refuges managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state lands administered by the Department of Land and Natural Resources.” — From Joan_Jewett@r1.fws.gov: You can cite the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the source of the critical habitat language, June 23, 2003. On June 19, 2003, the comment to my inquiry as to the author of this quote was: “These statements were written in Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s office. I do not know the exact author.”

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”— Maurice Strong, Head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro

“If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”— Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

“‘Protecting the Environment’ is a ruse. The goal is the political and economic subjugation of most men by the few, under the guise of preserving nature.”— J. H. Robbins

“Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.”— John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

“In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day.”— Dr. Jacques Cousteau

“We reject the idea of private property.”— Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society

“This is a political game. It has nothing to do with science. It has nothing to do with health and safety.”—Sherry Neddick, Greenpeace

“People are the cause of all the problems; we have too many of them; we need to get rid of some of them, and this [ban of DDT] is as good a way as any.”— Charles Wurster, Environmental Defense Fund

“In a decade, America’s mighty rivers will have reached the boiling point.”—Edwin Newman, Earth Day 1970 (GLOBAL WARMING)

“If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.”—Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day 1970. (GLOBAL COOLING)

“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic socialism and environmental policy.”— Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)

“Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian Religious tradition.”— Peter Singer, the ‘Father of Animal Rights’

Humor(?)

The “Stella” award ranks up there with the Darwin awards. Stella Liebeck is the 81 year old lady who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonalds. This case inspired an annual award - The “Stella” Award - for the most frivolous lawsuit in the U.S. The following are this year’s candidates:

1. January, 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin Texas was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little brat was Ms. Robertson’s son.

2. June, 1998: A 19 year old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car, when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps.

3. October, 1998: A Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation. Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner’s insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of half a million dollars.

4. October, 1999: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor’s beagle. The beagle was on a chain in it’s owner’s fenced-in yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

5. May, 2000: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx. The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson threw it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

6. December, 1997: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.

And the winner is: Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City. In November, 2000, Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32 foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having joined the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself cup of coffee. Not surprisingly the Winnie left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the handbook that he couldn’t actually do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a new Winnie. (Winnebago actually changed their handbooks on the back of this court case, just in case there are any other complete morons buying their vehicles.)

George Phillips of Meridian Mississippi was going up to bed when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things. He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?” and he said no. Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available. George said, “Okay,” hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again. “Hello. I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now cause I've just shot them all.” Then he hung up. Within five minutes three police cars, an Armed Response unit, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips residence. Of course, the police caught the burglars red-handed. One of the policemen said to George: “I thought you said that you’d shot them!” George said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”

Land-Property Rights

“The public lands of the United States exceed the combined areas of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark and Albania. When socialized ownership of land is concerned, only the U.S.S.R. and China can claim company with the United States.”—John Kenneth Galbraith

“Disregard of the constitutional protection of private property and stigmatization of the small or not so small entrepreneur as standing in the way of progress has everywhere characterized the advance of collectivism. To hold a purpose to be public merely for the reason that it is invoked by a public body to serve its ideas of the public good, it seems to me, can be done only on the assumption that we have passed the point of no return, that the trade, commerce and manufacture of our principal cities can be conducted by private enterprise only on a diminishing scale and that private capital should progressively be displaced by public capital which should increasingly take over. The economic and geographical advantages of the City of New York have withstood a great deal of attrition and can probably withstand more, but there is a limit beyond which socialization cannot be carried without destruction of the constitutional basis of private ownership and enterprise.”—Justice Van Voorhis dissenting in the case that paved the way for the construction of the World Trade Center in New York City, Courtesy Sandwich Shop v Port of New York Authority, 12 NY 2d 379, 399, 190 N.E. 2d 402, 411 (1963). 

“Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! When the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.”—Michah 2:1 and 2

“And Ahab spoke unto Naboth, saying: ‘Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house; and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.’ And Naboth said to Ahab: ‘The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.’—1 Kings 21

“And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is Mine; for ye are strangers and settlers (sojourners) with Me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land.”—Leviticus 25

“There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by … corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses.”—James Madison, often called the author of the American Constitution

“Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual—the man—has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, and the right to his property… the three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.” — U. S. supreme Court Justice George Southerland

“If we don’t stand our ground now, whose ground will we stand on in the future?” — Joanne Cline, July 19, 2002

“The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please during their usufruct.” — Thomas Jefferson, contained in a letter to James Madison

“No pursuit is more congenial with my nature and gratification, than that of agriculture; nor none I so pant after as again to become a tiller of the Earth.” — George Washington

“The home was a school. Farm and cabin households, though bookless save for the Family Bible and The Sacred Harp, taught the girls to spin, weave, quilt, cook, sew, and mind their manners; the boys to wield gun, ax, hammer and saw, to ride, plow, sow and reap, and to be men. Nobody need ever be bored. Amusement did not have to be bought.” — Richard Weaver on the Southern farm of old

“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of ... the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another...Now what liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?” — Samuel Adams, Nov 20, 1772

“Within our own borders we possess all the means of sustenance, defense, and commerce; at the same time, these advantages are so distributed among the different states of this continent as if nature had in view to proclaim to us be united among yourselves, and you will want nothing from the rest of the world.” — Samuel Adams, July 4, 1776, on Independence

Muley Graves, character in John Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath said, “I’m right here to tell you, mister, there ain’t nobody gonna push me off my land! My grandpaw took up this land seventy years ago. My paw was born here. We was all born on it. An’ some of us was killed on it. An’ some of us died on it. That’s what makes it arn. Bein’ born on it and workin’ on it and dyin’, dyin’ on it. An’ not no piece of paper with writin’ on it.”

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail—its roof may shake—the wind may blow through it—the storm may enter, the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter—all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!” — William Pitt, Speech on the Excise Bill, Hansard Parliamentary History of England, vol. 15

“The sacred rights of property are to be guarded at every point. I call them sacred, because, if they are unprotected, all other rights become worthless or visionary. What is personal liberty, if it does not draw after it the right to enjoy the fruits of our own industry? What is political liberty, if it imparts only perpetual poverty to us and all our posterity? What is the privilege of a vote, if the majority of the hour may sweep away the earnings of our whole lives, to gratify the rapacity of the indolent, the cunning, or the profligate, who are borne into power upon the tide of a temporary popularity?” — Judge Joseph Story, 1852

“Why, land’s the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.” — Gerald O'Hara, Gone With the Wind

“Either you have a right to own property, or you are property.” — Wayne Hage, March, 1992

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist.” — John Adams

“What we [National Socialists] need if we are to have a real People’s State is a land reform...And land [Grund und Boden], we must insist, cannot be private property. Further, there must be a reform in our law. Our present law regards only the rights of the individual. It does not regard the protection of the race, the protection of the community of the people...A law which is so far removed from the conception of the community of the people is in need of reform.” — Adolf Hitler, Munich, April 27, 1923

“To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be… controlled in everything.” — Friedrich von Hayek, 1974 Nobel laureate in economics

“There is nothing grateful as the earth; you cannot do too much for it; it will continue to repay tenfold the pains and labour bestowed upon it.” — Henry Thomas Liddell (1797-1878)

“To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life—this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfying thing a man can do.” — Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900)

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”— Booker T. Washington

Law

“No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession & control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear & unquestionable authority of law.”—Union Pacific Railway Co v. Botsford, 141 US 250 (1891)

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”—John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

“When we get to the point we try to use the law to oppose the law, it would seem laws are contradictory. When the laws are contradictory, it would seem there is opportunity for selective enforcement. Where there is selective enforcement the people are confused…but only for a little while. They soon make the rational leap and have no respect for law whatever.”—Chuck Marsh

“It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law…that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.”—H. L. Mencken

“I found the minions of the law—the agents of the FBI—to be men who proved themselves not only fully capable, but also utterly willing to manufacture evidence, to conceal crucial evidence and even to change the rules that governed life and death if, in the prosecution of the accused, it seemed expedient to do so.”—Gerry Spence, From Freedom to Slavery, 1995, describing his experience with the FBI’s handling of the siege of the Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho

“Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being....And, consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker’s will...this will of his Maker is called the law of nature. These laws laid down by God are the eternal immutable laws of good and evil...This law of nature dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this...The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures...[and] are found upon comparison to be really part of the original law of nature. Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these… If [the legislature] will positively enact a thing to be done, the judges are not at liberty to reject it, for that were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which should be subversive of all government.” — Sir William Blackstone [Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law was the recognized authority on the law for well over a century after 1776]

“The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of it’s enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it...No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law, and no courts are bound to enforce it.” — 16 Am Jur 2d, Sec. 177, late 2d, Sec. 256

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” — Plato (427-347 B.C.)

“The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. The Amendment not only protects the individual against being involuntarily called as a witness against himself in a criminal prosecution but also privileges him not to answer official questions put to him in any other proceeding civil or criminal formal or informal, where the answers might incriminate him in future criminal proceedings.” — Lefkowitz v. Turley, 94 S. Ct. 316, 414 U.S. 70 (1973).

“Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many Citizens, because of their respect for what appears to be law, are cunningly coerced into waiving their rights due to ignorance.” — U.S. supreme Court, US v Minker, 350 US 179 at 187

“No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above Justice?”— George Mason

“The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution.” — Reid v Covert, 354 US l (1957)

Liberty

“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”—John Stuart Mill

“The colonists are by the law of nature free-born, as indeed all man are, white or black…It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men’s liberty will soon care little for their own.”—James Otis (1725-1783), The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764)

“When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have freedom.”—Thomas Paine

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Maxims for Revolutionists: Liberty and Equality (1903)

“Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.”—Woodrow Wilson, New York Press Club, May 9, 1912

“Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.”—William Allen White (1868-1944) Editor, Emporia Gazette

“I tell ye true, liberty is the best of all things; never live beneath the noose of a servile halter.”—William Wallace, Address to the Scots, c. 1300

“If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.”—Carl Schurz (1829-1906) German-American statesman, journalist

“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”—John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”—John Stuart Mill

“Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself—that is my doctrine.”—Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

“It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.”—Thomas Paine

“The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters.”—H. L. Mencken

“I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another for none comes into the world with a saddle upon his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.”—Last words of Richard Rumbold before being hanged for planning an insurrection against the tyrant Charles II, 1679

“It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honour that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no good man gives up but with life itself.”—Declaration of Arbroath, Scotland, 1320

John Peter Muhlenberg was elected as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1774, and was a 30-year-old pastor who preached on the Christian’s responsibility to be involved in securing freedom for America. He was the son of Henry Muhlenberg, one of the founders of the Lutheran Church in America. In 1775, after preaching a message on Ecclesiastes 3:1, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” John Peter Muhlenberg closed his message by saying: “In the language of the Holy Writ, there is a time for all things. There is a time to preach and a time to fight.” He then threw off his robes to reveal the uniform of a soldier in the Revolutionary Army. That afternoon, at the head of 300 men, he marched off to join General Washington’s troops, becoming Colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment. He served until the end of the war being promoted to the rank of Major-general. In 1785 he became the Vice-President of Pennsylvania and in 1790 was a member of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention. He then served as a US Congressman from Pennsylvania and in 1801 was elected to the US Senate.

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them.”—George Washington

“Manus haec inimica tyrannis, Einse petit placidam cum libertate quietem. This hand, enemy to tyrants, By the sword seeks calm peacefulness with liberty.” — Algernon Sidney

“...freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man ...” — John Locke, Second Treatise

“The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.” — Plutarch

“Freedom requires unflagging devotion and unflappable courage. In fighting for freedom we must ‘never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never...never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy’.” — Justice Thomas quoting Winston Churchill

“The object is great which We have in View, and We must expect a great expense of blood to obtain it. But We should always remember that a free Constitution of civil Government cannot be purchased at too dear a rate as there is nothing, on this side (of) the New Jerusalem, of equal importance to Mankind… You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory I can see that the end is worth more than all the means; that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction, even though we [may regret] it, which I trust in God we shall not.” — John Adams, in a July 1, 1776 letter to Archibald Bullock, former member of the Continental Congress from Georgia

“He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of this country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man...The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.” — Samuel Adams

“God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.” —Daniel Webster

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” — H. L. Mencken

“The God Who gave us life gave us liberty — can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” — Inscription on the Jefferson Memorial

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government purposes are beneficent...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.” — Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928

“A diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.” — James Madison, 1825

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.” — Thomas Paine, 1795

“I prefer liberty with danger to security with slavery.” – J. Rouseau

“Go on, then, in your generous enterprise with gratitude to Heaven for past success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory...that these American States may never cease to be free and independent.” — Samuel Adams

“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” — John Adams, June 21, 1776

“The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” — John Stuart Mills

“It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose Liberty.” — Francis Bacon

“It is time to quit standing around whining and quit letting the vocal minority overrun us!” — Former U.S. Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have...a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the character and conduct of their rulers.” — John Adams, December 27, 1816

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” — Thomas Paine

“Posterity - you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” — John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1837

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” — Thomas Jefferson

”Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!” — Patrick Henry, March 20, 1775

“Before God, I believe the hour has come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it. And I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now, and Independence for ever!” — John Adams, July 1, 1776

“May you have many happy years, all bringing you an increase of virtue and wisdom, all witnessing your prosperity in this life, all bringing you nearer everlasting happiness thereafter. May God in His great mercy grant me this my constant prayer.” — Robert E. Lee to his son, December, 1851.

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men.” — Samuel Adams

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”—Benjamin Franklin

Media and Press

“[W]e made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.”—Robert E. Lee

“There is no nation so poor that it cannot afford free speech, but there are few elites which will put up with the bother of it.” — Daniel P. Moynihan

One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying: “There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” — Source: Labor’s Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979

“We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with the issues and subjects we choose to deal with.” – Richard M. Cohan, Senior Producer of CBS political news

“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.” - Richard Salant, former President of CBS News

“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.” — U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917

“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries.” — David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address before that organization in June, 1991

“The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one. Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” — From Benito Mussolini, contributing to the London Sunday Express, December 8, 1935.

Miscellaneous

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”—P.J. O’Rourke

“Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today’s half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again—and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.”—Thomas Sowell

“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”—H.L. Mencken

“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.”—Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, Chapter 2, The Glorious Whitewasher

“As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.”—Henry David Thoreau

“Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them.”—John Locke (1632-1704)

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.”—Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn, and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”—C.S. Lewis

“Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior race. They think they’re it. They believe they’re more intelligent than the general run of mankind, better suited than the little people are to manage the little people’s lives. They think they have the one true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century. They prefer big government because that is the first step to totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite. And of course they see themselves as the elite.”—Dean Koontz, from The Face of Fear

“Most men...can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven thread by thread into the fabric of their lives.”—Thomas Gold (1920-2004), physicist and professor of astronomy Gold argued in his 1999 book, The Deep Hot Biosphere, oil and natural gas are formed not from decaying organic matter, as most scientists believe, but from geologic processes and continually well up to the surface from deep underground.

“Life is tough but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.”—John Wayne

“If Americans wish to preserve a country they will recognize, then the first step is to recognize the enemy. Public education is the enemy. The entertainment industry is the enemy. The corporate culture is the enemy. The advertising industry is the enemy. And most of the politicians in both parties are the enemy. An enemy is defined as anybody, or any organization, which is attacking the traditional beliefs of Americans.”—Charley Reese

“A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.”—Thomas Jefferson

“Never question the ability of an individual to make a difference, because that’s the only thing that ever has.”—Anthropologist Margaret Mead 

“We cannot prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason. On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?—Thomas Macaulay, 1830

“It is a terrible thing when you think you got on a bandwagon and it turns out to be a garbage truck.”—Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstaengl

“He, who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and it time depraves all its good dispositions.”—Thomas Jefferson, 1785

“The Fear of Death often proves Mortal, and sets People on Methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.”—Joseph Addison

“From my earliest childhood I have been toiling & wearing my heart out for other people, who took all I could do & suffer for them as no more than their just dues.”—John Randolph, Collected Letters of John Randolph of Roanoke to Dr. John Brockenbrough, 1812-1833

“Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right?”—Jean-Baptiste Say, An Economist in Troubled Times: Writings Selected and Translated by R. R. Palmer

“The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice.”—Linda Bowles

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”—Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” — Winston Churchill

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.” — Edward Everett Hale

“If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.” — P. J. O’Rourke

“Ah consensus… the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?” — Margaret Thatcher

“To know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child.” — Cicero

“If you’re too open-minded, your brains fall out.”

“Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.” — Samuel Johnson

“A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today.” — Robert E. Lee

“A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.” — Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

“Don’t get enamored of the truth. There’s no money in it.”— George Herbert Walker Bush

1. Never slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.
2. Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.
3. There are 2 theories to arguing with a woman... neither works.
4. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
5. Always drink upstream from the herd.
6. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
7. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back in your pocket.
8. There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to touch the electric fence for themselves.
9. Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
10. If you’re riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.
11. Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier’n puttin’ it back.
12. And finally, after eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him...The moral: When you’re full of bull, keep your mouth shut. — Will Rogers

“The good opinion of honest men, wherever they may be born or happen to reside, is the only kind of reputation a wise man would ever desire.” — George Washington

“A good plan executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.” — George S. Patton

“When you sit down to negotiate on what you already have, you lose.” — Rep. Marie Parente

“If you are not paranoid, you just are not paying attention.” — Alfred E. Neuman

“Common sense is very uncommon. Common sense is in spite of, not as a result of education. Common sense is instinct, and enough is genius. Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he need more of it than he already has. Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done. — Rudyard Kipling’s view on Common Sense

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.” — George Washington

1. I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.
2. No man or woman is worth your tears, and the one who is, won’t make you cry.
3. Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.
4. A true friend is someone who reaches for your hand and touches your heart.
5. The worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them knowing you can’t have them.
6. Never frown, even when you are sad, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.
7. To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.
8. Don’t waste your time on a man/woman, who isn’t willing to waste their time on you.
9. Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the person, we will know how to be grateful.
10. Don’t cry because it is over, smile because it happened.
11. There’s always going to be people that hurt you so what you have to do is keep on trusting and just be more careful about who you trust next time around.
12. Make yourself a better person and know who you are before you try and know someone else and expect them to know you.
13. Don’t try so hard; the best things come when you least expect them to.

“Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you.”—Benjamin Franklin

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”— George Orwell

“...only three things are truly necessary in order to make life happy: the blessing of God, the benefit of books, and the benevolence of friends.”— Thomas Chalmers

“Tolerance is the virtue of men who no longer believe in anything.”— G. K. Chesterton

“Always do right. That will gratify some of the people and astonish the rest.”— Mark Twain

New World Order

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day-by-day and minute-by-minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”—George Orwell, 1984

“We shall have world government whether or not you like it—by conquest or consent.”—CFR member James Warburg in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1967

“Further global progress is now possible only through a quest for universal consensus in the movement towards a new world order.”—Mikhail Gorbachev, before the UN, December 7, 1988

“This idea of a planned world-state is one to which all our thought and knowledge is tending...It is appearing partially and experimentally at a thousand points...its coming is likely to happen quickly.”—H.G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy: Blueprints For A World Revolution, 1928

“The world has a cancer, and that cancer is man.”—Merton Lambert, former spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation, Harpeth Journal, December 18, 1962

“To achieve One World Government it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, their loyalty to family traditions and national identification.” — Brock Chisholm, while director of UN World Health Organization.

“Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government.” — Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991

“No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.” — David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries.” — David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address before that organization in June, 1991

“The New World Order is a world that has a super-national authority to regulate world commerce and industry; an international organization that would control the production and consumption of oil; an international currency that would replace the dollar; a World Development Fund that would make funds available to free and communist nations alike; and an international police force to enforce the edicts of the New World Order.” — Willy Brandt, Former West German Chancellor and former chairman of the Fifth Socialist International, Chairman of the Brandt Commission in the late1980s

Patriotism

“You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.” — Charles A. Beard

“A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men? Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of Society?...The Scriptures tell us ‘righteousness exalteth a Nation.’” — Abigail Adams

“A Patriot is merely a rebel at the start. In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice and always has been. In any civic crisis of a great and dangerous sort the common herd is not privately anxious about the rights and wrongs of the matter, it is only anxious to be on the winning side. In the North, before the war, the man who opposed slavery was despised and ostracized, and insulted. By the ‘patriots.’ Then, by and by, the ‘patriots’ went over to his side, and thenceforth his attitude became patriotism. There are two kinds of patriotism — monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: ‘The King can do no wrong.’ We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had: the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.” — Long after he was labeled a ‘traitor’ in 1901, Mark Twain returned to the issue of patriotism in this sketch from the closing pages of the notebook he used from 1905 to 1908. Monarchical and Republican Patriotism, Mark Twain; From Jim Zwick, ed., Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War, Syracuse University Press, 1992

Religion

President Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1805, offered A National Prayer for Peace: “Almighty God, Who has given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endow with Thy spirit of wisdom those to whom in Thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

“We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest. I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.” — Benjamin Franklin, Congressional Congress, 1787

“We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.” — Samuel Adams, As the Declaration of Independence was being signed, 1776

Jefferson’s “separation of church & state” letter written to the Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut on January 1, 1802:

“Gentlemen:

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which are so good to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, of prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all of his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessings of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.”

“I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God Governs the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” — Benjamin Franklin, Congressional Congress, 1787

“Should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a schoolbook? Its morals are pure, its examples are captivating and noble....In no Book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant, and by teaching all the same they will speak alike, and the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith.” — Fisher Ames, author of the First Amendment

“Have you ever found in history, one single example of a Nation thoroughly corrupted that was afterwards restored to virtue?... And without virtue, there can be no political liberty....Will you tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of temperance and industry? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?...I believe no effort in favor is lost...” — John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson

“As no truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgement of the growing providence of a Supreme Being and of the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributer of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness of individuals and to the well-being of communities...” — President John Adams calling for a National Fast Day, March 6, 1799

“It should therefore be among the first objects of those who wish well to the national prosperity to encourage and support the principles of religion and morality, and early to place the youth under the forming hand of society, that by instruction they may be molded to the love of virtue and good order.” — Abraham Baldwin, Founder of the University of Georgia

“...Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.” — Patrick Henry

“Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of all free government, but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society.” — John Adams, August 28, 1811

South-Dixie

“The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”—H. L. Mencken

“[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”—H. L. Mencken

“[W]e made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.”—Robert E. Lee

In a January, 1864, letter, presented to his subordinates and sent to the general commanding the Army of Tennessee, General Patrick R. Cleburne took the then radical step of advocating emancipating slaves who agreed to fight for the Confederacy: “Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late. We can give but a faint idea when we say that it means the loss of all we not hold most sacred—slaves and all other personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride, manhood. It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision…It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”

“What, then, is a little matter like a treaty to the French or British state? Merely a scrap of paper—Bethmann-Hollweg described it exactly. Why be astonished when the German or Russian State murders its citizens? The American State would do the same thing under the same circumstances. In fact, eighty years ago it did murder a great many of them for no other crime in the world but that they did not wish to live under its rule any longer; and if that is a crime, then the colonists led by G. Washington were hardened criminals and the Fourth of July is nothing but a cutthroat’s holiday.”—Albert J. Nock, The Criminal State

“The Confederate Soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes. We testify to the country our enduring fidelity to their memory. We commemorate their valor and devotion. There were some things not surrendered at Appomattox. We did not surrender our rights and history, nor was it one of the conditions of surrender that unfriendly lips should be suffered to tell the story of that war or that unfriendly hands should write the epitaphs of the true history of that war, the causes that led up to it and the principles involved.”—General E. W. Carmack, 1903

“All that the South has ever desired was the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth.”—General Robert E. Lee

“Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southern man apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance. Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again.”—President Jefferson Davis

“We must see to it that our children and our children’s children are taught that their fathers were not ‘rebels’ and ‘traitors,’ but as true patriots as the world ever saw; and that that cause could not be ‘treason’ for which Albert Sydney Johnson, and Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis, and the barefooted and ragged heroes who followed them to an immortality of fame, gave their stainless, noble lives.”—Reverend J. William Jones, D.D., Memorial Service for President Jefferson Davis

“He alone deserves to be remembered by his children who treasures up and preserves the memory of his fathers.” — Edmund Burke

“Their institutionalized world is a product of toil and discipline; of this they are no longer aware. Like the children of rich parents, they have been pampered by the labor and self-denial of those who went before; they begin to think that luxuries, though unearned, are rightfully theirs. They fret when their wishes are not gratified; they turn to cursing and abusing; they look for scapegoats.” — Richard Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay

“I’ve studied your great cities. Believe me the South is worth saving. Against a possible day when a flood of foreign anarchy threatens the foundations of the Republic and men shall laugh at the faiths of your fathers, and undigested wealth beyond the dreams of avarice rots your society until it mocks at honor, love and God — against that day we will preserve the South.” — Reverend John Durham, on being offered a Northern pastorate

“Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you.” — Reverend Matthias Burnet, 1803

“I felt so elated when I found myself in the ancient Dominion that I nodded to all the trees I passed.” — Robert E. Lee on his return home in 1840

“I am of Virginia and all my professional life I have studied of Lee and Jackson.” — General Douglas MacArthur

When my bones they lay down, In the cold, cold ground, Have someone play Dixie for me.

“Captain William Downs Farley, CSA, was a Scout for J. E. B. Stuart, and died June 9, 1863, after a cannonball took off his right leg. The night before, perhaps because of a premonition, he gave his new blue overcoat to a Culpepper woman, and told her, ‘If anything befalls me, wrap me up in this and send me to my mother.’ Instead, he was buried in Culpepper’s Fairview Cemetery. In April of 2002, his remains were returned to Laurens, South Carolina, turned over to the South Carolina Sons of Confederate Veterans. The final disposition of Farley’s remains resulted from a 17-year effort by Ed Gentry, a Culpepper lawyer and historian of the War. In a eulogy at the graveside service in Culpepper, Gentry stated, ‘I ask you to reflect on the personal meaning and importance of that simple word ‘home.’ It is there that the seeds of love are sown, that the branches of the family tree grow tallest and the roots of our lives grow deepest. It is the memories of home that light our path during our darkest hours; that bring the greatest peace at the time of greatest turmoil, and it is the memories of home that keep us warmest in the winter of our lives.” — May/June 2002, Southern Partisan Magazine

“The South is a land that has known sorrows; it is a land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened it with tears; a land scarred and riven by the plowshare of war and billowed with the graves of her dead; but a land of legend, a land of song, a land of hallowed and heroic memories. To that land every drop of my blood, every fiber of my being, every pulsation of my heart, is consecrated forever. I was born of her womb; I was nurtured at her breast; and when my last hour shall come, I pray GOD that I may be pillowed upon her bosom and rocked to sleep within her tender and encircling arms.” — Edward Carmack, United States House of Representatives

“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in hope that truth may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relating of campaigns and battles, and generals or other individuals, but that which shows principles. The principles for which the South contended were government by the people; that is, government by the consent of the governed, government limited and local, free of consolidated power. Those principles justified the South’s struggle.” — Robert E. Lee

“I think the American people lose a large part of the joy of life because they do not live for generations in the same place.” --Douglas Southall Freeman

“A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today.” — Robert E. Lee

“It’s been said that I should apply to the United States for a pardon, but repentance must precede the right of pardon, and I have not repented.” -- CSA President Jefferson Davis

Tax & Money

“There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims.”—Thomas Sowell

“Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.”—Baron M. A. Rothschild (1744-1812)

“Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.”—H.L. Mencken

“One man should not be afraid of improving his possessions, lest they be taken away from him, or another deterred by high taxes from starting a new business. Rather, the Prince should be ready to reward men who want to do these things and those who endeavor in any way to increase the prosperity of their city or their state.”—Machiavelli, The Prince

“Excessive taxation…will carry reason and reflection to every man’s door, and particularly in the hour of election.”—Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor of Caroline, 1798

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”—T.S. Elliot

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”—Galileo Galilei

“Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes.”—Thomas Sowell

“Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money—only for wanting to keep your own money.”—Joseph Sobran

“The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These, covering our land with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching, successively, every article of property and produce.”—Thomas Jefferson

“The arguments in favor of the constitutionality of legal tender paper currency tend directly to break down the barriers which separate a government of limited powers from a government resting in the unrestrained will of Congress. Those limitations must be preserved, or our government will inevitably drift from the system established by our Fathers into a vast, centralized, and consolidated government.”— supreme Court Justice Stephen Field, dissenting opinion in Dooley vs. Smith, 1872

“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt… not for the multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans and for increasing… the public debt on the principle of its being a public blessing.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1789

“We are ruined, Sir, if we do not overrule the principle that, ‘the more we owe the more prosperous we shall be.’” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1791

“The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.” — Mark Twain

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” — Winston Churchill

“It is unethical for any man to tax another man’s home to fund his social agenda. Friends don’t do that, your enemies will.” — John Taft

“The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” — Will Rogers

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” — A letter written by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Colonel House, November 21, l933

“Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that the days be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.” — Deuteronomy 25: 13-15

“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical...A wise and frugal government...shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned...Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated...Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands?” — Thomas Jefferson

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies… If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks]… will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered… The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” — Thomas Jefferson, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, 1809

“The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit…In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.... Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the “hidden” confiscation of wealth…[Gold] stands as a protector of property rights.”— Alan Greenspan, 1966

Tyranny

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”—William Pitt, 1783

“Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.”—Bertrand Russell, Saturday Review, 1951

“Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity—in short, of tyranny—and it is committed to making tyranny universal.”—Adlai E. Stevenson

“Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people’s master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed—first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.”—Gerry Spence, From Freedom To Slavery

“I have sworn before the alter of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”—Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.”—C.S. Lewis

“I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe…Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger.”—Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837

“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”—U.S. Justice Potter Stewart

“Democracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making, absolutist shape which we have given to it is, it is clear, the time of tyranny’s incubation.”—Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), p. 15.

“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.”—Aristotle

“In theory, the person is only selling his or her labor. In practice, however, indentured servants were basically slaves and the courts enforced the laws that made it so. The treatment of the servant was harsh and often brutal. In fact, the Virginia Colony prescribed ‘bodily punishment for not heeding the commands of the master.’ (Ballagh, 45) Half the servants died in the first two years. As a result of this type of treatment, runaways were frequent. The courts realized this was a problem and started to demand that everyone have identification and travel papers.”—Deanna Barker, Indentured Servitude in Colonial America

“If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes;…Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded.”—Noah Webster

“The whole world proves that there is no fellowship between overflowing treasuries and the happiness of the people; and that there is an invariable concurrency between such treasuries and their oppression. They are the strongest evidence in a civilized nation of a tyrannical government. But need we travel abroad in search of this evidence? Have we not at home a proof that national distress grows so inevitably with the growth of treasuries, as to render even peace and plenty unable to withstand their blighting effects?”—John Taylor of Caroline

“The rule of the Party is forever. Make that the starting point of your thoughts.”—O’Brien to Winston Smith, 1984

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.”—Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy

“There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.”—James Madison

“...the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.” — Robert E. Lee to Lord Acton regarding the Confederacy’s loss and the resulting centralization of power

“The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing.” — Teddy Roosevelt

“We are reduced to the alternative of choosing unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us.” — John Dickinson, in the Continental Congress's Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms in 1775

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C. S. Lewis

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm— but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” — T. S. Eliot

“I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth.” — Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800

“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” — George Washington

“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” — James Madison

“A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.” — Bertrand de Juvenal

“A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or perceived, from abroad.” — James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson

“Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded.” — Noah Webster

“Oh, my countrymen! What will our children say, when they read the history of these times? Should they find we tamely gave away without one noble struggle, the most invaluable of earthly blessings? As they drag the galling chain, will they not execrate us? If we have any respect for things sacred; any regard to the dearest treasures on earth; if we have one tender sentiment for posterity; if we would not be despised by the whole world - let us in the most open, solemn manner, and with determined fortitude, swear we will die, if we cannot live free men!” — Josiah Quincy, Jr., 1788, published in the Boston Gazette

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrations) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.” — Thomas Jefferson.

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them.” — George Washington

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini, from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor

“An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to insure our domestic security and protect our Homeland.” — Adolph Hitler, 1933, writing about the creation of the German Gestapo

“Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.” — William Penn

”Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, (1834-1902), British historian and philosopher

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become the unwitting victims of the darkness.” — William O. Douglas, supreme Court Justice, 1939-75

“And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.” — Nehemiah 4:14

United Nations

“Not only does the Charter Organization (United Nations) not prevent future wars, but it makes it practically certain that we shall have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us (the United States) the power to declare them to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting.” — J. Ruben Clark, Jr., former Under-Secretary of State and Ambassador to Mexico, widely recognized as one of our nation’s foremost international lawyers, page 27 of the book The United Nations Today

“The United Nations is the greatest fraud in history. Its purpose is to destroy the United States.” — Former U.S. Congressman John E. Rankin

“Food is Power! We use it to control behavior. Some may call it bribery. We do not apologize.” — Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, speaking at the UN World Food Summit, November, 1996

“It is the sacred principles enshrined in the United Nations charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their allegiance.” — President George Herbert Walker Bush addressing the General Assembly of the U.N., February 1, 1992

War

“I would never rob your cradles to feed the dogs of war.”—Huey P. Long

“The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.”—General George Patton (1885-1945)

“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”—Sir Winston Churchill

“The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant.” Reich cut to the chase when he said that “America’s domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve and America’s foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF].” And, “...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress.”—Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, in USA Today, January 7, 1999

“When the principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then the battle is your calling, and peace has become sin. You must at the price of dearest peace lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy with all the fire of your faith.” — Abraham Kuyper

“We simply cannot keep the country in readiness to fight an all-out war unless we are willing to turn our country into a garrison state and abandon all [its] ideals of freedom...” — The late Senator Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio)

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” — Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief, from Gilbert, G. M. (1947) Nuremberg Diary, New York: Signet

“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.” — attributed to Julius Caesar, but probably a bogus quote

“Every ambitious would-be empire clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie, and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.” — Mark Twain, in The Mysterious Stranger, 1916