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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The Declaration of Independence
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." Voltaire
"The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy." Adolf Hitler
"It is an abomination that babies are given Social Security numbers." Sam Aurelius Milam III
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage." Sir Alex Fraser Tyler, Scottish jurist and historian
"If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being a gift of ALMIGHTY GOD, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.” Samuel Adams 1772
"Sovereign individuals are subject only to a Common Law, whose primary purposes are to protect and defend individual rights, and to prevent anyone, whether public official or private person, from violating the rights of other individuals. Within this scene, Sovereigns are never subject to their own creations, and the constitutional contract is such a creation." To quote the Supreme Court, "No fiction can make a natural born subject." Milvaine v. Coxe's Lessee, 8 U.S. 598 (1808)
"Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government" Thomas Jefferson
"Governments are not the cause of a lack of freedom -- they are the result of it." Riqui Leon
"The American people had fought and won the War for Independence in order to escape from the corrupt English court system. But in less that ten years, the same antiquated system was forced upon them." "The Constitution That Never Was" Ralph Boryszewski, Page 11
"Usurpation is the customary weapon by which free government are destroyed." George Washington Farewell Address
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will one day reach himself.” Thomas Paine
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.” Bertrand de Jouvenel
"All the wonderful rights God gave you are called "unalienable Rights” in the Declaration of Independence, so whose idea was it to put them to a vote? The assembly of lawyers and other scoundrels otherwise known as the Constitutional Convention knew the "unalienable Rights” of the Declaration of Independence stood in the way of a strong central government. The so-called Founding Fathers dispensed with them by making them subject to the mob democracy." Dr. Eduardo M. Rivera
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself? There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide." Samuel Adams
"Governments commit more crimes upon persons and property and contribute more to their insecurity than all [the] criminals put together." Josiah Warren quoted in William O. Reichert, PARTISANS OF FREEDOM (1976), p. 72
"The end of law is NOT to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. But coercion remains an evil that must be minimized in a free society." Second Treatise of Government, John Locke
"The principle, on which the war was waged by the North was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals. No principle, that is possible to be name, can be more self-evidently false than this...If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave." Lysander Spooner
"The very highest duty of the States, when they entered into the Union under the Constitution, was to protect all persons within their boundaries in the enjoyment of these "unalienable rights with which they were endowed by their Creator.", U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)
"The assumption that, by a certain paper, called the constitution of the United States; a paper (I repeat and reiterate) which nobody ever signed, which but few persons ever read, and which the great body of the people never saw; and also by some forty subsidiary papers, called State constitutions, which also nobody ever signed, which but few persons ever read, and which the great body of the people never saw; all making a perfect system of the merest nothingness; the assumption, I say, that, by these papers, the people have all consented to the abolition of justice itself, the highest moral law of the Universe; and that all their own natural, inherent, inalienable rights to the benefits of that law, shall be annulled; and that they themselves, and everything that is theirs, shall be given over into the irresponsible custody of some forty little cabals of blockheads and villains called lawmakers; blockheads, who imagine themselves wiser than justice itself, and villains, who care nothing for either wisdom or justice, but only for the [*93] gratification of their own avarice and ambitions; and that these cabals shall be invested with the right to dispose of the property, liberty, and lives of all the rest of the people, at their pleasure or discretion;..." "Letter To Grover Cleveland” by Lysander Spooner (1886)
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush
"In America, we now have three forms of Constitutions in operation. The first is the original [de-jure] Constitution of a state. Unless one initiates a court action that relies upon a provision of an original Constitution, the states now function exclusively upon the second form of Constitution - the new state Constitutions for federal citizens. The third form is the federal Constitution." Henry Campbell Black, 'Handbook of American Constitutional Law'
"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws." John Adams
"The Constitution is not an instrument or the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." Patrick Henry
"What, then, is legislation? It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of absolute, irresponsible dominion over all other men whom they can subject to their power. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to subject all other men to their will and their service. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to abolish outright all the natural rights, all the natural liberty of all other men; to make all other men their slaves; to arbitrarily dictate to all other men what they may, and may not, do; what they may, and may not, have; what they may, and may not, be. It is, in short, the assumption of a right to banish the principle of human rights, the principle of justice itself, from off the earth, and set up their own personal will, pleasure, and interest in its place. All this, and nothing less, is involved in the very idea that there can be any such thing as human legislation that is obligatory upon those upon whom it is imposed.” Lysander Spooner
"Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment." Gandhi
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err." Gandhi
"To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body." Gandhi
"The idea of people being able to run their own lives, to a politician, is the most horrible thing he can imagine." Larken Rose
"Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?" Robert Nozick, Anarachy, State, and Utopia, 1974
"There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more." Robert Nozick, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia', 1974
"Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right." Robert Nozick, 'Anarachy, State, and Utopia' 1974
"Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another." Robert Nozick, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia', 1974
"It goes without saying that any persons may attempt to unite kindred spirits, but, whatever their hopes and longings, none have the right to impose their vision of unity upon the rest." Robert Nozick, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia', 1974
"The state constitutions in this country grant and limit the powers of the several departments of government, but, generally speaking, they are not to be considered as the origin of liberty or rights." [Ex parte Quarg, 149 Cal. 79, 84 P. 766, 5 L.R.A. (N.S.) 183, 117 Am. St. Rep. 115, 9 Ann. Cas. 747; People v. Warden of City Prison, 154 App. Div. 413, 139 N.Y.S. 277, 29 N.Y.Cr. R. 66.]
"Consider what you are about to do before your part with this Government. Take longer time in reckoning things: Revolutions like this have happened in almost every country in Europe: Similar examples are...ancient Greece and ancient Rome: Instances of the people losing their liberty by their own carelessness and the ambition of a few." Patrick Henry (Speech of 5 June 1778)
"Does it not insult your judgment to tell you, Adopt first, and then amend?...Is your rage for novelty so great, that you are first to sign and seal, and then retract?...agree to bind yourself hand and foot - for the sake of what? of being unbound?...to go into a dungeon - for what? To get out? Is there no danger, when you go in, that the bolts of federal authority shall shut you in?"... "I look upon the Constitution as the most fatal plan that could be possibly be conceived to enslave a free people." Patrick Henry (Speech to the Virginia ratifying assembly 1788)
"The facts about the American Revolution show that in the early days, in the mid 1770's, the colonialists suffered a series of defeats. Strategic secrets were being passed to the British. The facts also show that an American army general, Benedict Arnold, was a traitor who plotted to surrender the fort at West Point to the British and turn the tide of war against his own side. The facts link Washington with Arnold when it comes to Freemasonry and the facts show that the day the plot was discovered, Washington was due to meet Arnold at West Point...Washington has been working with Arnold and passing secrets to the British." Robert Cooper (Interview on Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol)
"If analyzed in contrast to history since 1787, it appears that the Constitution was purposely laden with several components designed to nearly guarantee the gradual expansion of the Federal Government - at the expense of the States and the people." Kenneth W. Royce, 'Hologram of Liberty'
"The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive." Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776-88
"Why then tell us of dangers to terrify us into an adoption of this new Government? And yet who knows the dangers that this new system may produce; they are out of sight of the common people: They cannot foresee latent consequences: I dread the operation of it on the middling and lower class of people: It is for them I fear the adoption of this system...I see jeopardy in this new Government. I see none from our present one." Patrick Henry, on adopting the Constitution
"That was the genius of the Constitution: To 1. utterly transform political reality without the people understanding it; 2. destroy the States without sound or smoke and 3. foist a government destined to become, over the distant horizon, fully national in scope and authority. By the time the States and the people would realize they'd been trumped, it would be too late." Kenneth W. Royce, 'Hologram of Liberty'
"So-called moderate politicians who compromise and seek bipartisanship are the most dangerous among the entire crew in Washington. Compromise is too often synonymous with "selling out,” but it sounds a lot better. " Ron Paul
"The man who owns a slave, or lives by exploiting others, whether slave or not, is not himself a free man. He is a man who must look over his shoulder all the time, in fear. True freedom lies in a deep concern for the freedom of others, and if this is accepted it should make every man, out of pure selfishness, the ardent devotee of the freedom of his neighbor." -Leonard Wibberly, 1776 - And All That (1975), p. 72.
"Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right." Robert Nozick, 'Anarachy, State, and Utopia' 1974
"There is no greater tyranny, that that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." Montesquien
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...we [will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent ...till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery. And the foreshores of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." Thomas Jefferson
"[We are] no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men." The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People, 1913 Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) 28th President of the U.S.
"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." George Washington
"In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population." Noam Chomsky
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Krishnamurti
"Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both." Abraham Flexner
"Government by consent is an unalienable right because it is given by God to all human beings. Consequently, this right is beyond the authority or jurisdiction of any government, federal or otherwise, to impair by regulation, balancing or otherwise. The independent agency, on the other hand, is a statutory creation of the federal government. I suggest that the independent agency, as we know it today, is repugnant to the Constitution. Of more significance to those who live under the reign of such agencies, their creation and continuation is antithetical to the spirit of a free people." Kerry L. Morgan, 'The Unalienable Right of Government by Consent and the Independent Agency
"A Republic must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty." John Witherspoon
"One encroachment leads to another; precedent gives birth to precedent; what has been done may be done again; thus radical princples are generally broken in upon, and the constitution eventually destroyed. Where is the security, where the inviolability of property, if the legislature, by a private act, affecting particular persons only, can take land from one citizen, who acquired it legally, and vest it in another. the rights of private property are regulated, protected, and governed by general, known, and established laws; and decided upon, by general, know, and established tribunals; laws and tribunals not made and created on an instant exigency, on an urgent emergency, to serve a present turn, or the interest of a moment." Justice William Patterson, 'VanHorne's Lessee v. Dorrance (C.C. Pa. 1795)
'Absolute rights' which individuals may exercise without reference to motive are rights incident to ownership of property, rights growing out of contractual relations, and rights to enter or refuse to enter contractual relations. By the 'absolute rights' of individuals is meant those which are in their primary and strictest sense, such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it. The rights of personal security, of personal liberty, and private property do no depend upon the Constitution for their existence. They existed before the Constitution was made, or the government was organized. These are what are termed the 'absolute rights' of individuals, which belong to them independently of all government, and which all governments which derive their power from the consent of the governed were instituted to protect." Words and Phrases, Volume 1, 1968
West Publishing Company
"Is everything a conspiracy? No, just the important stuff." - Jeff Wells, Rigorous Intuition
"An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so." Gandhi
"Our Lives begin to end, the day we become silent about the things that matter." Martin Luther King
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religions destroy spirituality." - Michael Ellner
"The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay. If such a law is not abolished immediately, it will spread: multiply and develop into a system." Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)
"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine
"A tiny portion of the population controls the lion's share of the wealth and most of the command positions of state, manufacturing, banking, investment, publishing, higher education, philanthropy, and media... these individuals exercise a preponderant influence over what is passed off as public information and democratic discourse." - Michael Parenti
"There is nothing useful but what is just; there is no law of nature which makes one individual dependent on another; and all those laws which reason disavows, have no force. Every person brings with him into the world his [own] title to freedom.” -LeGente (found in John Christice and Dwight Dumond, GEORGE BOURNE and THE BOOK AND SLAVERY IRRECONCILABLE (1969), p. 148.
"By 1992, there were more people working for government than for manufacturing companies in the private sector. There are more citizens receiving government checks than there are paying income taxes. When it is possible for people to vote on issues involving the transfer to themselves from others, the ballot box becomes a weapon whereby the majority plunders the minority. That is the point of no return. It is a doomsday mechanism." "The Creature From Jekyll Island", pg. 534-535, Edward Griffin
"The men and women who enlist in this country's military [should] be told the truth that they are not protecting the United States, they are and always have been protecting corporate interests." - Chante Wolf, Veterans for Peace activist
"We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy. We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called 'isolationism.' " Pat Buchanan
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then." Thomas Jefferson
"The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy." Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu
"The Constitution has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it". Lysander Spooner, No Treason (1870)
"The term "Attorney General" was NOT mentioned in the U.S. Constitution or ratifying conventions nor does it appear in the text of the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, Congress did not have the authority to create a new officer, an Attorney General, whom it could constitutionally involve in either the judicial or executive process; NOR did congress have the authority to create a new officer to be known as an "attorney for the United States." Congress was limited to establishing the federal courts. According to the terms of the Constitution, the federal courts could only be hearing bodies of judges limited entirely to deciding constitutional questions. The Supreme and inferior courts could not be trial courts if there was no Attorney General to act as attorney for the United States who could submit arguments in rebuttal to those of an aggrieved person seeking a judicial ruling. The word "trial" appears only twice in the Constitution and refers specifically to trial by jury, which "shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed." "The word "suit" does not once appear in the Constitution." The Constitution That Never Was by Ralph Boryszewski, pg. 175
"The incorporation of cities and towns by special act of the legislature, has, in many instances, proven to be a fountain of evil in the states where it prevails. There is no branch of government more completely adapted to the purposes of those who make the filthiest a trade than the manipulation of city charters, where their enactment is controlled by special laws." "The Origin of The Constitution of The State of Washington", by Lebbeus J. Knapp, page 16.
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." — Justice Louis D. Brandeis dissenting,Olmstead v. United States
"Tyranny and injustice thrive when people make economic decisions rather than stand on principle." — Jon Roland, 1983
"Nothing is more silly to say that the law made private property. The fact is the exact opposite. Private property came to exist and it made the law." John Maxcy Zane, THE STORY OF LAW (2nd ed., reprinted 1998), p. 147.
"The government waives its immunity when it violates one of its own statutes." Hollingshead v. United States, 85-2 USTC 9772 (5th Cir. 1985)
"I pay no tax to anyone. I striveon, my conscience completely clear, for I live by the Law of the Universe, as felt through my heart, and not the laws imposed by a corrupt and deluded State.” Jan, co-founder of of an eco-village
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” - George Bernard Shaw
"If a magistrate instigates a prosecution before himself without probable cause and deliberately uses the process issued by him therein, not for the legitimate purpose of hearing the case, but to show his authority and to gratify his personal feelings of importance, the act savors of oppression and constitutes an illegal abuse of process." Dean v. Kochendorfer, 237 NY 384, 143 NE 229.
"An officer who acts in violation of the United States Constitution ceases to represent the government." Brookfield Co. v. Stuart, (1964) 2, 34 F. Supp. 94, 99 USDC, Washington, D C.
"When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles on which they are supposed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power. Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power."Yik Wo v. Hopkins, 118 US 356 (1885)
"Here is the often expressed understanding from the United States Supreme Court, that "in common usage, the term "person" does not include the Sovereign, statutes employing the person are ordinarily construed to exclude the Sovereign." Wilson v. Omaha Tribe, 442 U.S. 653, 667 (1979) (quoting United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U.S. 600, 604 (1941)). See also United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258, 275 (1947).
"A peace officer cannot legally make an arrest without a warrant for an offense claimed to have been committed in his presence, under Code, §§ 5099, 5196, which he himself provokes or brings about." State v. Small, 184 Iowa, 882, 169 N. W. 116; Leighton v. Getchell, 169 N. W. 649. SCOTT v. FEILSCHMIDT (191 Iowa, 347) 182 NORTHWESTERN REPORTER 382
"A Sovereign is exempt from suit, not because of any formal conception or obsolete theory, but on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal Right as against the authority that makes the law on which the Right depends." Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, 205 U.S. 349, 353, 27 S. Ct. 526, 527, 51 L. Ed. 834 (1907)
"No such ideas obtain here(speaking of America);"at the revolution, the Sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the Sovereigns of the country, but they are Sovereigns without subjects (unless the African slaves among us may be so called) and have none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the Sovereignty." Chisholm v. Georgia (February Term, 1793) 2 U.S. 419, 2 Dall. 419, 1 L.Ed 440, pp. 471-472.
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." Thomas Jefferson
"Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos." Will Duran
"Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking. They want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." George Carlin
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." Unknown
"They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me, then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience." Gandhi
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” Robert Heinlein
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"If the citizens are under the intellectual hegemoney of the bureaucratic professionals, society breaks up into two castes: the ruling professionals, the Brahmins, and the gullible citizenry. Then despotism emerged, whatever the wording of constitutions and laws may be." Ludwig von Mises, 1944
"The first duty of man is that of subduing fear. We must get rid of fear; we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are slavish, not true but specious; his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got fear under his feet." Thomas Carlyle, 1840
"An illegal arrest is an assault and battery. The person so attempted to be restrained of his liberty has the same right, and only the same right, to use force in defending himself as he would have in repelling any other assault and battery." State v. Robinson 145 Me. 77,72 Atl. 2d 260, 262 (1950)
"It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has 'seized' that person." Terry v. Ohio, 392 US 1, 16 (1968)
"When officers detained defendant for the purpose of requiring him to identify himself, they performed a "seizure" of his person subject to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment." Brown v. Texas, 443 US at 47
"While the police have the right to request citizens to answer voluntary questions concerning unsolved crimes they have no right to compel them to answer." Davis v. Mississippi, 394 US 721, 727 n. 6
"The offense of resisting arrest, both at common law and under statute, presupposes a lawful arrest. It is axiomatic (self-evident) that every person has the right to resist an unlawful arrest. In such case the person attempting the arrest stands in the position of a wrongdoer and may be resisted by the use of force, as in self-defense." State v. Mobley 240 N.C. 476, 83 S.E. 2d 100,102 (1954).
"In sum then, individuals accosted by police on the basis merely of reasonable suspicion have a right not to be searched, a right to remain silent, and, as a corollary, a right not to be searched if they choose to remain silent". Justices Brennan, Marshall and Stevens dissenting in Michigan v. DeFillipo 443 US at 45
Though the police are honest and their aims worthy, history shows they are not appropriate guardians of the privacy which the Fourth Amendment protects." Jones v. United States 362 U.S. 257, 273 (1959).
"It is error alone which needs support of government. Truth can stand by itself." Thomas Jefferson
"Setting a thief (the government) to catch a thief doubles the amount of loot stolen." Robert LeFevre in the "Epilogue” to 'A Way to be Free"
"Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery they may indeed wait for ever." -Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) quoted in "England's Great Philistine, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, July 22, 1973, p. 26.
"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed." Ayn Rand from Atlas Shrugged, Francicsco's "Money Speech"
"...and it is the duty of the courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon." Byars v. U.S., 273 US 28 (1927)
"I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it." George Carlin
"So long as there is government, there shall be no peace and no justice.” John Simpson
"The proper way to suppress government power in a free society is with ideas. One good idea by one thinking individual is worth any number of guns and laws aimed at forcing men to blindly take actions." Paul Stevens, THE FREEMAN, November 1974, p. 689
"The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. ... Freedom and slavery are mental states. Therefore, the first thing to say to yourself: 'I shall no longer accept the role of a slave. I shall not obey orders as such but shall disobey them when they are in conflict with my conscience'." -M. K. Gandhi quoted in Gene Sharp, THE POLITICS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION (1973), p. 59.
"Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free." Attributed to Montesquieu
"If you ever wonder if a bureaucrat has the 'right' to do something, then just ask yourself this question: Does my neighbor have a right to do this to me?" -Marc Stevens, ADVENTURES IN LEGAL LAND (2005), p. 159.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we [stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people]." -Remarks by President George W. Bush at the Signing of H.R. 4613. the Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005, August 5, 2004.
"The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion." Justice Potter Stewart
"The usual rule is that a police officer may arrest without warrant one believed by the officer upon reasonable cause to have been guilty of a felony , and that he may only arrest without a warrant one guilty of a misdemeanor if committed in his presence. Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 US 487; Elk v. U.S., 117 US 529. The rule is sometimes expressed as follows:
"In cases of misdemeanor, a peace officer like a private person has at common law no power of arresting without a warrant except when a breach of the peace has been committed in his presence or there is reasonable ground for supposing that a breach of the peace is about to be committed or renewed in his presence." Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol. 9 part III, 612. The reason for arrest for misdemeanors without warrant at common law was promptly to suppress breaches of the peace, 1 Stephen, History of Criminal Law, 193..." Carrol v. U.S., 267 US 132, 157
"The practical reason for freedom, then, is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed. Everything else has been tried [and failed]. ... In suggesting that we try freedom ... the anarchist ... has a strictly practical aim. He aims at the production of a race of responsible beings. ... His desire for freedom has but one practical object, ie, that men may become as good and as decent, as elevated and noble, as they might be and really wish to be. Reason, experience, and observation lead him to the conviction that under absolute and unqualified freedom they can and rather promptly will, educate themselves to this desirable end; but that so long as they are the least degree dominated by legalism and authoritarianism, they never can.” A. J. Nock, "On Doing the Right Thing," pp. 173-178
"[I]t is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than right in chains." Thomas H. Huxley, LETTERS AND DIARIES: 1866 (November 8).
"These ... people don't see anything criminal about a little homemade brew. Try and understand their point of view.The know-how has been handed down for centuries. During all that time, whiskey has been used as their most common drug to doctor everything from colds to snake bite to heart trouble. They figure that it's their grain that goes into the whiskey. They grew it. They got together a few pieces of copper tubing and some other odds and ends and put together a little contraption on their land. To them, that's no more morally wrong than their wives making wild strawberry preserves in their kitchens or soap from lye drippings in their yards.” Catherine Marshall, CHRISTY, from Chapter 23 (1967)
"Persons and groups reaching for illicit power customarily assume attitudes of great moral rectitude to divert attention from the abandonment of their own moral standards of behavior. Deception of the multitude becomes necessary to sustain power, and deception of others rapidly progresses to deception of self. All conquest aristocracies have followed such paths. It would be incredible if ours [in the United States] had not.” Francis Jennings, THE INVASION OF AMERICA (1976), p. vii.
"Power can rarely be wielded effectively over long periods of time unless it is perceived by the community in which it is exercised as a form of legitimate authority, not as mere coercive force." -Brian Tierney, RELIGION, LAW, AND THE GROWTH OF CONSTITUTIONAL THOUGHT 1150-1650 (1982), p. x.
"[T]o proclaim a people free to choose their own government but then to insist that the government determine, through a government-controlled compulsory educational system, the very attitudes and values by which the people will choose becomes the most insidious and pernicious form of tyranny: it gives the people the illusion of freedom while all along controlling them through a form of governmental programming." -Blair Adams, WHO OWNS THE CHILDREN? (1991), p. 46.
"The existence of evil can never justify the existence of the State. If there is no evil, the State is unnecessary. If evil exists, the State is far too dangerous to be allowed to exist." Stefan Molyneux
"The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.” Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism
"…at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects…with none to govern but themselves…” CHISHOLM v. GEORGIA (US) 2 Dall 419, 454, 1 L Ed 440, 455 @DALL 1793 pp471-472
"The people of this State, as the successors of its former sovereign, are entitled to all the rights which formerly belonged to the King by his prerogative. Through the medium of their Legislature they may exercise all the powers which previous to the Revolution could have been exercised either by the King alone, or by him in conjunction with his Parliament; subject only to those restrictions which have been imposed by the Constitution of this State or of the U.S.” Lansing v. Smith
"Since there is no such entity as ‘the public,’ since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.” Ayn Rand
"The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future. Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophesies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true." - Eric Hoffer
"This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war . . . And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards . . . And he will take your men servants, and your maid servants, and your goodliest young men . . . and put them to his work . . . And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you." 1 Samuel 8:11
"I was born free by Nature. Why should I accept the yoke of an involuntarily assigned "citizenship,” which sweats me at law in order to finance its murder? The Constitution of a State has no inherent authority unless as a contract between man and man, and obviously can be binding only upon those then living who acknowledged it." Lysander Spooner
"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army." George Washington
"Blind faith in your leaders or in anything will get you killed." Bruce Springsteen
"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson
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