"Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late...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...The conqueror's policy is to divide the conquered into factions and stir up animosity among them... ....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."
~Maj. Gen Patrick Cleburne, Arkansas, C.S.A.
"The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice."
~Cicero [106-43 B.C.]
"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 is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other." ~John Adams
"The right to freedom being the gift of God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave." ~Samuel Adams
"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." ~John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 17, 1775
"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." ~John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787
"But if we are to be told by a foreign Power ... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little." ~George Washington, letter to Alexander Hamilton, May 8, 1796
"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
"I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."
~George Washington, letter to the General Committee of the United Baptist Churches in Virginia, May, 1789
"Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party generally.... A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume." ~George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been... to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home."
~George Washington, letter to Patrick Henry, October 9, 1775
"No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable." ~George Washington, Message to the House of Representatives, December 3, 1793
"Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all." ~George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
"The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institution may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest purposes. Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting an inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchm[en]t can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." ~George Washington, fragments of the Draft First Inaugural Address, April 1789
"The hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty - that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men." ~
George Washington, General Orders, August 23, 1776
"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." ~George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position." ~
George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
"A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support." ~Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792
"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight." ~Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." ~Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791
"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." ~Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776
"Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?" ~Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." ~Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
"I must not forget our old flag - though torn & tattered & faded. In the three days of fighting, although about 18 inches was torn off the end & lost - there is fifteen bullet holes through the flag & three through the staff -
& besides this a large rent made by a piece of a bomb. Three color bearers were shot down & the fourth now carries it. If I should live through the war I would want no brighter monument than this faded flag to decorate my parlor walls - (Provided I ever have a parlor)."
~James C. Bates CSA
Ben Bradlee "To hell with the news. I'm no longer interested in news. I'm interested in causes. We don't print the truth. We don't pretend to print the truth..."--former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee
"Let us be certain that our children know that the war between the States was not a contest for the preservation of slavery, as some would have them to believe, but that it was a great struggle for the maintenance of Constitutional rights, and that men who fought Were warriors tried and true, Who bore the flags of a Nation's trust, And fell in a cause, though lost, still just,
And died for me and you." ~J. Taylor Ellyson
"...None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free..."
~Carl Klang
"We could have pursued no other course without dishonour. And as sad as the results have been, if it had all to be done over again, we should be
compelled to act in precisely the same manner."
~General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A.
"Negro equality, Fudge!! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend and
fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?" ~Abraham Lincoln
"The suspension of the habeas corpus was for the purpose that men may be arrested and held in prison who cannot be proved guilty of any defined crime."
~Abraham Lincoln
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic declines. There has either been
a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or an ultimate national disaster."
~General Douglas MacArthur
The London (England) Spectator said "the Union government liberates the enemy's slaves as it would the enemy's cattle, simply to weaken them in the
conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."
"Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." ~George Orwell
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest."
~Thomas Paine
"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside...horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them..." ~Thomas Paine
"One can always do what he wills to accomplish." ~Stonewall Jackson
"Through life let your principal object be the discharge of duty." ~Stonewall Jackson
"Shoot the brave officers and the cowards will run away and take the men with them." ~Stonewall Jackson
"There is no hero unless the odds are overwhelmingly against the thing he stands for." ~Andrew Nelson Lytle
"The hero's most perfect image is, of course, Christ the man-God." ~Andrew Nelson Lytle
"While the battle was raging and the bullets were flying, Jackson rode by, calm as if he were at home, but his head was raised toward heaven, and his lips were moving, evidently in prayer." ~ War correspondent on Stonewall Jackson
"My spare time is given to reading and to other sources of improvement." ~ Stonewall Jackson
"Be courteous with all but intimate with a few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence." ~George Washington
"I am of Virginia and all my professional life I have studied of Lee and Jackson"
~General Douglas MacArthur
"He was a Baptist minister who prayed through his six-shooter which he claimed was the most efficacious form of prayer, especially in dealing with Yankees...he would go into battle singing the songs of David."
~Lt. Col. John Mosby describing his chaplain, Sam Chapman
"The precarious state of our civilization has grown with our control over nature, though we were promised an opposite result." ~Richard Weaver
"The agrarian South, close to the soil and disciplined in expectation, has never behaved as the spoiled child." ~Richard Weaver
"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.
"You cannot barter manhood for peace."
~Robert E. Lee
"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
"Go manfully to work, put your own shoulder to the wheel and be sure to cultivate those articles necessary for the support of yourself and family." ~ R.E. Lee to one of his sons
"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.
"Tolerance is the virtue of men who no longer believe in anything." ~G.K. Chesterton
Chivalry ~ "…a romantic idealism closely related to Christianity, which makes honor the guiding principle of conduct. Connected with this is the ancient concept of the gentleman." ~Richard Weaver
"Luxury is the vice most fatal to Republics."
~Francis Scott Key
"I pray that on this day [Christmas] when only peace and good-will are preached to mankind, better thoughts may fill the hearts of our enemies and turn them to peace." ~Robert E. Lee
"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once." ~Shakespeare
"Tell my father I died with my face to the enemy." ~Colonel Isaac E. Avery, CSA ~ 6th North Carolina
"Madam, if your son were to come home and try to shirk duty, you ought to shut your door in his face and treat him as a renegade unworthy of your name or regard."
~Stonewall Jackson
"Sir! Men who desert their comrades in war deserve to be shot! And Officers who intrude for them deserve to be hung!" ~Stonewall Jackson
"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 Traditoin at Bay
"The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself." ~Archibald Macleish
"Its one of the amusing features of our system that a really principled candidate always causes outrage when he threatens to make a real difference through sheer democratic appeal. This system has no room for principle." ~Joseph Sobran
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other." ~Voltaire
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
~Thomas Jefferson
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
~Thomas Jefferson, proposal to the Virginia Constitution, June 1776, 1 T. Jefferson Papers
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.e
~Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria
"An armed society is a polite society."
~Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon
"The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits." ~Thomas Jefferson
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
~Benjamin Franklin
"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." ~Thomas Jefferson
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty."
~Benjamin Franklin
"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole-with their common aim of legal plunder-constitute socialism." ~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals-that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government-that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens protection against the government." ~Ayn Rand
"Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"And reason...teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions."
~John Locke
"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself."
~John Locke
"As human beings, we all have certain unalienable rights. Of the rights we possess, we have a right to delegate to government. For example, we all have a right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate it to government. In other words, we can say to government, 'We have the right to defend ourselves, but for a more orderly society, we give you the authority to defend us.' By contrast, I dont possess the right to take your earnings for any reason. Since I have no such right, I cannot delegate it to government. If I did take your earnings for housing and medical services, it would rightfully be described as an act of theft. When government does it, its still theft-the only difference is that its legalized theft sanctioned by a majority vote.
If youre a Christian or simply a moral human being, you should be against these so-called rights. After all, when God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment 'Thou shalt not steal,' Im sure that he didnt mean thou shalt not steal unless there is a majority vote in Congress."
~Walter E. Williams
"I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." ~Thomas Jefferson
"It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man. "
~John Locke
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
~Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
"If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world." ~Frederic Bastiat
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely 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 barons 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
"The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression." ~H.L. Mencken
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
~H.L. Mencken
"A great many laws in a country, like many physicians, is a sign of malady." ~Voltaire
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." ~Tacitus
"Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts."
~Edmund Burke
"The goal of the 'liberals'-as it emerges from the record of the past decades-was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot-by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the 'conservative' was only to retard that process.)"
~Ayn Rand
"When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty."
~George Mason
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
~Thomas Jefferson
"The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another."
~Ayn Rand
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." ~Lord Acton
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
~Thomas Jefferson
"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
~Thomas Jefferson
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
~Thomas Jefferson
"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add within the limits of the law, because law is often but the tyrants will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."
~Thomas Jefferson
"The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace." ~H.L. Mencken
"Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
~H.L. Mencken
"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." ~Thomas Jefferson
"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
"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~William Pitt
"Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition, and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery." ~James Fenimore Cooper
"Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: 'Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.' ~Alexis de Tocqueville
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." ~Thomas Jefferson
"Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free."
~Thomas Jefferson
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
~Thomas Jefferson
"Theres no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there arent enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." ~Ayn Rand
"For in a Republic, who is the country ? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant-merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isnt. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them." ~Mark Twain
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." ~Ayn Rand
"When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality."
~Thomas Jefferson
"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
~Robert A. Heinlein
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."
~Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
~Thomas Jefferson
"It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny."
~James Fenimore Cooper
"What luck for rulers that men do not think."
~Adolf Hitler
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." ~Voltaire
"No one in this world, so far as I know-and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me-has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
~H.L. Mencken
"All history is little else than a long succession of useless cruelties." ~Voltaire
"The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave." ~Alexis de Tocqueville
"Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." ~Alexis de Tocqueville
"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny."
~Edmund Burke
"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
~Thomas Jefferson
"In America, it is indispensable that every well wisher of true liberty should understand that acts of tyranny can only proceed from the publick. The publick, then, is to be watched, in this country, as, in other countries kings and aristocrats are to be watched."
~James Fenimore Cooper
"There isnt a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights."
~Mark Twain
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
~John Adams
"...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."
~James Madison, Federalist Paper 10
"When the Founders thought of democracy, they saw democracy in the political sphere-a sphere strictly limited by the Constitutions well-defined and enumerated powers given the federal government. Substituting democratic decision-making for what should be private decision-making is nothing less than tyranny dressed up."
~Walter E. Williams
"Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic."
~Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." ~Robert A. Heinlein
"It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." ~Benjamin Disraeli
"Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods."
~H.L. Mencken
"There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns." ~Ayn Rand
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all." ~Thomas Jefferson
"It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it."
~Frederic Bastiat
"Its not an endlessly expanding list of rights-the right to education, the right to health care, the right to food and housing. Thats not freedom, thats dependency. Those arent rights, those are the rations of slavery-hay and a barn for human cattle."
~Alexis de Tocqueville
"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
~Voltaire
"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." ~Frederic Bastiat, Government
"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." ~Thomas Brackett Reed
"When personal judgement is inoperative (or forbidden), mens first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice." ~Ayn Rand
"Unfortunately, the greater the humanitarian outreach, the greater the violence required to achieve it."
~Ron Paul
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" ~Thomas Jefferson
"The god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. ~Thomas Jefferson
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." ~Thomas Jefferson
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name Liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until America will one day be a Socialist nation without knowing how it happened."
~Norman Thomas, 6-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party who retired from politics when Democrat Franklin Roosevelt ran on the same platform and won.
"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
"...a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles...is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and keep a government free."
~Benjamin Franklin
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."
~Barry Goldwater
"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
"People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them."
~Frederic Bastiat
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." ~Thomas Jefferson
"Every class is unfit to govern."
~Lord Acton
"Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."
~James Madison
"All men having power ought to be mistrusted"
~James Madison
"If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." ~Thomas Jefferson
"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed." ~Booker T. Washington
"...those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms [of the rich] do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much sufering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises." ~Booker T. Washington
"It is better to tolerate that rare instance of a parents refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings by a forcible transportation and education of the infant against the will of his father."
~Thomas Jefferson
"...the statement, The purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign, is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"Since law necessarily requires the support of force, its lawful domain is only in the areas where the use of force is necessary. This is justice.
Every individual has the right to use force for lawful self-defense. It is for this reason that the collective force-which is only the organized combination of the individual forces-may lawfully be used for the same purpose; and it cannot be used legitimately for any other purpose. Law is solely the organization of the individual right of self-defense which existed before law was formalized. Law is justice."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"The law is justice-simple and clear, precise and bounded. Every eye can see it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and unchangeable. Justice is neither more than this nor less than this. If you exceed this proper limit-if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic-you will then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself?" ~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"Law is justice. In this proposition a simple and enduring government can be conceived. And I defy anyone to say how even the thought of revolution, of insurrection, of the slightest uprising could arise against a government whose organized force was confined only to suppressing injustice. ...
As proof of this statement, consider this question: Have the people ever been known to rise against the Court of Appeals, or mob a Justice of the Peace, in order to get higher wages, free credit, tools of production, favorable tariffs, or government-created jobs? Everyone knows perfectly well that such matters are not within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals or a Justice of the Peace. And if government were limited to its proper functions, everyone would soon learn that these matters are not within the jurisdiction of the law itself."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion-whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government-at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works."
~Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head." ~ George Wallace
"It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him." ~ H.L. Mencken
"The South is America. The South is what we started out with in this bizarre, slightly troubling, basically wonderful country--fun, danger, friendliness, energy, enthusiasm, and brave, crazy, tough people."
~P.J.O'Rourke
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
~James Madison
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
~Plato
"A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion."
~Henry Mencken
"The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category." ~Adolf Hitler
"The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to."
~Thomas Jefferson
"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality." ~George Washington
"Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God."
~Benjamin Franklin
"It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare." ~Edmund Burke
"When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it." ~GK Chesterton
"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right." ~ GK Chesterton
"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."
~T.S. Eliot
"In politics stupidity is not a handicap."
~Napoleon Bonaparte
"It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience." ~Julius Caesar
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ." ~Patrick Henry
"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." ~Mark Twain
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." ~Bertrand de Jouvenal
"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)
"The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal." ~Peter Brimelow, National Review (2/1/93)
"Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws." ~Baron M.A. Rothschild (1744 - 1812)
"For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But, he didn't. Most of his thoughts, his political ammunition, as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advance by the Council on Foreign Relations One World Money group.. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared 'ammunition' in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people, and thus paid off and returned his internationalist political support.
The UN is but a longrange, internationalbanking apparatus nearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful OneWorld Revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power.
The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the WorldMoney powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market......The OneWorld Government leaders and their everclose bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank."
~Curtis Dall, FDR's son in law as quoted in his book, My Exploited FatherinLaw
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
~Frederic Bastiat - (1801-1850) in his book Economic Sophisms
"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements....The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking system of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States....The United States under present conditions will be transformed from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and importing nation with a balance of trade against it."
~Rep. Louis McFadden - (Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency) quoted in the New York Times (June 1930)
Corruptisima republica plurimae leges. [The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.]
~Tacitus, Annals III 27
"To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them …"
~George Mason
"We are fast approaching the state of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the state of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
~Ayn Rand
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
~Thomas Jefferson
"Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit and security of the people, nation or community; whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish
it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public Weal." ~George Mason
"Here in America we a descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." ~Dwight Eisenhower
"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence." ~John Locke
"The most sensible and jealous people are so little attentive to government that there are no instances of resistance until repeated, multiplied oppressions have placed it beyond a doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties; not to oppress an individual or a few, but to break down the fences of a free constitution, and deprive the people at large of all share in the government, and all the checks by which it is limited" ~John Adams
"It is an observation of one of the profoundest inquirers into human affairs that a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense." ~John Adams
"Whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of a right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government; the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."
~Declaration of Rights, Maryland
"Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny."
~John Hancock
"It is lawful and hath been held so through all ages for any one who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death." ~John Milton
"It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. ~Thomas Jefferson
"When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect." ~Thomas Paine
"Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." ~Patrick Henry
"Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them." ~John Milton
"Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse." ~E.M. Cioran
"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." ~Machiavelli
"Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license"; and they will define and define freedom out of existence." ~Voltarine de Cleyre
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they... undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow"
~James Madison, Federalist Number 62.
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
~Thomas Jefferson, 1789
"It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court."
~John Adams, 1771
"Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction... if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong."
~Alexander Hamilton, 1804
"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." ~Thomas Jefferson
"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel."
~H. L. Mencken
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law, for nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced."
~Albert Einstein, My First Impression of the U.S.A, 1921
"The reason for despotism is the unwillingness of the people to confront it, to fight it and to remove it. Americans are overwhelmingly gifted in their ability to conceal their self denial."
~SARTRE
"It is the sacred principles enshrined in the United Nations charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their allegiance."
~President George Bush addressing the General Assembly of the U.N., February 1, 1992
"...there was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, 'and this will always be the man in the street.' Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology... Hatred and contempt must be directed at particular individuals."
H. Trevor-Roper (ed), The Goebbels Diaries, p. XX, cited in Regan, Geoffrey. 1987. Great Military Disasters. New York: M. Evans and Company
"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like."
~William O. Douglas 1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice
"Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity." ~Lord Acton
"Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny."
~Robert A. Heinlein
"The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable."
~U. S. Privacy Study Commission, 1977
"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."
~ James Madison, 1798 (italics added)
"Is it not just possible that we may become corrupted at home by the reaction of arbitrary political maxims in the East upon our domestic politics, just as Greece and Rome were demoralised by their contact with Asia?"
~Richard Cobden, 1850
Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
[Neo's eyes suddenly wander towards a woman in a red dress.]
Morpheus: If you are not one of us, you are one of them.
~The Matrix
Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
~The Matrix