All Quotes
Edward Abbey
––American Author (1927-1989)
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government."
Lord Acton
––John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO (1834-1902)
"It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people to govern others. Every man is the best, the most responsible, judge of his own advantage."
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end."
"Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being."
John Adams
––2nd President of the United States (1735-1826)
"...religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society."
"Judges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men."
"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."
"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom."
"Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws."
"Fear is the foundation of most governments."
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."
"It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court."
"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."
(A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765)
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."
(letter to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1808)
"Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist."
"Public business must always be done by somebody... If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not."
"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private - and public virtue is the only foundation of republics."
"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
"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."
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
John Quincy Adams
––6th President of the United States (1767-1848
"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."
"Duty is ours; results are God's."
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."
"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."
Samuel Adams
––Statesman, philosopher (1722-1803)
"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt."
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."
"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men."
"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters."
"Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty."
"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness."
"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men."
"We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient."
(reflecting on Independence Day)
"While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."
Aeschylus
––Greek playwright (525-456 BC)
"Wisdom comes alone through suffering."
Aesop
––Greek fabulist (620-560 BC)
"Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow."
Herm Albright
––American writer (1876-1944)
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
Woody Allen
––American actor, playwright and comedian
"If you want to make GOD Laugh, tell him your future plans."
Fisher Ames
––U.S Representative, Massachusetts (1758-1808)
"If these [new] books ... must be retained, as they will be, should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book?"
"A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. "
"Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent."
"No one ever became, or can become truly eloquent without being a reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language."
"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty."
(speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 15 January 1788)
Thomas Aquinas
––Theologian and philosopher (1225-1274)
"A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational."
"All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly."
"Beware of the person of one book."
"By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments."
"How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God."
"How is it they live in such harmony the billions of stars - when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds about someone they know."
"Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason."
"Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them. "
"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."
Aristophanes
––Athenian dramatist (450-388 BC)
"Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war."
(From "The Birds")
"Wise men, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same lives."
"You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along."
(From "Ecclesiazusae")
Aristotle
––Greek philosopher (384-322 BC)
"Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit."
"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
"The fate of empires depends on the education of youth."
"The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law."
"To enjoy the things we ought, and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character."
"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do."
Augustine
––Theologian and bishop of Hippo (354-430)
"A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently."
"Conquer yourself and the world lies at your feet."
"In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?"
"It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels."
"Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering."
"Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature."
"Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you."
"Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand."
"Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand."
James Baldwin
––American novelist and playwright (1924-1987)
"Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law. "
"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
"Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch."
"Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it. "
Frederic Bastiat
––French political economist (1801-1850)
"Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property."
"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone."
"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."
"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal."
"Taxes must, in the end, fall upon the consumer."
"The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else."
"When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will."
"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law."
Charles Beard
––American historian (1874-1948)
"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 great struggle for independence."
Isaiah Berlin
––British philosopher and historian (1909-1997)
"But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you, the social reformers, see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them."
Ambrose Bierce
––American satirist and writer (1842-1914?)
"Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate."
"Politics, n. strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."
"Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope."
"The future is that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured."
Hugo L. Black
––Supreme Court Justice (1886-1971)
"It is my belief that there are 'absolutes' in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what the words meant and meant their prohibitions to be 'absolutes'."
"Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind."
"The Framers [of the Constitution] knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny."
"The layman's constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn't like is unconstitutional."
Elias Boudinot
––New Jersey delegate and president of the Continental Congress (1740-1821)
"Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow."
James Bovard
––Libertarian author and lecturer (1956- )
"As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board."
"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
"If so many Americans are looking for the government to save them, then it is hard to have a dignified search for a shepherd in chief."
"It is one of the great tragedies of the US, that most learn most of what they know about the government from the government."
"It is unfortunate that Americans are no longer aware of what the constitution says and what their rights are. Because of that, we are often very passive about what happens when the government violates those rights."
"Once freedom is equated with a certain material standard of living, confiscation becomes the path to liberation."
"The more expansive government is, the more perils people face in daily lives, be it from IRS agents or from child support services, or from other agencies that often have little or no legal restraints on their power."
Omar Bradley
––5-star General of the Army (1893-1981)
"Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death."
"Leadership is intangible, and therefore no weapon ever designed can replace it."
"Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship."
"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount... The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants."
Louis Brandeis
––Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)
"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent."
(Olmstead et al v. United States)
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
(Law and Democracy)
"Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
(Olmstead et al v. United States)
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
(Olmstead et al v. United States)
"Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."
(Charlotte Anna Whitney v. California)
William F. Buckley Jr.
––Author and Founder of National Review
"A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling "Stop!""
"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich."
"Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square."
"I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word "fair" in connection with income tax policies."
"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."
"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."
"Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security."
"One must bear in mind that the expansion of federal activity is a form of eating for politicians."
"There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance."
Edmund Burke
––Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729-1797)
"A state without some means of change is without the means of its conservation."
"All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter."
"All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice."
"All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist."
"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
"In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority."
"Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed."
"People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous."
"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all."
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts."
"There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations."
George Burns
––American comedian, actor, and writer (1896-1996)
"Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair."
Taylor Caldwell
––Anglo-American novelist (1900-1985)
"It is inevitable, that eventually the people will demand absolute security from the state... And absolute security is absolute slavery."
Thomas Carlyle
––Scottish satirist, essayist & historian (1795-1881)
"Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world."
"The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently but to live manfully."
Edmund Chaffee
––Presbyterian minister and educator (1887-1936)
"The majority of us are for free speech when it deals with subjects concerning which we have no intense feelings."
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
––Russian playwright (1860-1904)
"Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too."
"If you cry 'Forward' you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?"
"Only entropy comes easy."
"Prudence and justice tell me that in electricity and steam there is more love for man than in chastity and abstinence from meat."
G. K. Chesterton
––British writer and philosopher (1874-1936)
"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die."
"English experience indicates that when two political parties agree about something, it is generally wrong."
"Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another."
"The Christian faith has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."
"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
Noam Chomsky
––Linguist, anarchist, libertarian socialist (1928-)
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
Winston Churchill
––British Prime Minister and Statesman (1874-1965)
"A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him."
"Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage."
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
"It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as folly."
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
"Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts."
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
Marcus Tullius Cicero
––Roman philosopher and statesman (106-43BC)
"Freedom is a possession of inestimable value."
"In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power. "
"Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world. "
"Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything. "
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
Grover Cleveland
––22nd and 24th U.S. President (1837-1908)
"Once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again."
Charles Caleb Colton
––English cleric and writer (1780-1832)
"Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase."
"He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place."
"Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed."
"Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others."
"Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power. "
"The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little."
"The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum."
"Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind."
"War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies."
"Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking."
Confucius
––Chinese philosopher (551-479 BC)
"The higher type of man clings to virtue, the lower type of man clings to material comfort. The higher type of man cherishes justice, the lower type of man cherishes the hope of favors to be received."
Calvin Coolidge
––30th U.S. President (1872-1933)
"After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government."
"Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong."
"It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow."
"Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good."
"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."
"We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts.... Self-government means self-reliance."
James Fenimore Cooper
––American writer (1789-1851)
"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."
John Philpot Curran
––Irish orator & politician (1750-1817)
"The condition upon which God that given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
Frank Dane
––Danish actor (1902-1963)
"A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn't own."
"Rome had senators too, and that is why it declined."
"The news of any politician's death should be listed under 'Public Improvements.'"
"Where the criminals cover their crimes by making them legal."
(On Washington, DC)
Stockwell Day
––Canadian MP, Conservative Party
"A conservative knows that there are limits to what we can change, that there are some things that government cannot and should not do. Liberals and socialists, on the other hand, are convinced that by interfering with the free market they can create a better economy, or that by social engineering they can create a new and improved human nature."
Demosthenes
––Greek statesman & orator (384-322BC)
"It is not possible to found a lasting power on injustice."
Charles Dickens
––English novelist (1812-1870)
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditures twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
(David Copperfield, 1849)
"Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means."
"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
Benjamin Disraeli
––British Prime Minister and Statesman (1804-1881)
"How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct."
John Dos Passos
––American novelist and artist (1896-1970)
"The world's becoming a museum of socialist failures."
Frederick Douglass
––Abolitionist, orator, author & statesman (1818-1895)
"A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people."
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
"I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress."
"I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted."
"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."
"I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety."
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."
"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck."
"One and God make a majority."
"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
(1849)
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
Elizabeth Drew
––American writer
"Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation."
Thomas A. Edison
––American inventor & scientist (1847-1931)
"Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success."
"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
"Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something."
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
"I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us -- everything that exists -- proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision."
"I start where the last man left off."
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
"Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure."
"The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work."
"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."
Albert Einstein
––Nobel physicist & author (1879-1955)
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
"It is almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry."
"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man."
"The world is a dangerous place to live - not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
"We should take care not to make 'intellect' our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
––WWII Supreme Commander/ETO & 34th U.S. President (18980-1969)
"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."
(1956)
"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads."
T. S. Eliot
––Nobel poet & playwright (1888-1965)
"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."
Epictetus
––Greek Stoic philosopher (55-135)
"Only the educated are free."
Euripides
––Greek playwright (480-406 BC)
"There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change."
Max Farrand
––American historian (1869-1945)
"A lady asked Dr. Franklin, 'Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?' 'A republic,' replied the Doctor, 'if you can keep it.'"
(Records of the Federal Convention)
Gerald Ford
––38th U.S. President
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."
Henry Ford
––Father of the assembly line and founder of Ford Motor Co. (1863-1947)
"Time and money spent in helping men do more for themselves is far better than mere giving."
Harry Emerson Fosdick
––American clergyman (1878-1969)
"Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people."
"I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it."
"Liberty is always dangerous - but it is the safest thing we have."
Anatole France
––French poet, journalist & novelist (1844-1924)
"The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts."
Benjamin Franklin
––American Renaissance man -- satirist, statesman, inventor, and much more (1706-1790)
"It is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
"Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man."
"How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keepHolidays than Commandments."
(Poor Richards Almanack, 1743)
"I pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous."
"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?"
"It is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own."
"Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself a slave to it."
"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals. ... [I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."
(Letter to Benjamin Vaughn, March 14, 1783)
"Work as if you were to live 100 Years, Pray as if you were to die To-morrow."
(Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757)
Milton Friedman
––Nobel economist and author (1912-2006)
"Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the few, and long-term gain for all."
"Given our monstrous, overgrown government structure, any three letters chosen at random would probably designate an agency or part of a department that could be profitably abolished."
"Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other."
David Frost
––British writer and journalist (1939-)
"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home."
William Gaddis
––American novelist (1922-1998)
"Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power."
Arthur Godfrey
––American entertainer (1903-1983)
"I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money."
Arthur Goldberg
––Supreme Court justice (1908-1990)
"If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock."
Barry Goldwater
––U.S. Senator, Arizona (1909-1998)
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Billy Graham
––Evangelist (1918-)
"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost."
Alexander Hamilton
––Co-author of the Federalist Papers & first U.S. Treasury Sec'y
"There is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution."
(Federalist No. 81, 1788)
"...however weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties."
"The Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution."
"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired."
"Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction... if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong."
"Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others."
"Measures which serve to abridge ... free competition ... have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices."
"The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones."
(Federalist No. 73)
"To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character."
(Federalist No. 34)
"We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority."
(Federalist No. 85)
"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint."
(Federalist No. 15)
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison
––Co-authors of the Federalist Papers
"In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. ... Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."
(Federalist No. 55)
John Hancock
––Patriot & signer of the Declaration of Independence
"There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!"
(after signing the Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776)
John Marshall Harlan
––Supreme Court justice (1833-1911)
"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."
(SCOTUS Dissent on Plessey v. Ferguson)
William Hazlitt
––British writer (1778-1830)
"It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed."
"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."
"There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you."
Patrick Henry
––Orator & statesman (1736-1799)
"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
"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. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship."
"Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty?"
"Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds. ... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that precious jewel."
"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave."
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."
Auberon Herbert
––British writer & philosopher (1838-1906)
"Force and reason -- which last is the essence of the moral act -- are at the two opposite poles. The one who compels his neighbor... treats him, not as a being with reason, but as an animal in whom reason is not."
"How should it happen that the individual should be without rights, but the combination of individuals should possess unlimited rights?"
"True liberty cannot exist apart from the full rights of property, for property is the only crystallized form of free faculties...The whole meaning of socialism is a systematic glorification of force... "
Charlton Heston
––American actor and conservative activist (1924-2008)
"Another plague upon the land, as devastating as the locusts God loosed on the Egyptians, is 'Political Correctness.'"
"Here's my credo. There are no good guns, There are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good man is no threat to anyone, except bad people."
Cullen Hightower
––American writer & sales trainer (1923-2008)
"Discipline without freedom is tyranny; freedom without discipline is chaos."
(quoted in Reader's Digest Magazine, July 1999)
"Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else's can shorten it."
"Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know."
"Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it."
"There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else."
"We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex, but Congress can."
"Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions."
Thomas Hobbes
––English philosopher (1588-1679)
"A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to."
"A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life."
"The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life."
Eric Hoffer
––American social writer & philosopher (1902-1983)
"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."
"It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it."
"It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak."
"It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn."
"Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible."
"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves."
"Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength."
"Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives."
"The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves."
"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings."
"The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist."
"Totalitarianism spells simplification: an enormous reduction in the variety of aims, motives, interests, human types, and, above all, in the categories and units of power."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
––Supreme Court justice (1841-1935)
"A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born."
"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions."
"Beware how you take away hope from any human being."
"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so."
"I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy."
"It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the obscure."
"Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke."
"The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God."
"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
"To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man."
"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
"We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe."
"Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God. "
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
––American physician, poet & essayist (1809-1894)
"Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force."
"Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant."
"Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer."
"People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks."
"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all."
"The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city."
"The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer."
"The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."
Herbert Hoover
––31st U.S. President (1874-1964)
"A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus."
"America - a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose."
"Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt."
"Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress."
"Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he is free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family."
"Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity."
"It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business."
"Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs."
"No public man can be just a little crooked."
"Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury."
"When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned."
"When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man."
"Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next."
"With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system."
Bob Hope
––American comedian (1903-2003)
"Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong."
"Congress may be going home for the holidays soon. How can you beat a Christmas gift like that?"
"I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful."
"I like to come to Washington, D.C., at least once a year. Why should my tax money travel more than I do?"
"If you haven't any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble."
"The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup."
Jason Hutchison
"Eagles may soar in the clouds, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines."
Robert H. Jackson
––U.S. chief Nuremberg prosecutor & Supreme Court Justice (1892-1954)
"Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
(West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943)
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."
(American Communications Association v. Douds)
Thomas Jefferson
––Farmer, lawyer, architect, inventor, naturalist, philosopher, scientist, and 3rd U.S. President (1743-1826)
"A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive."
"A wise and frugal government...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."
"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."
"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."
"A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government."
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated. ... A wise and frugal government ... shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."
"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day."
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories."
"Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labors and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered."
"Excessive taxation ... will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election."
"I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office."
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."
"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy."
"It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions."
"It is not honorable to take mere legal advantage, when it happens to be contrary to justice."
"Never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing..."
"One single object... [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation."
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
(Epigrams)
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
"That government is best that governs least."
"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
"The Constitution ... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
(letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819)
"The duty of an upright administration is to pursue its course steadily, to know nothing of these family [dissensions], and to cherish the good principles of both parties."
"The foundation on which all [constitutions] are built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every preeminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a preeminence by birth."
"The freedom and happiness of man...[are] the sole objects of all legitimate government."
(letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1810)
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."
"The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain."
"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife."
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."
"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys."
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive."
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
"To take from one, because it is thought 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 everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience."
(Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782)
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another."
Samuel Johnson
––lexicographer (1709-1784)
"Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels but they live like men."
"Courage is the first of all the virtues because if you haven't courage, you may not have the opportunity to use any of the others."
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
Bertrand de Jouvenel
––French philosopher & political economist (1903-1987)
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
"The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State."
Helen Keller
––American author and lecturer, and first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts (1880-1968)
"Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight."
"I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble."
John F. Kennedy
––35th US President (1917-1963)
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
"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."
Jeane Kirkpatrick
––Ambassador, young socialist Democrat turned Republican anti-communist, first woman US UN Ambassador (1926-2006)
"The elements of our strength are many. They include our democratic government, our economic system, our great natural resources. But, the basic source of our strength is spiritual. We believe in the dignity of man."
Jean de La Bruyere
"The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many as can help in making his fortune."
Jean de La Fontaine
"Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish."
Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld
"Love of justice in the generality of men is only the fear of suffering from injustice."
D. H. Lawrence
––English author, poet and playwright, philosopher (1885-1930)
"I do esteem individual liberty above everything. What is a nation for, but to secure the maximum liberty to every individual?"
Tom Lehrer
––American mathematician, teacher, composer, satirist (1928-)
"I know there are people in this world who do not love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that."
"In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.'"
"It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."
Abe Lemons
––American college basketball coach (1922-2002)
"Finish last in your league and they call you idiot. Finish last in medical school and they call you doctor."
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
––First Soviet leader (1870-1924)
"Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless."
"One man with a gun can control 100 without one."
"Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism."
"Stalin is too rude."
"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
"The goal of socialism is communism."
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."
C. S. Lewis
––Irish essayist, novelist & theologian (1898-1963)
"And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies' plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger."
"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."
"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."
Liberty Bell
––Liberty Bell Center, Market St & 6th, Philadelphia, PA
"Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
(Leviticus 25:10)
G. C. Lichtenberg
––German satirist & scientist (1742-1799)
"Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessing of heaven."
G Gordon Liddy
––Attorney, White House Plumber, talk show host (1930-)
"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."
Abraham Lincoln
––Lawyer, legislator, abolishionist, 16th US President
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
"As I would not be a slave, neither would I be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."
"It's not me who can't keep a secret, it's the people I tell that can't."
"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
(Lincoln-Douglas debate)
"Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar."
"Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."
"The legitimate object of a government is to do for a community of people what ever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities."
"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
"You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
Martin Luther
––German theologian, author of "Ninety-Five Theses" (1483-1546)
"Whatever man loves, that is his god. For he carries it in his heart; he goes about with it night and day; he sleeps and wakes with it, be it what it may - wealth or self, pleasure or renown."
Douglas MacArthur
––American army general, Medal of Honor recipient (1880-1964)
"The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power."
Archibald MacLeish
––American poet, writer, Librarian of Congress (1892 – 1982)
"Freedom is the Right to Choose, the Right to create for oneself the alternatives of Choice. Without the possibility of Choice, and the exercise of Choice, a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing."
James Madison
––Co-author of the Federalist Papers & 4th U.S. President
"The States will retain, under the proposed Constitution, a very extensive portion of active sovereignty..."
"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species."
"Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals.... The invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended..."
"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?"
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...."
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."
"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."
"The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it."
(letter to James Monroe, December 16, 1824)
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."
(Federalist No. 45)
"The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone."
"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."
John Marshall
––American statesman and jurist, 4th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1755-1835)
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation."
Groucho Marx
––American comedian, film star, host on radio and television (1890-1977)
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."
George Mason
––American patriot & statesman (1725-1792)
"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens."
(Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 17, 1788)
Massachusetts Bill of Rights
"It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe."
(Part the First)
H. L. Mencken
––American journalist, essayist, satirist (1880-1956)
"I believe it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant."
"People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men."
"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 everwhere else."
"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights."
"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."
"Unionism seldom, if ever, uses such power as it has to insure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding bad work."
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
John Stuart Mill
––British philosopher and clvil servant, theorist on society, politics and political economy (1806-1873)
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
"That which seems to be the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next."
"Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse."
Charles Montagu
––English poet and statesman, 1st Earl of Halifax (1661-1715)
"If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of lawyers in the first place."
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne
––French writer (1533-1592)
"If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field."
C. L. De Montesquieu
––French political philosopher (1689-1755)
"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded."
Dwight L. Moody
––American evangelist and publisher (1837-1899)
"God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves."
J. P. Morgan
––American financier, banker, and art collector (1837-1913)
"A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one."
Christopher Morley
––American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet (1890-1957)
"The enemies of truth are always awfully nice."
Daniel P. Moynihan
––U.S. Senator, New York
"Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire."
"Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good."
"The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare."
Jim Murray
––American sports writer, Pulitzer Prize winner(1919-1998)
"Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss."
Edward R. Murrow
––American broadcast journalist (1908-1965)
"Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solution."
Geoffrey Neale
––national chair of the Libertarian Party, 2003
"The only way to reduce the influence of money in politics is to reduce the size and power of government. If Congress had nothing to sell, special interests would have nothing to buy."
Dorothy Nevill
––British writer & horticulturist (1826-1913)
"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
Howard W. Newton
––American advertising executive and author (1903-1951)
"Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy."
"When a man blames others for his failures, it's a good idea to credit others with his successes."
Isaac Newton
––English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, theologian (1643-1727)
"In the absence of any other proof, the thumb would convince me of God's existence."
"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being ... All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God."
Reinhold Niebuhr
––American theologian (1892-1971)
"All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions."
(Leaves From the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic (1929))
"All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion."
(Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932))
"Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems."
"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
(The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses)
"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
(The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944))
"No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."
(The Irony of American History (1952))
"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. "
(The Irony of American History (1952))
"Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love."
(The Irony of American History (1952))
"Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith."
(The Irony of American History (1952))
"The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it."
"The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world."
Pastor Martin Niemoller
––German Lutheran theologian (1892-1984)
"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me -- and by that time no one was left to speak up."
Friedrich Nietzsche
––German philosopher (1844-1900)
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
"In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play."
Kathleen Norris
––American Christian poet & writer (1947-)
"In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary."
"In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular."
P. J. O'Rourke
––American political satirist, journalist, author (1947-)
"A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them."
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!"
"Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking."
Thomas Paine
––American author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, Founding Father (1737-1809)
"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."
"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
(Common Sense)
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest."
"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."
"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."
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it."
(The Crisis, no. 4, 11 September 1777)
Theophilus Parsons
––American jurist (1750-1813)
"If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states, then the juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty."
Blaise Pascal
––French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher (1623-1662)
"Faith declares what the senses do not see, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them, not contrary to them."
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from mistaken conviction."
Doug Patton
––American conservative writer, contributor to Human Events, GOPUSA
"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil."
Pericles
––Athenian statesman, orator, general (495-429 BC)
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
Franklin Pierce
––American lawyer, 14th US President (1804-1869)
"It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence."
"The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded."
William Pitt the Younger
––British Prime Minister (1759-1806)
"As long as we look to government to solve our problems, we will always suffer tyranny."
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
Plato
––Greek philosopher, mathematician (428-348 BC)
"Everything that deceives can be said to enchant."
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
"The punishment of wise men who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse men."
"We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."
Plutarch
––Greek historian, biographer, essayist, Roman citizen (46-120)
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."
"The real destroyers of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."
Dennis Prager
––American radio host, columnist, author, speaker, commentator on Judeo-Christian values (1948-)
"America derives its laws from its Constitution. It derives its values from the Bible. We don't get inalienable rights from the Constitution; we get them from God."
"Enough generations of socialist policies have now passed for us to judge their effects. They are bleak. Socialism undermines the character of a nation and of its citizens. In simpler words, socialism makes people worse."
"Nothing more separates Judeo-Christian values from secular values than the question of whether morality - what is good or evil - is absolute or relative."
Ayn Rand
––Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright (1905-1982)
"Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life."
"We are fast approaching the stage 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 stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
Ronald Reagan
––"The Great Liberator" & 40th U.S. President (1911-2004)
"We don't have deficits because people are taxed too little. We have deficits because big government spends too much."
"Freedom is indivisible - there is no 's' on the end of it. You can erode freedom, diminish it, but you cannot divide it and choose to keep 'some freedoms' while giving up others."
"Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets."
"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
"I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts."
"If history teaches us anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly."
"Liberals fought poverty and poverty won."
"Man is not free unless government is limited.... As government expands, liberty contracts."
"Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment."
"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15."
"Republicans believe the best way to assure prosperity is to generate more jobs. The Democrats believe in more welfare."
"Some of you may remember that in my early days, I was sort of a bleeding heart liberal. Then I became a man and put away childish ways."
"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."
"The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution."
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
"The taxpayer; that's someone who works for the federal government, but doesn't have to take a civil service examination."
"There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."
"Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying."
"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much."
"We must not look to government to solve our problems. Government is the problem."
"What is euphemistically called government-corporate 'partnership' is just government coercion, political favoritism, collectivist industrial policy, and old-fashioned federal boondoggles nicely wrapped up in a bright-colored ribbon. It doesn't work."
"When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat."
"You can't be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy."
"You know it's said that an economist is the only professional who sees something working in practice and then seriously wonders if it works in theory."
Jean Francois Revel
––French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher (1924-2006)
"Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
Will Rogers
––American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer and actor (1879-1935)
"A fool and his money are soon elected."
"All I know is just what I read in the Congressional Record. They have had some awful funny articles in there lately. As our government deteriorates, our humor increases."
"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."
"I don't think you can make a lawyer honest by an act of legislature. You've got to work on his conscience. And his lack of conscience is what makes him a lawyer."
"If you ever injected truth into politics, you would have no politics."
"The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer."
"The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected."
"They are voting whether to keep a governor two years or four. I think a good, honest governor should get four years, and the others life."
"This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
––32nd President of the United States (1933-1945)
"Every man has a right to life. That means that he also has a right to make a comfortable living."
"The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."
"When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him."
Theodore Roosevelt
––"Progressive" Republican, 26th US President (1858-1919)
"All that the law can do is to shape things so that no injustice shall be done by one to the other, and that each man shall be given the first chance to show the stuff that is in him."
"Better faithful than famous. Honor before prominence."
"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediencey."
"The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything."
"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
"When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer 'present' or 'guilty'."
Benjamin Rush
––American physician, writer, educator, humanitarian, Founding Father (1745-1813)
"The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments."
"Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community."
Bertrand Russell
––British philosopher, logician, historian & socialist (1872-1970)
"A good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."
E.S. Savas
––Baruch College Presidential Professor (
"The word government is from the Greek word, which means 'to steer'. The job of government is to steer, not to row the boat. Delivering services is rowing and government is not very good at rowing."
Laura Schlessinger
––Radio host "Dr. Laura"
"If you're a liberal, anything you say is protected. If you're a conservative, anything you say is hateful."
Arthur Schopenhauer
––German atheist philosopher (1788-1860)
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see."
Walter Scott
––Scottish historical novelist, poet (1771-1832)
"Real valor consists not in being insensible to danger, but in being prompt to confront and disarm it."
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
––Roman dramatist, philosopher, politician (5 BC-65 AD)
"Laws do not persuade just because they threaten."
"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power."
Dr. Seuss
––Theodor Geisel
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
William Shakespeare
––English poet and playwright (1564-1616)
"One may smile and smile and be a villain."
(Hamlet)
George Bernard Shaw
––Irish playwright (1856-1950)
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Igor Sikorsky
––Russian-American aviation pioneer (1889-1972)
"The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward."
Upton Sinclair
––American author, Pulitzer Prize winner (1878-1968)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Adam Smith
––Scottish moral philosopher, political economist (1723-1790)
"By pursuing his own interest [every individual] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."
(The Wealth of Nations)
"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. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."
(The Wealth of Nations)
"It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of valuable property...can sleep a single night in security."
"The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatsoever."
(The Wealth of Nations)
Thomas Sowell
––American economist, commentator, author (1930-)
"In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics."
"We have been imposed on so often that it is understandable how some would think that we had reached the point where we would stand for anything."
Herbert Spencer
––English Philosopher (1820-1903)
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
Baruch Spinoza
––Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin (1632-1677)
"The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts."
Lysander Spooner
––American individualist anarchist, lawyer, entrepreneur, libertarian, political philosopher, abolitionist (1808-1887)
"There has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the power and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their power, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and find all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws."
Robert Louis Stevenson
––Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer (1850-1894)
"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying 'Amen' to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive."
Joseph Story
––American lawyer, jurist, judge of the US Supreme Court (1779-1845)
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic..."
Jonathon Swift
––Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet, cleric (1667-1745)
"All government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery!"
Margaret Thatcher
––British Prime Minister, leader of the Conservative Party (1925-)
"Consensus is the negation of leadership."
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Henry David Thoreau
––American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher (1817-1862)
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
"If I knew that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life."
"Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights."
Alexis de Tocqueville
––French political thinker and historian (1805-1859)
"Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves they will seek it, cherish it, and view any deprivation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery."
"Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details, which must be attended to if rules have to be adapted to different men, instead of indiscriminately subjecting all men to the same rule."
"Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions because it loves moderation, delights in compromise an is most careful to avoid anger."
"We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects."
Lily Tomlin
––American actress, comedian, writer, producer (1939-)
"The trouble with the rat race is even if you win, you find out you're still a rat."
Harry S. Truman
––33rd US President (1884-1972)
"Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice."
Gideon Tucker
––American lawyer, newspaper editor, politician (1826-1899)
"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session."
Mark Twain
––Samuel Clemens: American writer, humorist (1835-1910)
"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."
"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."
"Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth."
"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
Unknown
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten."
"There are many ways to measure success; not the least of which is the way your child describes you when talking to a friend."
"Two of the gravest general dangers to survival are the desire for comfort and a passive outlook."
(US Army Ranger Handbook)
Paul Valery
––French poet, essayist, philosopher (1871-1945)
"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them."
Fredrich von Hayek
––Austrian economist and philosopher (1899-1992)
"I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice."
"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything."
Ludwig Von Mises
––Austrian economist, philosopher, author, classical liberal (1881-1973)
"The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state."
George Washington
––First President of the United States, Founding Father
"There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of [slavery]."
(letter to Robert Morris, 12 April 1786)
"A people ... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything."
(letter to Benjamin Harrison, 10 Oct 1784)
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master."
"If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."
"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors."
"Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness."
"My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom."
"No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant."
"The best and only safe road to honor, glory, and true dignity is justice."
(letter to Marquis de Lafayette, September 30, 1779)
"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."
"'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world."
"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
"To the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian."
"Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
Mary Ball Washington
––Mother of George Washington
"I am not surprised at what George has done, for he was always a good boy."
(about the success of the revolution, and her son George, 1784)
Daniel Webster
––American statesman, orator (1782-1852)
"The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions."
"We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land - nor, perhaps, the sun or stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. That chart is the Constitution."
Robert Welch
––American businessman, political activist, co-founder of the John Birch Society (1899-1985)
"And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction."
"And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic."
"For not only every democracy, but certainly every republic, bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction."
"In a democracy there is a centralization of governmental power in a simple majority."
"In our Constitution governmental power is divided among three separate branches of the national government, three separate branches of State governments, and the peoples of the several States."
"In the best days of our republic Americans were fiercely proud of the fact that rich and poor met on such equal terms in so many ways, and without the slightest trace of hostility."
"In the Constitution of the American Republic there was a deliberate and very extensive and emphatic division of governmental power for the very purpose of preventing unbridled majority rule."
"It was under Wilson, of course, that the first huge parts of the Marxist program, such as the progressive income tax, were incorporated into the American system."
"The real freedom of any individual can always be measured by the amount of responsibility which he must assume for his own welfare and security."
H. G. Wells
––English socialist & author of science fiction, novels, history, politics and social commentary (1866-1946)
"The great trouble with you Americans is that you are still under the influence of that second-rate -- shall I say third-rate? -- mind, Karl Marx."
E. B. White
––American writer and author (1899-1985)
"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."
"There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement."
Walt Whitman
––American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist (1819-1892)
"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws."
Oscar Wilde
––Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete (1854-1900)
"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
"Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob."
James Wilson
––Signer of the Declaration, Founding Father, Congressman, and an original US Supreme Court justice (1742-1798)
"Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind."
(Lectures on Law, 1791)
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it."
(Of the Study of Law in the United States, Circa 1790)
"Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness."
John Witherspoon
––Signer of the Declaration, Founding Father, clergyman (1723-1794)
"There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage."
Harriet Woods
––American politician and activist (1927-2007)
"You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims."
William Butler Yeats
––Irish poet and dramatist (1865-1939)
"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. Of such is wisdom."
