"Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure." Abraham Lincoln
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Abraham Lincoln
"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." Abraham Lincoln
"The people are the rightful masters of both congresses, and courts not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it." Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio September 17, 1859 (Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 3, p. 435)
"How fortunate for rulers that men do not think" Adolf Hitler
"Any excuse will serve a tyrant." Aesop
"Liberty-loving American people will sacrifice their freedom and their democratic principles if their security and their very lives are threatened." Out of These Roots: Journey Through Chaos 1944 Agnes E. Meyer (1887-1970) Socialist Author
"The only way to deal with an unfree world, is to become absolutely free, that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Albert Camus
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants." Albert Camus
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." Albert Einstein
"It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own." Albert J. Nock
"A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything." Alexander Hamilton
"O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name." Alexander Pope
"Fascism is inherently conspiratorial, and the study of it is often maligned as "conspiracy theory." Alex Constantine
"In a dictatorship there is no choice, the elections are controlled, the police are the military, fear equals control, speech is suppressed, the economy is looted, the people are slaves." - Alex Jones
"The answer to 1984 is 1776." - Alex Jones
"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it." Alexis de Tocqueville
"Violence as a way of gaining power...is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security." Alfred Adler
"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"An election is nothing more than an advance auction of stolen goods.” Ambrose Bierce
"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes." Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second National Bank, July 10, 1832
"It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion."- Aristotle in Politics, J. Sinclair translation, pg. 226, 1962
"The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave." Ayn Rand
"Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing." Ayn Rand
"We are fast approaching the stage of ultimate inversion: the stage where government is free to do as it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission." Ayn Rand
"Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths...I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Barbara Bush
"No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots." Barbara Ehrenreich
"A
nation of well informed men who have been taught to know & prize
the rights which G-d has given them, cannot be enslaved. It is in the
region of ignorance, that tyranny begins." Benjamin Franklin
"It is the responsibility of every citizen to question authority.” Ben Franklin
"Only a Virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” Benjamin Franklin
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.." - Bill Clinton USA Today
"I do not lift my voice against the great and glorious Government guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution, but against those corrupt administrators who trample the Constitution and just laws under their feet." Brigham Young (1801-1877) President LDS Church, Journal of Discourses September 13, 1857
"The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection." Butler Shaffer
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." Charles A. Beard
"Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him." Charles de Gaulle
"When the President signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913], the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized." Speech on the Senate floor, November 1912 Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. (1859-1924) U.S. Senator, Minnesota (R)
"The voice of protest...is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum...is bidding all men...obey in silence the tyrannous word of command." Charles Eliot Norton
"When the President signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913], the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized." Speech on the Senate floor, November 1912 Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. (1859-1924) U.S. Senator, Minnesota (R)
"The voice of protest...is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum...is bidding all men...obey in silence the tyrannous word of command." Charles Eliot Norton
"I'm a politician, and as a politician I have the prerogative to lie whenever I want." Charles Peacock
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, then it will lose it's freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort and security that it values, it will lose that too. Unknown Americans must decide: Are we to be governed by Americans or by an International organization ? I, for one, owe no alliegence to the United Nations nor will I give it any. I obey only the U.S. Constitution. You had better think about this issue, for if the U.N. can violate the Sovereignty of Haiti, Iraq and other countries, it can violate ours...The United States may not be the top dog 15 years from now. U.N. security council resolutions, backed by say chinese soldiers, could be aimed at us."-Charley Reese-Orlando Sentinel
"You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free." Clarence Darrow
"It is seldom that any liberty is lost all at once." - David Hume
"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is affected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular." - David Hume: Of the First Principles of Government (1758)
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is affected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular." - David Hume: Of the First Principles of Government (1758)
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke
"The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion." Edmund Burke
"The greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake." The Early Life, Correspondence and Writings of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, p. 338 Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"No man is free who is not a master of himself." Epictatus
"Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic." - Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
"It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly, that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement." – Etienne de la Boetie
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.” Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment
"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." Frederick Bastiat, French Economist
"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." - Frederick Douglass
"We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends -- the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.” Friedrich Engels
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded." Friedrich August von Hayek
"Financial dependence on the state is the foundation of modern serfdom." G. Edward Griffin
"If CON is the the opposite of PRO, does that mean that CONgress is the opposite of PROgress?” Gallagher
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" Gandhi
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." - George Bernard Shaw (1944)
"No man has ever ruled other men for their own good.” George D. Herron
"If the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts.” - George H.W. Bush
"The Laws of Nature are the Laws of God, Whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to Him from whose punishment they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey." George Mason
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." George Orwell, '1984'
"The best way to have peace is to always be prepared to fight a way." George Washington
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." George Washington
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that are free." Goethe
"For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from it's original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy making arm of the government." President Harry Truman
"If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law." - Henry David Thoreau
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." Henry Kissinger New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973
"The whole
aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence
clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken
"Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed." I.F Stone
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." - James Madison
"I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people.” John Anderson, Independent presidential candidate, 1980
"Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations." John Dewey 1896
"Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience. " John Locke
"I am convinced that the people generally of the United States have not studied [the Constitution]. Many of them have never read it, and some know nothing concerning what it is all about." Joseph Fielding Smith (1876-1972), General Conference April 1950
"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.” L. Neil Smith, The Probability Broach
"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections." Lord Acton
"Arbitrary power... must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were, step by step, lest the people should see it approach." Lord Chesterfield
"They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." Justice Louis Brandeis (Olmstead v. U.S.)
"The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless.” James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." - Prof. John E. E. D. Acton
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.” John Hay, 1872
"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and he work of his hands are properly his." John Locke, 1690
"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy" John Pierpont Morgan
"The condition upon which God hath 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.” John Philpot Curran, 1790
"Real courage is found, not in the willingness to risk death, but in the willingness to stand, alone if necessary, against the ignorant and disapproving herd." Jon Roland, 1976
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928
"Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.” Ludwig Mises, "Socialism”
"I
cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can
only teach you not to bow your heads before anyone even at the cost of
your life." Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"An inalienable human right is a right that is with you at all times, it is a part of you and cannot be separated from you. It is a right that cannot be granted to you by man or governments. Inalienable rights are intinsic to your existence. Inalienable rights are bestowed by the creator of creation, and cannot be granted by an earthly authority. Governments and courts cannot give to you something that is already with you...". Malcolm McClure
"The answers to redress social injustices and denial of human rights arise from you and not from statute law" Malcolm McClure
"Human rights are lived from your conscience, not from your mind...from your guts, not from your head" - Malcolm McClure
"When you co-operate with an injustice, then a little bit of your spirit dies." Malcolm McClure
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." Mark Twain
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King
"One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It is not recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially self-liberation - that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my owness." Max Stirner
"The protection of our liberties does not ultimately depend on parliaments or even the courts. It depends on the love of the people for liberty." Michael Kirby
"Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.” Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist
"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.” Nikita Khrushchev
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." Noah Webster
"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security” - Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)
"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience & through rebellion" Oscar Wilde
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” Patrick Henry
"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!" Speech Virginia House of Delegates March 23, 1775 Patrick Henry
"The degree of a man's freedom decreases as the restraints on his actions, beyond those imposed by nature, increase in number or extent." Paul Lepanto
"Although the influences reducing a man's freedom can vary in form, the source of any and all such influences can only be the actions of other men." Paul Lepanto
"Rise like Lions after slumber; In unvanquishable number; Shake your chains to earth like dew; Which in sleep had fallen on you; Ye are many; They are few." - Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy
"There is no Left or Right -- there is only freedom or tyranny. Everything else is an illusion, an obfuscation to keep you confused and silent as the world burns around you." Philip Brennan
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” Plato
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.” P.J. O'Rourke
"As political theorist Michael Parenti points out, historians often overlook Fascism's economic agenda--the partnership between Big Capital and Big Government--in their analysis of its authoritarian social program. Indeed, according to Bertram Gross in his startlingly prescient Friendly Fascism (1980), it is possible to achieve fascist goals within an ostensibly democratic society." Richard Heinberg
"Control
freaks who sneer at people who have 'faith' in the free market
(voluntary trading) must be fantasizing an allegedly 'higher' political
end than freedom." Rick Gaber
"Taxation of earning from labor is on a part with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities." Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher
"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." Ronald Reagan
"It
is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human
history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to
improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends
forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million
different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current
that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance". - Robert F. Kennedy
"Taxation of earning from labor is on a part with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities." Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher
"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." Ronald Reagan
"September 11th does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur." Domestic Surveillance and the Patriot Act December 26, 2005 Ron Paul
"...it is a government by the corporations, for the corporations." Rutherford B. Hayes 19th President of the USA.
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!" Speech, State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia August 1, 1776 Samuel Adams (172-1803) American Patriot
"Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals." - Samuel Adams
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." Samuel Adams
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." Letter to James Warren 24 October 1780 (The Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4)
"The more corrupt a nation the more numerous are it's laws." Tacitus 95 A.D.
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President." Theodore Roosevelt
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. " Thomas Jefferson
"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as a gift of their chief magistrate." Thomas Jefferson
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1, p. 130.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if the can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Thomas Jefferson
"If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread." - Thomas Jefferson
"Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established." Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797. ME 9:422
"Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Thomas Jefferson
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” Thomas Jefferson
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.” Thomas Jefferson
"The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1781
"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government." Thomas Jefferson
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." Voltaire
"So
long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who
wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and
will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and
otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." Voltaire
"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be." Voltaire
"A person dependent on somebody else for everything from potatoes to opinions may declare that he is a free man, and his government may issue a certificate granting him his freedom, but he will not be free... How can he be free if he can do nothing for himself? .. Men are free precisely to the extent that they are equal to their own needs. The most able are the most free." Wendell Berry, "Discipline and Hope" in A Continuous Harmony (1972), p 124
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Wendell Phillips
"Why are corporate laws are so awry? Because the ones who designed them are psychopaths. The scaly ones behind the multinationals, the ones who seek to control the planet made corporations as their instruments of control. That is why they are feudal in design, not democratic". Zuerrnnovahh-Starr Livingstone
