The Spoonfed Truth

"There is no power representing the good or the just ... Power, whomsoever exercises it, is the Devil, the corrupter of man." Thucydides 460-395 BC

"Mankind are, in all ages, caught by the same baits: the same tricks played over and over again, still trepan them." - David Hume

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and the keystone under independence. The rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that is good." George Washington

"The federal government.. can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, and oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any other despotic or oppressive form so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people." George Washington

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." Albert Einstein

"The class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery." Eugene Debs

"To change masters is not to be free.” Jose Marti y Perez

"Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil." -1 Peter 2:16

"[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom." John Quincy Adams

"We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls." Robert J. McCracken

"There is no ‘slippery slope’ toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.” Alan K. Simpson (1931- ), US Senator

"The germ of destruction of our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body - working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." Thomas Jefferson, 1821.

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul." Moshe Dayan

"While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." John Adams

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

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." John F. Kennedy

"When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him." Franklin D. Roosevelt

"This truth is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of Capital to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance. Thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.” Sir Denison Miller

"Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond." Jeffrey Borenstein

"If we are to adopt socialism, it should be presented to the people of this country as socialism and not under the guise of a law to collect revenue." Calvin Coolidge

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty." John Adams

"The principle at stake was the First Amendment, the right of people not to be punished for dissenting beliefs. And so I would say that one of the first lessons of the '50's is the need for serious national First Amendment education: what it is, how to use it, how to know when it is under attack, and how to defend it." Victor Navasky, Editor, The Nation, at the "No More Witch-Hunts" rally, Chicago, 1981

"There are two freedoms – the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought." Charles Kingsley

"When right is wrong, change is past due." Jeffrey Stuart, Katz

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." Abraham Lincoln

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” John Milton

"What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” Thomas Jefferson

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." Lila Watson

"Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that don’t have brains enough to be honest.” – Benjamin Franklin

"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

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Louis D. Brandeis

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise." Barbara Jordan

"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people." John Adams

"An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashined frontal assault." Richard N. Gardner in 1974 "Foreign Affairs" CFR Publication

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err." Mahatma Gandhi

"Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die." Dwight D. Eisenhower

"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." Samual Adams 1772

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" Thomas Jefferson in "Notes on Virginia"

"You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased nor how you are to become a great and powerful people but how your liberties may be secured, for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government." Patrick Henry

"The jaws of power are always open to devour." John Adams

"We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free men." Gerald W. Johnson

"Liberty, sir, is the primary object,.. the battles of the Revolution were fought, not to make 'a great and mighty empire', but 'for liberty.". Patrick Henry

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice from 1916--1939

"The United Nations is the greatest fraud in all History. Its purpose is to destroy the United States." Congressman John E. Rankin

"There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.” John F. Kennedy

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” H. L. Menken

"If every Jewish and anti-nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic." Aaron Zelman, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

"If you think of yourselves as helpess 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 populat sense that they are helpless and ineffectual." Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

"The United Nations is the greatest fraud in all History. Its purpose is to destroy the United States." Congressman John E. Rankin

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." Lyndon B. Johnson

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." George Bernard Shaw

"The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe." H.L. Mencken

"The right to bear arms is essential to freedom. For it is the policy of governments to disarm the people, that they may have the opportunity to oppress them." Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor, 1845.

"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 ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun." Patrick Henry

"The police aren't here to create disorder. The police are here to preserve disorder." Mayor Richard Daley

"Majority rule only works if you’re also considering individual rights. Because you can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.” Larry Flynt

"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea." Elliot's Debates, James Madison 3:537

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

"The people in general ought to have regard to the moral character to those whom they invest with authority either in the legislative, exeutive, or judicial branches." John Witherspoon

"Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.” Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), Roman statesman, philosopher and orator

"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." John Adams

"They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.” Eugene Victor Debs

"If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.” George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-1950), British author

"Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it." - Ben Franklin

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.” Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965), American Broadcast Newsman

"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are." H.L. Menchken, writing in Smart Set magazine, December 1919

"If every Jewish and anti-nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic." Aaron Zelman, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

"The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.” William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice, An Almanac of Liberty, 1954

"Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." George Washington

"You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments' rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe." John Adams

"I cannot accept, your canon that we are to judge pope and king unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." Abraham Lincoln

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal'". Martin Luther King Jr. March on Washington, 1963

"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." Frederick Douglass

"The right to bear arms is essential to freedom. For it is the policy of governments to disarm the people, that they may have the opportunity to oppress them." Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor, 1845.

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." Nelson Mandela

"No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents.” Wendell Phillips

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." Samuel Adams

"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 the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave." Samuel Adams

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age - old dream - the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order - or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism." Ronald Reagan

"Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty with which Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Galatians 5:1

"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?” Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), British author, economist, philosopher, 1884

"No man survives when freedom fails, the best men rot in filthy jails, And those who cry ‘appease, appease’ Are hanged by those they tried to please.” Hiram Mann

"All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals." John Quincy Adams

"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.” Charles Eliot Norton

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

"I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.” H. L. Mencken, "Why Liberty?” January 30, 1927

"There is simply no escaping the fact that the fate of the Constitution is in our hands -- as voters, representatives, justices. If we allow ourselves to abuse the tradition of higher lawmaking, the very idea that the Constitution can be viewed as the culminating expression of a mobilized citizenry will disintegrate. After all, the American Republic is no more eternal than the Roman -- and it will come to an end when American citizens betray their Constitution’s fundamental ideals and aspirations so thoroughly that existing institutions merely parody the public meanings they formerly conveyed." Bruce Ackerman

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln (1809-65)

"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state controlled police and the military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy... If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government—and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws." Edward Abbey

"Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered." Archibald Macleish - (1892-1982) Poet, playwright, Librarian of Congress, & Assistant Secretary of State under Franklin Roosevelt - Source: Saturday Review, 12 May 1979

"Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise." Alexander Meiklejohn

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent." Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928.

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

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and the keystone under independence. The rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that is good." George Washington

"It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them." Samuel Adams

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking is freedom.” Dwight Eisenhower

"Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change." Stephen R. Covey

"The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and his fellow men.” Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)

"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." Samuel Adams

"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).” Ayn Rand

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Martin Luther King Jr

"And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment." The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

"Freedom is never an achieved state; like electricity, we’ve got to keep generating it or the lights go out.” Wayne LaPierre

"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." John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address Washington, D.C. January 20, 1961

"The CIA is not an intelligence agency, it is the President's personal army." Chalmers Johnson, Former CIA analyst

"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions." Samuel Adams

"A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom." Patrick Henry

"Only with the complicity of Congress have we become a nation of preemptive wars, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrollable spying on the American people." Ron Paul

"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it." William Faulkner

"We.. are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant." Charley Reese

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. 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, Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790 (Speeches, Dublin, 1808) as quoted in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." W. Somerset Maugham

"Law resides within darkness and pure fiction. It cannot sustain the scrutiny of truth when light is shone upon it. Law only exists becuase we have been lied too about who we are and the nature of the reality in which we live. The entire house of cards relies upon the belief that someone external to you has power over you, when in fact by careful and simple observations, you find that they don't. Money, the other partner in this mass fraud, is created out of thin air by the banks and people who wish undermine the natural creative growth of our world and implement destructive policies that induce fear and various levels of war. You are enslaved because you have accepted fiction has being truth. Whenever you see people protecting something from scrutiny ask yourself why? Truth requires no laws to protect it." Francis Robert Thomas Hay 'The Extortion System of the Ruling Elite'

"There is no ‘slippery slope’ toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.” Alan K. Simpson (1931- ), US Senator

"If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmeceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Money to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in." Bill Hicks

"We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there." Neil deGrasse Tyson

"By the blessing of God, may our country become a vast and splendid monument not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever." Daniel Webster, First Bunker Hill Oration

"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.” Fredrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974

"Therefore, one must be wise and attentive, since there are those among us who make kings and set up princes outside His law." Hosea 8:4

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." John Adams

"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.” Thomas Jefferson to John Colvin, 1810

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue." Samuel Adams

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." Alice Walker

"...it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government." Quoting the Texas Declaration of Independence of March 2, 1836

"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit." Abbie Hoffman

"Government…may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another… The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality." Abe Fortas

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." Aesop

"Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention." Adam Smith

"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