First Job of Government: Protect people from govermment. Second Job of Government: Protect people from each other It must *never* be the job of government to protect people from themselves. ------- Can you trust a government that subsidizes tobacco and tries to ban vitamins to make intelligent choices about YOUR health care? ------- Illegal aliens are a problem in America. Ask any Indian. ------- When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it. ------- Socialist: 1. one who believes all persons are or should be equal when they are not and cannot be; if unable to enrich the poor or educate the foolish, the socialist will settle for impoverishing the wealthy and preventing the wise from speaking; 2. a hypocritical malignity who conceals a nihilism borne of jealousy with hysteria; 3. a thief elected by the unable to loot the able and distribute the spoils; 4. a common lout who believes he can achieve greatness by stealing a great man's possessions; 5. the attitude of the fox, after being denied the grapes (re "Aesop's Fables"). ------- If the government wants us to respect the law it should set a better example ------- Show me a tax on the rich and I'll show you a tax on the poor. Who owns the businesses which employ the multitude? Who pays their salaries? Who extends the loans? Who invests? All men labor for someone wealthier -- the richest corporation's customers in sum have more money in the bank. ------- Election: wherein the multitude harvest from a crop already weeded by the press and the parties of any showing a glimmer of intellect, honesty or merit. ------- "No one escapes when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cried, 'Appease, appease!' are hanged by those they tried to please." ------- I decided to run for elective office, I met a man at work, I ask for a tour of his business, I saw that it (the business) was working productively, I ask him for a campaign and party contribution, I got regulations passed to stop the abuses taking place, I got taxes passed to pay for the regulations, I saw the reglations go into effect, I saw to getting the taxes collected, I watched the businesses fail, I got regulations passed to get the unemployed workers put on welfare, I got re-elected by promising higher welfare benefits. I met another man at work, ... ------- "A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged." ------- When we lose the 2nd Amendment is when we start the 2nd Revolution ------- TERRORIST ALERT: There is a terrorist group operating in North America. They are stockpiling the most advanced weaponry known to man, are highly dangerous! They have committed high treason against the lawful government, refused to comply with current arms legislation, and have refused to pay lawful taxes. This paramilitary group is highly proficient in guerrila warfare and is currently being led by a man who held the rank of lieutenant in the military, but is now referred to by his cult of followers as General. This hate crazed, anti-government group may be linked to a separatist movement. Anyone having information as to the whereabouts of one George Washington, please contact His Majesty's representative as soon as possible! ------- "The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of it's enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it... No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law, and no courts are bound to enforce it." [16 Am Jur 2d, Sec 177 late 2d, Sec 256] ------- "Liberty enables us to do our duty unhindered by the state, by society, by ignorance and error. We are free in proportion as we are safe from these impediments to fight the battle of life and the conflict with temptation." [Lord Acton] ------- "Prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can't stop what it's meant to stop. We like it. It's left a trail of graft and slime It don't prohibit worth a dime It's filled our land with vice and crime, Nevertheless, we're for it." [newspaperman Franklin P. Adams, 1931, in the New York World, following release of the report of the Wickersham Commission] ------- "All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise ... from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation." [John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787] ------- "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to know that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers." [John Adams] ------- "The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." [Pres. John Adams] ------- "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher to the freedom and independence of all." [John Quincy Adams] ------- "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men." [Samuel Adams] ------- "The right to freedom being the gift of God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave." [Samuel Adams] ------- "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] ------- "The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule." [Samuel Adams] ------- "If you think of yourself as a decent, rational person, and you support the war on drugs, then you are misinformed... either about the war or about your decency and rationality." [Ray Aldridge: The WARSTOP pages, April, 1995] ------- "Suppose I wanted to--have a party?" I said. "Like, what kind of party?" "Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls." "Oh, wow." [Woody Allen, "The Whore of Mensa"] ------- "The passing of an unjust law is the suicide of authority." [Pastoral Letter of the American Roman Catholic Herarchy, Feb., 1920] ------- "...This we can only do if we exercise moral restraint. Therefore we reject all immorality, especially love between men, because it deprives us of our last chance to free our people from the chains of slavery which are keeping it fettered today." [American Family Association? Pat Buchanon? Family Research Council? No, Nazi Party response to a questionaire, May 14, 1928] ------- "No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger that its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise. [Marian Anderson, on CBS TV, December 30, 1957] ------- "All the people I know who are driving for a form of national service, primarily want it to be compulsory. They realize that's a terrible problem politically, so they're not willing to say it. It is endangerment of freedom and the potential for indoctrination that skeptics do not like in the national service concept. However benign the program, some think it will not succeed on any meaningful scale unless it is compulsory." [Martin Anderson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Boston Globe, November 29, 1992] ------- "If the price I must pay for my freedom is to acknowledge that the government was granted the power to infringe on them, then I am not free." [Pol Anderson] ------- "Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him". [T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of IRS, May 25, 1956 in U.S. News & World Report] ------- "War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth fighting for is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." [Anonymous] ------- "When a conservative hears of someone in dire straits, he reaches into his pocket. When a liberal hears of the same, he dips into the pockets of the taxpayers." [Anon] ------- "The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching." [Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC] ------- "Your income tax is 100 percent voluntary tax, and your liquor tax is 100 percent enforced tax. Now, the situation is as different as night and day..." [Dwight E. Avis, former head of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division of the IRS, testifying before a House Ways and Means subcommittee in 1953] ------- "A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint." [Francis Bacon] ------- "The Social Security Act of 1935 required that the government keep tabs on wages earned by every American worker, & keeping tabs meant using tabulating machines. IBM won the contract, which meant that [it] linked itself to the only true growth industry of the 1930s - the government. FDR's New Deal spawned dozens of new agencies to administer hundreds of new programs. By the time the government filed its next suit against [it], late in 1952, 95% of the government's punch-card machines were leased from the company it was suing." [Peter Baida, _Poor Richard's Legacy_] ------- "Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it." [Mikhail Bakunin] ------- "We really don't know how to raise children. If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in families means there's no equality.....In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them." [Dr. Mary Jo Bane, Fmr Asst. Secretary of Administration for Children and Families - Department of Health and Human Services for Clinton Admin.] ------- "The Democrats seem to basically be nice people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I'd be reluctant to trust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy." [Dave Barry] ------- "Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country." [Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC] ------- "Confronting Liberals with the facts of reality is very much akin to clubbing baby seals. It gets boring after a while, but because Liberals are so stupid it is easy work." [Steven M. Barry] ------- "When law & force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others." [Frederic Bastiat, _The Law_ 1848] ------- "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." [Frederic Bastiat, "The Law"] ------- "Our adversaries believe that an activity that is neither subsidized nor regulated is abolished. We believe the contrary. Their faith is in the legislator, not in mankind. Ours is in mankind, not in the legislator." [Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)] ------- "The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." [Frederic Bastiat] ------- "If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race?" [Frederic Bastiat] ------- "If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner." [Frederic Bastiat] ------- "Start with the idea that society is contrary to Nature; devise contrivances to which humanity can be subjected; lose sight of the fact that humanity has its motive force within itself; consider men as base raw materials; propose to impart to them movement at will, feeling and life, set oneself up apart, immeasurably above the human race -- these are the common practices of the social planners. The plans differ; the planners are all alike..." [Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)] ------- "I am a firm believer in the ideas of Malthus when it comes to bureaucrats. For their expansion in numbers and projects is fixed precisely by Malthus' principle that the size of the population is determined by the amount of available food. If we vote 800 million francs for government services, the bureaucrats will devour 800 million; if we give them two billion, they will immediately expand themselves and their projects up to the full amount." [Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)] ------- "Our doctrine is based on private property. Communism is based on systematic plunder, since it consists in handing over to one man, without compensation, the labor of another. If it distributed to each one according to his labor, it would, in fact, recognize private property and would no longer be communism." [Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)] ------- "Without having traveled a great deal, I have seen countries in which people think that agriculture can make no progress unless the government supports experimental farms; that soon there will no longer be any horses, if the government does not provide studs; that fathers will not have their children educated, or will have them taught only immorality, if the government does not decide what it is proper to learn." [Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)] ------- "It is equally well-settled that '[w]elfare benefits are not a fundamental right...', Lavine v Milne 424 US 588, 584 n9, 96 SCt 1010, 1015, 47 LEd2d 249 (1976)." [Bauer, 1980-02-01 in McElrath v Califano 615 F2d 434 @ 441] ------- "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] ------- "Gov't should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as (a) they know what they are doing, (b) they consent to it, & (c) no one -- at least no one other than the participants -- is harmed by it." [Hugo Adam Bedau] ------- "I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse." [Brendan Behan (1923-1964)] ------- "...the myth of socialism is far stronger than the reality of capitalism. That is because capitalism is not really an ism at all. It is what people do if you leave them alone." [Arnold Beichmen] ------- "In a recent conversation with an official at the Internal Revenue Service, I as amazed when he told me that 'If the taxpayers of this country ever discover that the IRS operates on 90% bluff, the entire system will collapse'" [Henry Bellmon, Senator (1969)] ------- "Conservative (n.) - A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." [Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), "The Devil's Dictionary"] ------- "Grapeshot: An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism." [Ambrose Bierce] ------- "Equality: In politics, an imaginary condition in which skulls are counted instead of brains, and merit is determined by lot and punishment by preferment." [Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"] ------- "The United States has a system of taxation by confession". [Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice, in U.S. v. Kahriger] ------- "It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant, and meant their prohibitions to be "absolute." [Hugo Black (b. 1922), U.S. Supreme Court Justice. "Hugo Black: A Biography" by Roger K. Newman, Pantheon (1994), limiting the power of the courts and Congress to reinterpret the Constitution] ------- "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." [Supreme Court Justice H. Blackmun, from Roe v. Wade, Feb. 1973] ------- "Over the last 75 years or so, many people have come to accept the lie that it's OK to steal as long as 'it's for a good cause' [and there's no shortage of good causes.] We have to reassert the moral principle that people are responsible for themselves and have no legal or moral claim on that which is earned by other people. We're never going to have real change until people accept the principle that government is not the answer to our problems." [Jimmy Blake] ------- "Unlike the present income tax system, the Fair Tax treats each and every person in this country exactly the same. This, of course, presents somewhat of a problem to politicians who like to use the tax code to foment class distrust or outright warfare." [Neal Boortz] ------- "Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense-- the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammelled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen." [William E. Borah] ------- "The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments." [William H. Borah] ------- "Governments and citizens blend together only in the imaginations of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens. There is no magic in a ballot box that makes government any less coercive." [James Bovard, _Freedom in Chains_] ------- "There is a constitutional right not to be murdered by a state officer, for the state violates the Fourteenth Amendment when its officer, acting under color of state law, deprives a person of life without due process of law. But there is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties; it tells the state to let people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order. Discrimination in providing protection against private violence could of course violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But that is not alleged here." [Bowers v. DeVito, Federal Reporter, second series v.686 p.618 (7th Circuit, 1982)] ------- "A socialist is merely a thief who's got the government to go along with him." [Darwin Branch] ------- "Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means- to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal- would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face." [Justice Louis Brandeis] ------- "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning; but without understanding." [Justice Louis D. Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court] ------- "Privacy is the right to be alone--the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized man." [Louis D. Brandeis] ------- "[L]iberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods." [Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 704 (1972)] ------- "The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal." [Peter Brimelow, National Review (2/1/93)] ------- "..If the Fed had a war on abortion like its war on poverty or war on drugs, within 5 years men would be having abortions!" [Harry Browne, Libertarian for President, 1996] ------- "A great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything." [Harry Browne] ------- "For those looking for security, be forewarned that there's nothing more insecure than a political promise." [Harry Browne] ------- "When you can't say 'fuck,' you can't say 'Fuck the government.'" [Lenny Bruce] ------- "Capitalism is the best. It's free enterprise. Barter. Gimbels, if I get really rank with the clerk, 'Well I don't like this', how I can resolve it? If it really gets ridiculous, I go, 'Frig it, man, I walk.' What can this guy do at Gimbels, even if he was the president of Gimbels? He can always reject me from that store, but I can always go to Macy's. He can't really hurt me. Communism is like one big phone company. Government control, man. And if I get too rank with that phone company, where can I go? I'll end up like a schmuck with a dixie cup on a thread." [Lenny Bruce, opening quote from "The Machinery of Freedom - Guide to a Radical Capitalism" by David Friedman] ------- "It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people." [Giordano Bruno (1548-burned at the stake,1600)] ------- "In every free government, the people must give their assent to the laws by which they are governed. This is the true criterion between a free government & an arbitrary one. The former are ruled by the will of the whole, expressed in any manner they may agree upon; the latter by the will of 1, or a few." ["Brutus", 1787-10-18] ------- "Narcotics police are an enormous, corrupt international bureaucracy... and now fund a coterie of researchers who provide them with 'scientific support' ... fanatics who distort the legitimate research of others. The anti- marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents." [William F. Buckley, 'Commentary' in The National Review, p. 495, April 29, 1983] ------- "We do know this, that more people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing." [William. F. Buckley Jr.] ------- "I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies." [William F. Buckley] ------- "We need a national-corporate commitment to public service to look after [the elderly]. We aren't able to provide resources unless the young pay something for their patrimony through public service." [William F. Buckley Jr. in Mother Jones magazine, demonstrating hypocrisy conservative-style] ------- "AMERICANISM: 1) the desire to purge America of all those qualities which make it more or less a tolerable place to live; 2) The ability to simultaneously kiss ass, follow your boss's orders, swallow a pay cut, piss in a bottle, cower in fear of a job loss, and brag about your freedom." [Chaz Bufe, The American Heretic's Dictionary] ------- "In all forms of government the people is the true legislator." [Edmund Burke] ------- "The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." [Edmund Burke] ------- "Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has." [William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine, "My Own Business" (1985)] ------- "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." [Julius Caesar] ------- "Throughout recorded history, without exception, it has been the sole accomplishment of organized government to deprive their populations of their Liberty and of their Property." [John C. Calhoun] ------- "Selling is legal, fucking is legal....why isn't selling fucking legal? In the military you get a medal for spraying napalm on someone, but in civilian life you go to jail for giving someone an orgasm!" [George Carlin] ------- "I do this really moronic thing that the government doesn't want me to do. It is called thinking." [George Carlin] ------- "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself." [President Jimmy Carter, Aug. 2, 1977] ------- "Parties like or dislike our constitution, just as they are out of power, or in it: Those who are out of power like it, because it gives them the best protection against those who are in power; and those who have been in power have blamed it, for not giving them power enough to oppress all whom they would oppress." [Cato's Letters, 1722] ------- "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." [Noam Chomsky] ------- "If you say, "Would there were no wine" because of the drunkards, then you must say, going on by degrees, "Would there were no steel," because of the murderers, "Would there were no night," because of the thieves, "Would there were no light," because of the informers, and "Would there were no women," because of adultery." [St. John Chrysostom: Homilies, c. 388] ------- "Why don't you just whisper it to me, just between you and me?" [CBS' Connie Chung, coaxing House Speaker Newt Gingrich's mother to disclose her son's views of the First Lady, 1/4/95] ------- "Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life." [Sir Winston Churchill] ------- "The budget should be balanced, the treasury refilled, public debt reduced, the arrogance of officialdom tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt." [Cicero, Roman statesman] ------- "Well, they've had their twenty years to solve their social problems. Vast mountains of funds have been disposed of, whole new bureaucracies created--and those who made it all happen now say that the problem is worse than ever; that we still cannot afford a space program; that a nation that has gone to the moon can and ought to solve its social problems first. "It was this sort of vision that made Portugal a world power." [Tom Clancy] ------- "And so it is with guns. I choose to own firearms. so long as I act responsibly, what right does anyone have to make my choices for me?" [Tom Clancy] ------- "We must organize all labor, no matter how dirty and arduous it may be, so that every [citizen] may regard himself as part of that great army of free labor.... The generation that is now fifteen years old & must arrange all their tasks of education in such a way that every day, and in every city, the young people shall engage in the practical solution of the problems of common labor, even of the smallest, most simple kind." [Vladimir Lenin] "Imagine an army of 100,000 young people restoring urban and rural communities and giving their labor in exchange for education and training.... [National Service] will harness the energy of our youth and attack the problems of our time. It literally has the potential to revolutionize the way young people all across America look at their country and feel about themselves." [Bill Clinton] ------- "[T]here is the great silent, continuous struggle; the struggle between the State and the individual; between the State which demands and the Individual who attempts to evade such demands. Because the individual, left to himself, unless he be a saint or a hero, always refuses to pay taxes, obey laws, or go to war." [Benito Mussolini] "I'm here because I want to redefine the meaning of citizenship in America.... [I]f you're asked in school, "What does it mean to be a good citizen?" I want the answer to be, "Well, to be a good citizen, you have to obey the law, you've got to go to work or be in school, you've got to pay your taxes and - oh, yes, you have to serve...." [Bill Clinton] ------- "We're here for the first President's Summit for America's Future - to mobilize every community and challenge every citizen and to ask our young people to become citizen-servants, too." [Bill Clinton] ------- "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it." [Pres. Bill Clinton, MTV's "Enough is Enough" 3-22-94] ------- Before they have their own families, the young can make a unique contribution to the family of America. In doing so, they can acquire the habit of service, and get a deeper understanding of what it really means to be a citizen. That is the main reason, perhaps, why we are here." [Bill Clinton] ------- "Government is not a solution to our problem, government IS the problem." [Ronald Reagan] "First of all, keep in mind that most of our problem is with working Americans." [Bill Clinton] ------- "If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees." [Pres. Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993] ------- "The United States can't be so fixed on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." [Pres. William Clinton, March 1, 1993 press conference in Piscataway, NJ, from Boston Globe, 3/2/93, page 3] ------- "We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." [Hillary Clinton, 1993] ------- "President Clinton said he directed advisers to craft a policy allowing police to search public housing for weapons in the wake of a federal court order barring Chicago officials from conducting sweeps without search warrants." [Associated Press: Chicago Tribune, 4/10/94 Section 1 page 10] ------- "We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all- around enlargement of our entire system of public education... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents... The government must undertake the improvement of public health - by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor... by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth. We combat the... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of the common good before the individual good." [Excepts from the political program of the Nazi Party, adopted in Munich on 1920 Feb 24; found in _Die Nazionalsozialistische Dokumente_ 1933-1945, edited by Walther Hofer, Frankfurt am Mein; Fischer Bucherei, 1957, pp 29-31.] "But you know, it's about time we start thinking about the common good and the national interest, instead of just individuals, in our country." [Hillary Clinton 1994 health care speech] ------- "All that is necessary for the triumph of waste and destruction is for good men and women to attempt to do good through the power and authority of government." [Michael Cloud] ------- "It's fun to dream about a "back to nature" existance, Swiss Family Robinson, Noble Savage, et al, but what you're really dreaming about is mass murder on a grand scale. That's what makes the tree hugger Greens so horrific. To enable the existence they want, 9/10ths of humanity has to die." [Gary Coffman] ------- "We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with." [Richard M. Cohen, former Senior Producer of CBS political news] ------- "The general purpose of gov't is the same under all forms; it exists for the benefit of those who submit & are governed by it, & the benefit is afforded in the establishment & protection of rights. Except for this purpose, no gov't could for a moment justify its existence. The rights which every gov't is expected to recognize & protect may be classed under the following heads: 1. Security in person. 2. Security in the acquisition & enjoyment of property. 3. Security in the family relations." [Thomas M. Cooley, 1879, _The Law of Torts_ 3rd edition 1906 edited by John Lewis pg 27] ------- "The power to tax is the power to destroy. A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny." [Calvin Coolidge] ------- "Individuality is the aim of political liberty." [James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)] ------- "Liberals dispute slight reductions in the marginal tax rates as if they are trying to prevent Charles Manson from slaughtering baby seals." [Ann H. Coulter] ------- "The good part of being a Democrat is that you can commit crimes, sell out your base, bomb foreigners, and rape women, and the Democratic faithful will still think you're the greatest." [Ann H. Coulter] ------- "Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have." [Col. David Crockett; member of the Tennessee legislature (1821-1822/1823-1824); member U.S. House of Representatives (1827-1831/1833-1835); and Texas Hero of the Alamo (1836)] ------- "Only the rare taxpayer would be likely to know that he could refuse to produce his records to IRS agents ... Who would believe the ironic truth that the cooperative taxpayer fares much worse than the individual who relies upon his constitutional rights." [Judge Cummings, U.S. Federal Judge, in U.S. v. Dickerson (7th Circuit 1969)] ------- "The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities." [John E. E. Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834-1902), _The History of Freedom in Antiquity_] ------- "If the hours spent complying with the tax code were put to productive work, they'd represent the entire annual outputs of the U.S. auto, truck and aircraft industries." [The Dallas Morning News, June 30, 1994] ------- "The rights listed in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are not subject to a majority vote." [Gary Daniels, Cleveland ACLU spokesperson] ------- "Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips, but few in their mind." [Dante (1265-1321)] ------- "Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve." [Clarence Darrow] ------- "The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along." [Clarence Darrow, speech, March 14, 1902] ------- "The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million." [Eugene V. Debs, US labor leader, who received one million votes in 1920 as candidate for US President, while serving a 10-year jail sentence for having said in June 1918: "Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder...the master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles."] ------- "When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." [Eugene V. Debs, address to jury, September, 1918] ------- "Wherever there is a jackboot stepping on a human face, there will be a well-heeled Western liberal there to assure us that the face enjoys free health care and a high degree of literacy." [John Derbyshire] ------- "The president wants to increase spending 20 percent over the next six years. I want to increase spending 14 percent." [Bob Dole, on the immense philosophical gulf separating him from Bill Clinton] ------- "[T]hat there is one common bulwark with which men of prudence are naturally provided, the guard & security of all people, particularly of free states, against the assaults of tyrants -- What is this? Distrust. Of this be mindful; to this adhere; preserve this carefully, & no calamity can affect you." [Demosthenes, 2nd Philippic oration] ------- "Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedienceis to commence tyranny in the nursery." [Benjamin Disraeli (1874)] ------- "The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the gov't off the backs of people." [Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas] ------- "As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." [Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980)] ------- "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong that will be imposed on them." [Frederick Douglass] ------- "We have lost all hope of getting any shred of authenticity from either Bill or Hillary -- unless it's the authenticity of the deluded. They have chosen tactics over truth with such consistency that it's impossible to accept anything they say." [Maureen Dowd, *certified* feminist and liberal, 8/4/99] ------- "[There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens..." [Albert Einstein] ------- "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 USA," 1921] ------ "Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels--men and women who dare to disssent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." [Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address, May 31, 1954] ------- "America's prosperity does not and need not depend upon war or the preparation for war." [Dwight D. Eisenhower] ------- "When the shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and without it, all rights would soon disappear." [Dwight D. Eisenhower] ------- "60% of most of our violent crimes are associated with alcohol or drug use. Many times they're robbing, stealing, and all of these things to get money to buy drugs, and I do feel that we would markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalized. But I don't know the ramifications of this and I do feel that we need to do some studies. In some of the countries that have legalized drugs, and made it legal, they certainly have shown that there has been a reduction in their crime rate, and there has been no increase in their drug use rate." [Surgeon General Joclyn Elders] ------- "What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing To fork out his copper and pocket a shilling. [Ebenezer Elliott] ------- "The less government we have the better. The antodote to... abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual." [Ralph Waldo Emerson] ------- "The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it." [Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.)] ------- "There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a HUGE number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." [Richard Feynman, Feb. 1989] ------- "We will not recognize [American Fascism] as it rises. It will wear no black shirts here. It will probably have no marching songs. It will rise out of a congealing of a group of elements that exist here and that are the essential components of Fascism.... It will be at first decorous, humane, glowing with homely American sentiment. But a dictatorship cannot remain benevolent. To continue, it must become ruthless. When this stage is reached we shall see that appeal by radio, movies, and government-controlled newspapers to all the worst instincts and emotions of our people. The rough, the violent, the lawless men will come to the surface and into power. This is the terrifying prospect as we move along our present course." [John T. Flynn, writing in the American Mercury, February 1941] ------- "Law never does anything constructive. We have had enough legislators promising to do that which laws cannot do." [Henry Ford] ------- "What does it mean when Republicans and Democrats alike warn us about all the "pain" involved in cutting government spending -- in *their* spending less of *our* money? Painful for whom? Maybe it's painful for the politicians. But for the average citizen, what pain is there involved in *his* keeping more of *his* money? No government has ever borne the cost of anything. Taxes cost *people*. Tax cuts do not cost *government*." [Theodore J. Forstmann] ------- "The First Amendment does not allow the state "to reduce the adult population...to reading only what is fit for children." [Felix Frankfurter] ------- "The proceedings by which this conviction was obtained do more than offend some fastidious squeamishness or private sentimentalism about combatting crime too energetically. This is conduct that shocks the conscience... struggling to open his mouth & remove what was there, the forcible extraction of [bodily] contents - this course of proceedings by agents of government to obtain evidence is bound to offend even hardened sensibilities. They are methods too close to the rack & the screw to permit of constitutional differentiation. It has long since ceased to be true that due process of law is heedless of the means by which... evidence is obtained... It would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of constitutional history has cast upon this court to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind but can extract what is in his [body]." [Justice Felix Frankfurter, Rochin v California] ------- "There never was a good war, or a bad peace." [Benjamin Franklin] ------- "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty or Safety." [Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the governor, Nov. 11, 1755] ------- "Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man, as far as by it he does not hurt and control the right of another: and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know." [Benjamin Franklin] ------- "Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp." [Milton Friedman, _Capitalism and Freedom_, p. 2] ------- "What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system." [Milton Friedman, US economist] ------- "It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat." [Robert Fuoss] ------- "No matter who you are or what you believe, you have to understand that some day the worst control-freaks among your bitterest enemies will control the federal government, and you better have restored effective, working constitutional limitations on that government before that time arrives." [Rick Gaber] ------- "The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." [Albert Gallatin, NY Historical Society, October 7, 1789] ------- "Enslave the liberty of one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril." [William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)] ------- "With resignation, but with resolve, I hereby end 40 years of Democratic rule of this House." [House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt transferring power to Speaker Gingrich, 1/4/95] ------- "Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigor of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind." [Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire] ------- "The secret wealth of commerce & the precarious profits of art & labor are susceptible only of a discretionary value, which is seldom disadvantageous to the interest of the treasury... the payment of the imposition, which in the case of a land tax may be obtained by seizure of property, can rarely be extorted by any other means than those of corporal punishments." [Edward Gibbon 1788 _The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire_ quoted in Charles Adams 1993 _For Good & Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization_] ------- "Americans just want us to... not be concerned if they can be constitutionally justified... Why, if we had to do that we could not pass most of the laws we enact around here." [Sen. John Glenn 1996-07-16, in opposition to a proposed law requiring all new laws to cite their explicit constitutional authorization] ------- U.S.A., n. The freest country on Earth (a distinction akin to being the coolest county in Hell). What makes the You Ess of Ay so much greater than all those other benighted republics? A simple comparison makes our superiority abundantly clear: What other governments have What our government has instead Kickbacks Subsidies Indoctrination centers Public schools Propagandists Government spokespersons Government censors Network Standards and Practices Thought control Political correctness Embarrassing and Information that, if leaked, could incriminating evidence pose a threat to national security Dissidents Crackpots Refugees Homeless Political prisoners Morals offenders Forced labor Community service Black markets Organized crime Secret police and Elite anti-terrorism and death squads drug-interdiction units Resistance movements Terrorist militias Invasion and occupation Strategic presence U.S.S.R., n. A former superpower. One down, one to go. Vote, v. An opportunity to piss in the ocean in the hope of affecting the tide. Death, n. The only medicine currently available which can deliver one from the affliction known as government. It has a number of inconvenient side-effects which have a negative impact on the ability to achieve one's goals. The unpleasantness of these side-effects can be greatly reduced if the medicine is adminstered to the functionaries of the State instead of, as is usual, by them. [The Godling's Glossary] ------- "There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content." [P.J. Goebbels: Speech at Nurnberg, Aug. 20, 1926] ------- "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will eventually come to believe it." [Joseph Goebbels] ------- "Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time are either psychopaths or mountebanks. [Goethe, "Maximen and Reflexionen", 1907] ------- "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." [Johann W. Von Goethe] ------- "I'm sick of government trying to feel my pain. I'd like government to feel my boot in its ass." [Jonah Goldberg, National Review column 2/15/2000] ------- "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue." [Barry Goldwater] ------- "The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please, as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. No one has ever shown me how being gay or lesbian harms anyone." [Barry Goldwater, 1994] ------- "The rights that we have under the Constitution covers anything we want to do, as long as its not harmful. I can't see any way in the world that being a gay can cause damage to somebody else." [Barry Goldwater] ------- "People want government out of their pockets, off their backs, and out of their bedrooms." [Barry Goldwater] ------- "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests, " I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." [Barry Goldwater] ------- "When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye." [Barry Goldwater] ------- "Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives." [Barry Goldwater] ------- "On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.' " [Barry Goldwater] ------- "You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight." [Barry Goldwater] ------- "When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown." [Stephen Jay Gould] ------- "... 100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt ... all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government." [1984 Grace Commission report submitted to President Ronald Reagan] ------- "The war on drugs has turned into a war on our people. We almost can't do it worse than we are today. There's got to be a better way." [Judge James Gray, Orange County, California, Superior Court] ------- "Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different." [David Grayson] ------- "I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot." [Horace Greeley] ------- "The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists (government bureaucrats) to use the banking system as an unlimited expansion of credit. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation... Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process." [Alan Greenspan] ------- "Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." [A. Whitney Griswold] ------- "A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city; he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family; he cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself; and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason." [Hugo Grotius] ------- On Jealousy: "I may so act as not to hurt the feelings of anyone But what can I do to an envious man dissatisfied with himself? Die, O envious man, for this is a malady, Deliverance from which can be obtained only by death. Unfortunate men sometimes ardently desire The decline of prosperous men in wealth and dignity. If in daytime, bat-eyed persons do not see Is it the fault of the fountain of light, the sun? Thou justly wishest that a thousand such eyes Should be blind rather than the sun dark." [The Gulistan of Sa'di] ------- "We hear about constitutional rights, free speech, and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist. You never hear a real American talk like that." [Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City: N.Y. World-Telegram, April 2, 1938 ------- "The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others who claim that if such things are to be allowed their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty." [Lord Hailsham] ------- "Power over a man's subsistence is power over his will." [Alexander Hamilton] ------- "Juries are frequently influenced by the opinions of judges. They are sometimes induced to find special verdicts, which refer the main question to the decision of the court. Who would be willing to stake his life and his estate on the verdict of a jury acting under the guidance of judges who had predetermined his guilt?" [Alexander Hamilton] ------- "... The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation... He owes no duty to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom, beyond protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the State, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution... He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights." [Hale v. Henkel, 210 U.S. at 74 (1905)] ------- "They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?" [Paul Harvey] ------- "I use the term 'liberal' in the original, nineteenth-century sense... In current American usage it often means very much the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftists movements in the country, helped by the muddle-headedness of many who believe in liberty, that 'liberal' has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control" [Friedrich Hayek] ------- "The conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government can be limited than with that of who wields them; and like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people." [Fredrich Hayek] ------- "The guiding principle of any attempt to create a world of free men is this: A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy." [F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom , 1944] ------- "Once politics become a tug-of-war for shares in the income pie, decent government is impossible." [Friedrich A. Hayek] ------- "Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. . . Liberty and responsibility are inseparable." [Friedrich Hayek, "The Sensory Order"] ------- "You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage, you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation." [Henry Hazlitt, "Economics In One Lesson"] ------- "Prohibition today - Prohibition tomorrow - Prohibition forever!" [Head of the U.S. effort to enforce alcohol prohibition] ------- "We are recording the individual characteristics of every single member of the nation onto a little card... We are proud to be able to contribute to such a task, a task that makes available to the physician of our German body-social the material for his examination, so that our physician may determine whether, from the standpoint of the health of the nation, the results calculated in this manner stand in harmonious, healthy relation to one another, or whether unhealthy conditions must be cured by corrective interventions... we have firm trust in our physician and will follow his orders blindly, because we know he will lead our nation towards a great future." [Willy Heidinger, 1934, president of Dehomag Industries speaking about production of the Holleriths, the world's first population control & surveillance computer in Berlin, Nazi Germany] ------- "Political tags -- such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth -- are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort." [Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enought for Love"] ------- "I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!" [Robert Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the XIXth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961] ------- "A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore." [Robert Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw in "Stranger in a Strange Land"] ------- "I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces--with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything, now." [Robert A. Heinlein in "The Robert Heinlein Interview And Other Heinleinana" by J. Neil Schulman] ------- "What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'." [Robert Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw in "To Sail Beyond the Sunset"] ------- "Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws--always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good"--not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it." [Robert Heinlein, Manuel Garcia O'Kelly in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"] ------- "For the first time in my life, I was reading things which had not been approved by the Prophet's censors, and the impact on my mind was devastating. Sometimes I would glance over my shoulder to see who was watching me, frightened in spite of myself. I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked, contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything---you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." [Robert Heinlein, John Lyle in "If This Goes On--"] ------- "Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft." [Robert Heinlein, Jim Marlowe in "Red Planet"] ------- "I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him." [Robert Heinlein, Lazarus Long in "Time Enough For Love"] ------- "I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do." [Robert Heinlein, Professor Bernardo de la Paz in "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress"] ------- "Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to do." [Robert Heinlein, from "Podkayne of Mars"] ------- "From politics I have come to believe the following: (1) Most people are basically honest, kind and decent. (2) The American people are wise enough to run their own affairs. They do not need Fuehrers, Strong Men, Technocrats, Commissars, Silver Shirts, Theocrats, or any other sort of dictator. (3) Americans have a compatible community of ambitions. Most of them don't want to be rich but do want enough economic security to permit them to raise families in decent comfort without fear of the future. They want the least government necessary to this purpose and don't greatly mind what the other fellow does as long as it does not interfere with them living their own lives. As a people we are neither money mad nor prying. We are easy-going and anarchistic. We may want to keep up with the Joneses -- but not with the Vanderbilts. We don't like cops. (4) Democracy is not an automatic condition resulting from laws and constitutions. It is a living, dynamic process which must be worked at by you yourself -- or it ceases to be democracy, even if the shell and form remains. (5) One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way -- prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs. Hitler's government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise. (6) Democracy is the most efficient form of government ever invented by the human race. On the record, it has worked better in peace and in war than fascism, communism, or any other form of dictatorship. As for the mythical yardstick of 'benevolent' monarchy or dictatorship -- there ain't no such animal! (7) A single citizen, with no political connections and no money, can be extremely effective in politics." [Robert Heinlein, "Take Back Your Government - A Practical Handbook for the private citizen who wants democracy to work.", April 1946. Chapter 1 (pp. 3-4 in the Baen Paperback edition, August, 1992] ------- "Communism possesses a language which every people can understand--its elements are hunger, envy, and death." [Heinrich Heine] ------- "TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As a Free Lunch." [popularized by Robert Heinlein] ------- "If all bank loans were paid ... there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation. We are absolutely without a permanent money system." [Robert Hemphill, Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, in foreword to "100% Money" by Irving Fisher] ------- "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." [Patrick Henry] ------- "The Constitution is not an instrument for government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." [Patrick Henry] ------- "Go back to bed America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America. Your government is in control again. Here,... here's 'American Gladiators'. Watch this. Shut up. Go back to bed America. Here's 'American Gladiators'! Here's 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate YOU on living in the 'Land of Freedom'!! Here you go America! You are FREE to do as we tell you! You are FREE to do as we tell you!..." [The Late, Great Comedian, Bill Hicks] ------- "DEA SUCCESS UPDATE Let's see. After 20 years of relentless federal Drug War activity, while the price of world-class marijuana has gone from $60 an ounce to $450, the price of quality cocaine has plummeted from $125 a gram to $30, and 30%-pure heroin has dropped from $700 a gram to about $100. Way to go, boys!" [High Times, April 1995] ------- "Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent." [Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf] ------- "The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force." [Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf] ------- "I'll put an end to the idea that a woman's body belongs to her... Nazi ideals demand that the practice of abortion shall be exterminated with a strong hand." [Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_] ------- "When an opponent says, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already.... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community." [Adolf Hitler] ------- "Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise" [Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi party] ------- "Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true. [Eric Hoffer (1902-83), U.S. philosopher. "The Passionate State of Mind", aph. 78 (1955)] ------- "A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business." [Eric Hoffer, "The True Believer"] ------- "A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will. [Eric Hoffer] ------- "To its committed members (the Democratic Party) was still the party of heart, humanity, and justice, but to those removed a few paces it looked like Captain Hook's crew-- ambulance-chasing lawyers, rapacious public policy grants persons, civil rights gamesmen, ditzy-brained movie stars, fat-assed civil servant desk squatters, recovering alcoholics, recovering wife-beaters, recovering child-buggers, and so forth and so on, a grotesque line-up of ill-mannered, self-pitying, caterwauling freeloaders banging their tin cups on the pavement demanding handouts." [Nicholas von Hoffman, columnist, The Washington Post, 11/12/94] ------- "We are a fact-gathering organization only... the minute the FBI begins making recommendations on what should be done with its information, it becomes a Gestapo." [J. Edgar Hoover] ------- "Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains." [Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), 31st US President] ------- "We only meant to make society better. Law would lay everything out for us. But law cannot save us from ourselves. Waking up every morning, we have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgement and personal conviction be important again. There is nothing unusual or frightening about it. Relying on ourselves is not, after all, a new ideology. It's just common sense." [Philip K. Howard in "The Death of Common Sense"] ------- "When a bully demands $10, meets resistance, and presents a compromise of $8, only in government is the paying of the $8 considered a savings of $2. This is how inalienable rights have always been eroded." [Curt Howland, on the Net, 1995] ------- "We are not punished for our sins, but by them." [Elbert Hubbard] ------- "The pursuit of commerce reconciles nations, calms wars, strengthens peace, and commutes the private good of individuals into the common benefit of all." [Hugh of St. Victor] ------- "While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty." [Charles Evans Hughes, U.S. Supreme Court Member, May 1908] ------- "When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free." [Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948), US Supreme Court Chief Justice, Opinion, June 17, 1925] ------- "Every great advance in....knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." [Julian Huxley, "Lay Sermons"] ------- "It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." [Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, American Communications Association v. Douds (1950) (339 U.S. 382, 447)] ------- "I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt among the greatest of dangers; we must make our choice between economy and liberty; or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "All authority belongs to the people... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with chains of the Constitution." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "I have sworn before the alter of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." [Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800] ------- "...the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,' therefore the act of Congress, passed on the [1798-07-14], and entitled 'An Act in addition to the act intituled An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States,' as also the act passed by them on [1798-06-??], entitled 'An Act to punish frauds committed on the bank of the United States,' (and all their other acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory." [Thomas Jefferson "KY Resolution" 1798] ------- "On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." [Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, found in The Complete Jefferson, p. 322] ------- "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?" [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases". [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be... The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "He who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "Fear can only prevail when victims are ignorant of the facts". [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "Still one thing more, fellow citizens - a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression." [Thomas Jefferson, "First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1801; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 364.] ------- "It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own." [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803. From Daniel B. Baker, ed., Political Quotations, Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1990, p. 189.] ------- "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." [Thomas Jefferson (1777)] ------- "The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills." [Thomas Jefferson (October 1776)] ------- "If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." [Thomas Jefferson] ------- "A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." [Bertrand de Jouvenal] ------- "I couldn't imagine anybody being in a home with that many women and children and having big tank coming through the front door. And they penetrated a room's length or more... This is America. This isn't a police state. I don't care what they did. I can't see that. And I wasn't predetermined. I didn't realize the tanks had done that until I was shown by the govenment,"she said." [Juror at trial of surviving Branch Davidians quoted in Associated Press story in Mar 1, 1994 Austin American-Statesman page b3] ------- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" "Who watches the watchmen?" [Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347] ------- "Freedom is the precondition for aquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is reached." [Immanuel Kant] ------- "There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we have met the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us." [Walt Kelly] ------- "Bob Dole never met a tax he didn't hike. When Bob Dole talks about leadership for the future, he's the man who led the fight for five major tax increases in the past five years." [Jack Kemp, 2/11/88...Chief Designer of the Kemp/Dole Economic plan] ------- "It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head." [Sally Kempton] ------- "The people come first, not the government." [John F. Kennedy] ------- "If men and women are in chains, anywhere in the world, then freedom is endangered everywhere." [John F. Kennedy] ------- "Unless liberty flourishes in all lands, it cannot flourish in one." [John F. Kennedy] ------- "The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrence to private initiative which are imposed by our tax system, and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963." [President John F. Kennedy] ------- "The quest for novelty is the essence of capitalist endeavour, as it is of all human progress, and the appetite for adventure is a sharper spur than cupidity. Those who pillory capitalism for "creating artificial needs" strike me as timid and dismal souls. You might just as well denounce Monet for creating an "artificial need" for Impressionism." [Paul Johnson] ------- "There it is, Washington D.C.. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." [Obi Wan Kenobi] ------- "Whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no force. That to this contract (the Constitution) each State acceded as a State and is an integral Party, its co-States forming as to itself the other Party. That government created by this Contract was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion and not the Constitution the measure of its powers. But that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each Party has an equal right to judge for itself as well of infraction as of the mode and measure of redress." [Kentucky State Legislature, 19 Nov 1799] ------- "Between 1987 and 1992, the federal paperwork burden increased 261% to nearly seven billion hours, according to the GAO, with tax requirements comprising most of that burden. And regulatory costs tend to hit small business harder than larger companies which "often welcome new regulations because they know the regulations will help consolidate their market share and wipe out small business competitors." [Karen Kerrigan, president of the Small Business Survival Committee, Investor's Business Daily, Sept. 8, 1994] ------- "Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. Like Martin, I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others." [Coretta Scott King] ------- "Don't you think it would be better to legalize victimless crimes like drugs & prostitution & divert the resources to more important things like the rapes & assaults & things like that?" [Larry King, 1992] ------- "In any civilized society, it is every citizen's responsibility to obey just laws. But at the same time, it is every citizen's responsibility to disobey unjust laws." [Martin Luther King Jr.] ------- "It went left-right, left-right, left-right." [Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, calling Clinton's State Of The Union address a "great marching speech," 1/26/95] ------- "Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior race. They think they're it. They believe they're more intelligent than the general run of mankind, better suited than the little people are to manage the little people's lives. They think they have the one true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century. They prefer big government because that is the first step to totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite. And of course they see themselves as the elite." [Dean Koontz, from "The Face of Fear"] ------- "If you look at President Clinton's budget submitted to Congress in 1995, Table 3-3 says future generations will pay a net 82% of their lifetime earnings if the budget laws are not changed." [Robert Krulwich, Nightline, 12/5/95] ------- "Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it." [Richard Lamm] ------- "So long as any large group of persons, anywhere on this earth, believe the ancient supersition that some Authority is responsible for their welfare, they will set up some image of that Authority and try to obey it. And the result will be poverty and warfare." [Rose Wilder Lane, "The Discovery Of Freedom"] ------- "Here's a man who has delivered thousands of babies, counseled thousands of teenagers, and could be blocked for doing something that's legal in all 50 states. It's Alice in Wonderland." [Vermont Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy, on Surgeon General nominee Henry Foster, USA Today, 2/8/95] ------- "Before we head down a road that leads to censorship we must think long and hard about its consequences. [It is] harmful and dangerous conduct, not speech, that justifies adverse legal consequences." [Patrick Leahy, 1995-05-11] ------- "The Right of property is the guardian of every other Right, and to deprive the people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their Liberty" [Arthur Lee, Virginia, 1775] ------- "He has not ruled out entirely running for president in 1997." [David Letterman, on Dan Quayle, "Late Show," CBS, 2/9/95] ------- "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." [C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)] ------- "We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn, and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." [C.S. Lewis] ------- "Clinton is a liar's moon in full illuminated disk. Finding the proverbial grain of truth in this White House is a drilling operation that would daunt Exxon." [Norman Liebmann] ------- "Liberal Democrats are inexorably opposed to tax cuts, because tax cuts give people more power, and take away from the role of government." [Rush Limbaugh] ------- "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." [Abraham Lincoln] ------- "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: Speech in the Illinois House of Representatives, Dec 18, 1840] ------- "You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income" [Abraham Lincoln] ------- "If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right enslave B.- why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A. is white and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?- You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks and therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you." [Abraham Lincoln, 1854] ------- "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us with a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined with a Bonaparte at their head and disposing of all the treasure of the earth, our own excepted, could not by force make a track on the Blue Ridge or take a drink from the Ohio in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up from amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all times, or die by suicide." [Abraham Lincoln, 1838] ------- "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." [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] ------- "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." [Abraham Lincoln] ------- "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges every one; & reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal & independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." [John Locke, 1690, _2nd Treatise on Government_ (quoted in "Mile- Stones in Natural Law" for the 2nd Renaissance Conference "Ideas for the Rational Mind" course #s 94A & B on "Rights & the Courts")] ------- "Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them." [John Locke (1632-1704)] ------- "New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common." [John Locke, _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_] ------- "There cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason. Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." [John Locke] ------- "[l]aw enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public." [Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)] ------- "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency...Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real." [Gen. Douglas MacArthur, 1957] ------- "One man should not be afraid of improving his posessions, lest they be taken away from him, or another deterred by high taxes from starting a new business. Rather, the Prince should be ready to reward men who want to do these things and those who endeavour in any way to increase the prosperity of their city or their state." [Machiavelli, "The Prince"] ------- "The principal foundations of all states are good laws and good arms; and there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms." [Machiavelli] ------- "I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule and also ruled I will not be." [John Henry Mackay] ------- ".... the ultimate authority... resides in the people alone." [James Madison, in Federalist Papers No. 46] ------- "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." [President James Madison] ------- "If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation." [James Madison (1751-1836)] ------- "Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government." [James Madison] ------- "I'd rather that England should be free than that England should be compulsorily sober. With freedom we might in the end attain sobriety, but in the other alternative we should eventually lose both freedom and sobriety." [W.C. Magee (Archbishop of York): Sermon at Peterborough, 1868] ------- "If no information or return is filed, [the] Internal Revenue Service cannot assess you." [Gary Makovski, Special IRS Agent, testifying under oath in U.S. v. Lloyd] ------- "Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponents heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him." [S.K Malik, The Quranic Concept of War, p.59. Pakistan 1979] ------- "When we get to the point we try to use the law to oppose the law, it would seem laws are contradictory. When the laws are contradictory, it would seem there is opportunity for selective enforcement. Where there is selective enforcement the people are confused... but only for a little while. They soon make the rational leap and have no respect for law whatever." [Chuck Marsh] ------- "Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation." [Karl Marx, 1848 author of "The Communist Manifesto"] ------- "We know that violent measures against religion are nonsense; but this is an opinion: as socialism grows, religion will disappear. Its disappearance must be done by social development, in which education must play a part." [Chicago Tribune Interview with Karl Marx] ------- "Americans did not learn from Prohibition that one cannot successfully legislate against private behavior with any result but a decrease in respect for the law." [C. W. McConnell] ------- "It is not merely that I dislike, distrust and disbelieve anyone who seeks political office. I would extend privacy rights even to politicians were it not for two countervailing circumstances. First, they themselves violate privacy rights wholesale. They regulate virtually everything that peaceful people can do behind closed doors, from taking drugs to having sex. It is elitist hypocrisy for them to demand the privacy rights that they routinely deny to ordinary people. If a politician wishes me to respect his personal life, then he needs to respect mine." [Wendy McElroy] ------- "A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them." [H.L. Mencken, 1918] ------- "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] ------- "I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the pruderies and prejudices of the general, so long as any honest minority, however small, wants to read them. The remedy of the majority is not prohibition, but avoidance." [H.L. Mencken, _Baltimore Evening Sun_, March 31, 1924] ------- "It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are the most tolerable are arbitary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Liberals have many tails and chase them all." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." [H. L. Mencken, Webster's DOQ p 244 (1992)] ------- "I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air - that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. 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] ------- "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society." [H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)] ------- "A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The results raise the possibility that ... American democratic society cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority. If in this study an anonymous experimenter could substantially command adults to subdue a fifty-year-old man, and force on him painful [and potentially lethal] electric shocks against his protests, one can only wonder what government, with its vastly greater authority and prestige, can command of its subjects." [Dr. Stanley Milgram, American social psychologist, 1968, summarising the his landmark series of experiments testing obedience to authority] ------- "Liberty consists in doing what one desires." [John Stuart Mill 1859] ------- "So Long as we do not harm others we should be free to think, speak, act, & live as we see fit, without molestation from individuals, law, or gov't." [John Stuart Mill 1859] ------- "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." [John Stuart Mill 1859] ------- "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of actions of any of their number, is self protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will. is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." [John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), "On Liberty", 1859] ------- "We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still." [John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_] ------- "Over himself, over his own body & mind the individual is sovereign." [J.S. Mill] ------- "War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." [John Stuart Mill] ------- "A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency over the body. ... All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects are evil." [John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_ (1859)] "It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity." [Benito Mussolini,_The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism_ (1932)] ------- "The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, and there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words." [Letter from David McIntosh [former member of V.P. Quayle's Council on Competitiveness] to Grover C. Norquist, Oct. 13, 1992] ------- "Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil - only evil - and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs." [Roger Q. Mills of Texas, 1887, quoted repeatedly during a December 1914 debate in Congress over Prohibition] ------- "A little, justly gained, is better than thousands secured by stealth, or at the expense of another's rights & interests." [From _Money for the Millions_ (quoted in Peter Baida _Poor Richard's Legacy_)] ------- "What they're trying to do is enslave our society by taking our children's rights away. Young people who go through these [mandatory community service] programs learn to submit, and later on they won't mind giving up a few more of their rights when the government says it's necessary." [Thomas Moralis (father of two students denied high school diplomas for not complying with a mandatory service requirement)] ------- "Some people just enjoy finding fault with our leaders. They're anarchists. They're troublemakers. Or they're just unpatriotic." [Julie Musante, "Political Officer" _Babylon 5_ episode _Voices Of Authority_, Third Season] ------- "It is the business of education in our social democracy to eliminate the influence of parents... We have decided that children shall not be at the mercy of their parents. It is the business of the local education authority to see that they are not." [Professor Frank Musgrove -- The Family, Education and Society, RKP 1966] ------- "Family - see Fascist State." [Benito Mussolini's Fascist dictionary] ------- "Police, in my experience, are by nature bullies as well as heroes, & the smaller the police force, the more police officers tend to exhibit the characteristics of heroes rather than of bullies. The more personnel cracking down on crime, the greater the likelihood that individual citizens will suffer abuses of their civil liberties." [Richard Neely, WV Supreme Court _Why Courts Don't Work_] ------- "The biggest killer on the planet is stress and I still think the best medicine is and always has been cannabis." [Willie Nelson] ------- "We ARE speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $ 70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 percent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect." [New York Bar Association, statement to panel of lawyers on the drug question] ------- "In his April 5 radio address outlining the goals of the summit, the President endorsed compulsory volunteerism - and even called for extending it to middle schools. In other words, the man who so famously avoided the dangerous duty of fighting in Vietnam as a young man now proposes drafting a new generation of young people to perform a different set of difficult tasks." [New York Post editorial, April 27, 1997] ------- "Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose." [Friedrich Nietzsche: The Antichrist] ------- "The State, that is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly, also, it lies, and the lie that creeps from its mouth is this: "I, the State, am the People." [Nietzsche] ------- ".. we conclude that the [Federal] Reserve Banks are not federal ... but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations ... without day to day direction from the federal government." [9th Circuit Court in Lewis v. United States, June 24, 1982] ------- "I believe a self-righteous liberal Democrat with a cause is more dangerous than a Hell's Angel with an attitude." [Ted Nugent] ------- "If I am terminally ill, it is not anybody's business on this floor how I handle the pain or the illness or the sickness associated with that illness. With all due respect to all of you, butt out. I did not enter this world with the permission of the Justice Department, and I am certainly not going to depart it by seeking their permission or that of any other authority. The Congress has no business telling people that they cannot manage their illness or their pain any way they need to. I would trust any doctor in the country before I trust some of the daffy ducks in this institution to decide what I am supposed to do if I am terminally ill... When is this Congress going to recognize that individuals in their private lives have a right to manage their problems as they see fit without the permission of the big guy in the White House or the big guy in the Justice Department or any of the Lilliputians on this Congressional floor? Wake up!" [Congressman David Obey (D-WI)] ------- "The tax that was supposed to soak the rich has instead soaked America. The beneficiary of the income tax has not been the poor, but big government. The income tax has given us a government bureaucracy that outnumbers the manufacturing work force. It has created welfare dependencies that have entrapped millions of Americans in an underclass that is forced to live a sordid existence of trading votes for government handouts" [Paul Craig Roberts, economist] ------- "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." [P.J. O'Rourke] ------- "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money-if a gun is held to his head." [P.J. O'Rourke, Rolling Stone Magazine] ------- "Liberalism, however dressed in "sharing and caring" modernity, is ultimately about the primitive, ignorant, troglodyte tribal idea of collective life. And about human sacrifice -- liberals like that even better. The will, the conscience, the very existence of the person must be destroyed for the benefit of the mob. Liberals have the same morals as Fascists, Communists, Crips and Bloods. The worship of collective power always ends in some kind of drive-by shooting, Pearl Harbor, for example." [P.J. O'Rourke] ------- "The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes-- thank God these people don't actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already." [P.J. O'Rourke, 1991, "Dirt of The Earth: The Ecologists"] ------- "There is only one basic human right: the right to do as you please, without causing others harm. With it comes our only basic human duty: the duty to accept the consequences of our actions." [P.J. O'Rourke] ------- "The religious conservatives aren't trying to get a nose under the tent anymore. They are the tent." [Wis. GOP Chair David Opitz, Washington Times, 5/18/95] ------- "Of all serious crimes under the law, smuggling... least violates the consciences of men. It is a crime against law and against government, but not against morality. The smuggler robs no man. He buys goods honestly in one market and sells them honestly in another. His offense is against an arbitrary regulation of government.... he simply fails to pay its demands. Many men otherwise honest are unable to see any moral turpitude in smuggling. ...government, in exacting toll, plays the part of the highwayman." [The Oregonian, Jan. 21, 1886] ------- "And now we come to the question of 'how' and 'why.' You understand well enough _how_ the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me _why_ we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power? Go on, speak," he added as Winston remained silent. "You are ruling us for our own good," he said feebly. "You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore--" He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty five. "That was stupid, Winston, stupid!" he said. "You should know better than to say things like that." He pulled the lever back and continued: "Now I will tell you the answer to my question. The Party seeks power for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power....The object of torture is torture. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" [George Orwell, _1984_] ------- "Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy-- everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen." [George Orwell "1984" (1948)] ------ "The colonists are by the law of nature free-born, as indeed all man are, white or black...It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own." [James Otis (1725-1783), _The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved_, 1764] ------- "The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind." [Thomas Paine] ------- "If, from the more wretched parts of the Old World, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." [Thomas Paine "Rights of Man", 1792] ------- "We are not moved by the gloomy smile of a worthless king, but by the ardent glow of generous patriotism. We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in. In such a case we are sure that we are right; and we leave to you the despairing reflection of being the tool of a miserable tyrant." [Thomas Paine] ------- "Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself--that is my doctrine." [Thomas Paine (1737-1809)] ------- "THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated." [Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776] ------- "When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have freedom." [Thomas Paine] ------- "When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon." [Thomas Paine] ------- "It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves." [Thomas Paine] ------- "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 produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher." [Thomas Paine - Feb. 14, 1776 (from "Common Sense")] ------- "Money, when considered as the fruit of many years' industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency." [Thomas Paine] ------- "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression: for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." [Thomas Paine] ------- "It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government." [Thomas Paine] ------- "It is my conviction that it was freedom that effected the miracle of America-intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, industrial freedom; freedom to dream, to think, to experiment, to invent, to match wits in friendly competition; freedom to be an individual. That is our great American heritage." [J. Howard Pew] ------- "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." [William Pitt, 1783] ------- "According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, with this need of raising the State to its rightful position." [Mario Palmieri] ------- "Fascism finds it necessary, at the outset, to take away from the ordinary human being what he has been taught and has grown to cherish the most: personal liberty. And it can be affirmed, without falling into exaggeration, that a curtailment of personal liberty not only has proved to be, but necessarily must be, a fundamental condition of the triumph of Fascism." [Mario Palmieri, "The Philosophy of Fascism" (1936)] ------- "Fascist ethics begin ...with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position." [Mario Palmieri, "The Philosophy of Fascism" (1936)] ------- "Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens' lives. Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference" [US Congressman Ron Paul, in his "Texas Straight Talk" column, August 2004] ------- "Point for point, the Founding Fathers' argument for liberty was the exact counterpart of the Puritans' argument for dictatorship - but in reverse, moving from the opposite starting point to the opposite conclusion. Man, the Founding Fathers said in essence (with a large assist from Locke and others), is the rational being; no authority, human or otherwise, can demand blind obedience from such a being - not in the realm of thought or, therefore, in the realm of action, either. By his very nature, they said, man must be left free to exercise his reason and then to act accordingly, i.e., by the guidance of his best rational judgment. Because this world is of vital importance, they added, the motive of man's action should be the pursuit of happiness. Because the individual, not a supernatural power, is the creator of wealth, a man should have the right to private property, the right to keep and use or trade his own product. And because man is basically good, they held, there is no need to leash him; there is nothing to fear in setting free a rational animal. "This, in substance, was the American argument for man's inalienable rights. It was the argument that reason demands freedom." [Leonard Peikoff, "Religion vs. America," The Voice of Reason] ------- "Democracy is the name we give to other people when we need them." [Robert Pellevue, Marquis de Flers (1872-1927)] ------- "The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack." [Wendell Phillips, American abolitionist,(1811-1884), speech, 1863] ------- "He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it." [Plato] ------- "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." [Plato] ------- "A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake, at the moment." [Willis Player] ------- "The basis of freedom is not that permission to do legitimate things is granted to the people, but rather that the government is empowered to do a limited number of legitimate things -- everything else people are free to do; they do not need to justify their choices." [Eric Postpischil, 1990] ------- "Freedom is more important than equality. The attempt to realize equality endangers freedom. If freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree." [Karl Popper] ------- "Do what's right for you, so long as it don't hurt no one." [Elvis Presley] ------- "To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, lawridden, regulated, penned up, indoctrinated, preached at, checked, appraised, seized, censured, (and) commanded by beings who have neither title, knowledge nor virtue." [Pierre Proudhon, c 1825] ------- "A mixed economy has to reach the day when it faces a final crossroad: either the private sector regains its freedom and starts rebuilding - or it gives up and lets the absolute state take over the shamble." [Ayn Rand] ------- "Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value." [Francisco D'Anconia, in ATLAS SHRUGGED, by Ayn Rand] ------- "The most immoral contradiction--in the chaos of today's anti-ideological groups--is that of the so-called `conservatives' who posture as defenders of individual rights, particularly property rights, but uphold and advocate the draft. By what infernal evasion can they hope to justify the proposition that creatures who have no right to life, have the right to a bank account?" [Ayn Rand, "The Wreckage of the Consensus"] ------- "Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders' attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose of those who taught you to evade it, was to make you forget that Man is Man." [John Galt, in "Atlas Shrugged", Ayn Rand] ------- "Whoever claims the "right" to "redistribute" the wealth produced by others is claiming the "right" to treat human beings as chattel." [Ayn Rand] ------- "It's only human", you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept "human" mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to excise from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure - as if "to feel" were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not - as if the premise of DEATH were proper to man, but the premise of LIFE were not." [Ayn Rand, Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged] ------- "There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob." [Ayn Rand] ------- "No genius is required to see clearly that an unhampered market economy best fulfills the peaceful wants and ambitions of everyone involved. Each best serves himself by serving others, producing his own specialty, trading for theirs." [Leonard E. Read] ------- "We will never disarm any American who seeks to protect his or her family from fear or harm." [Ronald Reagan addressing the NRA in TX, quoted in Osha Gray Davidson _Under Fire_ pp 38-39] ------- "Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." [Ronald Reagan, NY Times, April 13, 1980 Despite this, Reagan supported and expanded the "War on Drugs"] ------- "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is." [Ronald Reagan] ------- "Communism is neither an economic or a political system -- it is a form of insanity -- a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. I wonder how much more misery it will cause before it disappears." [Ronald Reagan] ------- "Americans, both politicians and voters, may have become corrupted by big government beyond redemption. A virtuous government requires a virtuous people. A frugal government requires a self-reliant people. A free country requires people who value liberty more than money." [Charley Reese] ------- "Given the low level of competence among politicians, every American should become a libertarian. The government that governs least is certainly the best choice when fools, opportunists, and grafters run it. When power is for sale, then the government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better". [Charley Reese] ------- "You are part of a govt that has given its people more freedom...than any other govt in the history of the world." [Janet Reno to her troops....note the idea of gov't "giving" rights, as opposed to rights pre-existing and superior to government] ------- "Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all." [Michael Rivero] ------- "And now, finally, we have reached this condition: The real Constitution mandates that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Under the Anti-Constitution, political speech that is critical of government officials is declared to be "corruption," and Congress may punish offenders with long prison terms." ["Spencer Roane", Freedom of Speech Now Illegal, American Spectator, Feb. 2004] ------- "The liberal party is a party which believes that, as new conditions an problems arise beyond the power of men and women to meet as individuals, it becomes the duty of the government itself to find new remedies with which to meet them." [Franklin D. Roosevelt, Introduction to volume 7,_The Public Papers and Addressess of Franklin D. Roosevelt_] ------- "Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows." [Franklin D. Roosevelt] ------- "We have accepted a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all, regardless of station, race or creed. Among these are: The right to a useful and remunerative job... The right of every business man, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad. The right of every family to a decent home. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment. The right to a good education. [President Franklin D. Roosevelt, _Message to Congress_, January 11, 1944] [At whose expense, Franklin?] ------- "My own party can succeed at the polls only so long as it continues to be the party of militant liberalism." [Franklin D Roosevelt, Introduction to volume 7, _The Public Papers and Addressess of Franklin D. Roosevelt_] ------- "Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence... They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers... They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money, it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow-men. Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be values only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit, and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live." [Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, attacking business and laying groundwork for social programs] ------- "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day" [Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906] ------- "When government tax agents carry guns and wear black ski masks to hide their faces, the evil has become institutionalized. And when those government agents shoot nursing mothers and burn women and children alive over $200 tax matters, then you have a government that is out of control." [John Ross, author of "Unintended Consequences"] ------- "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws." [Baron M.A. Rothschild (1744 - 1812)] ------- "Personal liberty, which is guaranteed to every citizen under our constitution & laws, consists of the right... to go where one pleases, & when, & to do that which may lead to one's business or pleasure, only so far restrained as the rights of others may make it necessary for the welfare of all other citizens." [Rudkin 1931 Hawaii v Anduha 48 F 2d 171, 172] ------- "Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic. The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom." [Benjamin Rush, George Washington's personal doctor and a signer of the Declaration of Independence] ------- "Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit." [Bertrand Russell: Saturday Review, 1951] ------- "There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action." [Bertrand Russell: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish] ------- "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." [Richard Salant, former President of CBS News] ------- "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied chains us all irrevocably." [Judge Aaron Satie, from Star Trek: The Next Generation] ------- "How can we live in freedom and maintain that we are entitled to *anything* that we can't get without the labor of others? Remember, if we are entitled to the labor of others, that makes slaves of those others." [Marilyn vos Savant, Parade Magazine, 12/31/95 ([Marilyn vos Savant is listed in "The Guiness Book of World Records" Hall of Fame for the "Highest IQ".)] ------- "To lay with on hand the power of the government on property of the citizen and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation." [Savings and Loan Association v Topeka 1875] ------- "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." [George Bernard Shaw. Man and Superman, "Maxims for Revolutionists: Liberty and Equality" (1903)] ------- "I think that the war on drugs is domestic Vietnam. And didn't we learn from Vietnam that, at a certain point in the war, we should stop and rethink our strategy, ask ``Why are we here, what are we doing, what's succeeded, what's failed?'' And we ought to do that with the domestic Vietnam, which is the war on drugs." [Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke] ------- "If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. there is no other." [Carl Schurz ,(1829-1906) German-american statesman, journalist] ------- "It goes without saying that the more power a government assumes, the bigger it grows, and the bigger it grows, the more it costs. The more a government costs, the more it requires of its citizens, and the more it requires of its citizens, the more subjugated those citizens become. The more subjugated the citizens become, the more power a government assumes... You get the idea." [Lee Shelton] ------- "Government is instituted for those who live under it. It ought therefore to be so constituted as not to be dangerous to their liberties. The more permanency it has the worse if it be a bad Government. Frequent elections are necessary to preserve the good behavior of rulers. They also tend to give permanency to the Government, by preserving that good behavior, because it ensures their re-election." [Roger Sherman, June 26, 1787] ------- "You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." [Michael Shirley] ------- "In a free society, standards of public morality can be measured only by whether physical coercion -- violence against persons or property -- occurs. There is no right not to be offended by words, actions or symbols." [Richard E. Sincere] ------- "People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, where 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_] ------- "Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." [Joseph Sobran] ------- "Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric." [Thomas Sowell] ------- "Everyone is a progressive by his own lights. That the anointed believe that this label differentiates themselves from other people is one of a number of symptoms of their naive narcissism." [Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed"] ------- "Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes" [Thomas Sowell] ------- "Parasites plus suckers do not add up to a community." [Thomas Sowell] ------- "What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long." [Thomas Sowell] ------- "There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims." [Thomas Sowell] ------- "What is more disturbing -- indeed, frightening -- is the possibility that years of dumbed-down education and debased popular culture have left us in a mental condition where unbridled emotional responses are all we have left. Perspective, logic, self-discipline -- these things seem to have faded away." [Thomas Sowell, 7/22/99, responding to media orgy following JFK Jr's death] ------- "Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed - first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf." [Gerry Spence, "From Freedom To Slavery"] ------- "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools." [Herbert Spencer, Essays, vol. 3, "State Tamperings with Money and Banks" (1891). from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations] ------- "Every person who puts money into the hands of a 'government' (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against him, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will." [Lysander Spooner] ------- "For more than six hundred years -- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 -- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that: in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of such laws. Unless such be the right and duty of jurors, it is plain that, instead of juries being a "palladium of liberty" --a barrier against the tyranny and oppression of the government-- they are really mere tools in its hands, for carrying into execution any injustice and oppression it may desire to have executed." [Lysander Spooner] ------- "The United States should get rid of its militias." [Joseph Stalin] ------- "Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime." [U.S. Justice Potter Stewart] ------- "Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity--in short, of tyranny--and it is committed to making tyranny universal." [Adlai E. Stevenson] ------- "A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." [Adlai Stevenson] ------- "The truth of the past 400 years is that science and technology are the real revolutionary forces in society. All governments manage is mewling and reaction." [Stephen Strauss, Mind & Matter, The Globe & Mail, May 2nd, 1992] ------- "Vices carry their own penalties with them. We never can annihilate the penalty. We can only divert it from the head of the man who incurred it to the heads of others who have not incurred it." [William Graham Sumner] ------- "No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession & control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear & unquestionable authority of law." [Supreme Court, 1891, Union Pacific RailWay Co v Botsford 141 US 250, 251] ------- "It would be intolerable & unreasonable if a prohibition agent were authorized to stop every automobile on the chance of finding liquor, & thus subject all persons lawfully using the high-ways to the inconvenience & indignity of such a search." [Supreme Court, 1925, Carroll v US 267 US 132] ------- "The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But perhaps you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself." [Thomas Szasz, "The Untamed Tongue"] ------- "... bank records are not the depositor's private papers and having given the information to the bank, the depositor has no legitimate expectation of continued privacy ... " [United States Supreme Court in U.S. v. Miller] ------- "Corruptisima republica plurimae leges." [Tacitus] (The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.) ------- "Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race." [William Howard Taft (1857-1930) Popular Government, ch. 3 (1913)] ------- "The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind. ... In this field every person must be his own watchman for the truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the truth from the false for us." [Thomas v Collins, 323 U.S. 516 (1945)] ------- "Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning" [Dr. Hunter S. Thompson] ------- "As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." [Henry David Thoreau] ------- "A government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it." [Henry David Thoreau,_On the Duty of Civil Disobedience_] ------- "To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts 'All aboard!' when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over,- and it will be called, and will be, 'A melancholy accident.'" [Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"] ------- "If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills, that would not be so violent and bloody a measure as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood." [Henry David Thoreau] ------- "Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law." [Henry David Thoreau] ------- "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. " [Henry David Thoreau] ------- "There will never be a really free and enlightened state, until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." [Henry D. Thoreau, 1849 "Resistance to Civil Government"] ------- "When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?" [Henry David Thoreau] ------- "The state is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe air after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest." [Henry David Thoreau] ------- "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." [Henry David Thoreau] ------- "Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. .... Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance: it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution." [Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, pt. 3, ch. 21 (1840)] ------- "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." [Alexis de Tocqueville] ------- "[A]fter having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupifies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepard. - I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than it is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people." [Alexis de Tocqueville] ------- "...this happy place, where men are to live, without labor, upon the fruit of the labors of others; this political hive, where all the drones in the society are to be collected to feed on the honey of the land. How dangerous this city may be, and what its operation on the general liberties of this country, time alone must discover." [Thomas Tredwell in the New York Ratifying Convention, 2 July 1788, describing the federal district containing the seat of government (now the District of Columbia)] ------- "Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship." [Harry S. Truman, speech at Columbia University, Apr.28 1959] ------- "The right of self-defense is the first law of nature ... and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." [St. George Tucker, in his edition of Blackstone's _Commentaries_] ------- "Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it, or even diminish it." [Mark Twain: Letter from New York to the Alta Californian, May 28, 1867] ------- "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." [Mark Twain: Manuscript note, c.1882] ------- "He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain." ["Tom Sawyer," by Mark Twain, Chapter 2, "The Glorious Whitewasher"] ------- "The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them." [Mark Twain (1835-1910)] ------- "It were not best that we should all think alike; it is the difference of opinion that makes horseraces." [Mark Twain, _Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar_, 1894] ------- "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] ------- "We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter- exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place- the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan." [Mark Twain, a Biography] ------- "The government is not the country itself, but a temporary servant of the country. There can be times the highest loyalty to one's country consists of vigorous opposition to a government which is serving it badly." [Mark Twain] ------- "The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor." [Mark Twain] ------- "What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin." [Mark Twain] ------- "I believe the Prince of Darkness could start a branch of hell in the District of Columbia (if he has not already done it), and carry it on unimpeached by the Congress of the United States, even though the Constitution were bristling with articles forbidding hells in this country.... What a rotten, rotten, and unspeakable nasty concern this nest of departments is, with its brainless battalions of Congressional poor-relation-clerks and their book-keeping, pencil-sharpening strumpets." [Mark Twain] ------- "The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble ... and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action ... and sink into the helplessness of [one] who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise." [Mark Twain] ------- "Patriotism is honoring your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." [Mark Twain] ------- "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." [Prof. Alexander Tyler] ------- "I suppose I can understand the statists insecurity in their power lust. It's their disregard for the rights of the individual that passes me by." [Tymogee] ------- (37) Over all The Way never does anything, and everything gets done. If those in power could hold to the Way, the ten thousand things would look after themselves. ["Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: A book About The Way and The Power of The Way," new English version by Ursula K. Le Guin. Shambala Publications, 1998] ------- (57) Being simple Run the country by doing what's expected. Win the war by doing the unexpected. Control the world by doing nothing. How do I know that? By this. The more restrictions and prohibitions in the world, the poorer people get. The more experts the country has the more of a mess it's in. The more ingenious the skillful are, the more monstrous their inventions. The louder the call for law and order, the more the thieves and con men multiply. So a wise leader might say: I practise inaction, and the people look after themselves. I love to be quite, and the people themselves find justice. I don't do business, and the people prosper on their own. I don't have wants, and the people themselves are uncut wood. ["Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: A book About The Way and The Power of The Way," new English version by Ursula K. Le Guin. Shambala Publications, 1998] ------- "Conservatives are afraid the people WON'T understand; Liberals are afraid the people WILL understand!!!" [Unknown] ------- "If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence ... and the courts must abide by that decision." [US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 417 F.2d at 1006 (1969)] ------- "The jury has unreviewable and irreversible power to acquit in disregard of the instruction given by the trial judge." [US v Dougherty, 1972] ------- "For the children is the plea for every infringment of human liberty; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." [E. Vigilance 1998] ------- "The view of "drug warriors" that people can only be controlled by force is contrary to the fundamental principles upon which this country was founded." [Bryan J. Vila, PhD Assistant Professor. Dept. of Criminology, Law and Society School of Social Ecology University of California, Irvine CA] ------- "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." [Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, "Money" (1764)] ------- "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." [Voltaire] ------- "I tell ye true, liberty is the best of all things; never live beneath the noose of a servile halter." [William Wallace, Address to the Scots, circa 1300] ------- "...a fundamental princple of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." [Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1, 6 (D.C. App 1981)] ------- "Let me now warn you in the most solemn manner. Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. The Nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest." [President George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796] ------- "Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money." [Daniel Webster, lexicographer] ------- "I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger." [Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837] ------- "Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." [Gen. William Westmoreland] ------- "Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others." [Willian Allen White (1868-1944) Editor, Emporia Gazette] ------- "Progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority." [Oscar Wilde] ------- "While to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all." [Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"] ------- "A man is a sovereign unto himself, and may only be ruled by his own consent." [John Wilkes] ------- "All we have to do now is to inform the public that the payment of social security taxes is voluntary and watch the mass exodus." [Walter E. Williams, John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, January 24, 1996] ------- "...we Americans put too much faith in politicians and too little faith in ourselves to do what's necessary for growth and prosperity." [Walter Williams] ------- "Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage." [Walter Williams, "All It Takes Is Guts"] ------- "To surpress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress..Now more than ever we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opeing the way to loss of liberty for those we love." [Wendell Willkie (1892-1944), Republican candidate for President, 1940] ------- "True freedom requires taking responsibility for your own life. That frightens the hell out of too many people. They prefer to have Big Brother holding a safety net for them, and they'll sell their own birthright and their children's as well to keep it." [F. Paul Wilson] ------- "It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea." [Robert Anton Wilson] ------- "A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the Federal Reserve System. The growth of the nation , thertefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completelly controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world-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 duress of small groups of dominant men." [President Woodrow Wilson, 3 years after signing the Federal Reserve Act into law.] ------- "Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance." [Woodrow Wilson: Address, New York Press Club, May 9, 1912] ------- "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." [Claire Wolfe, _101 Things To Do 'Til the Revolution_] ------- "Fourth Amendment protects the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable searches and seizures.' The essence of that protection is a prohibition against some modes of law enforcement because the cost of police intrusion into personal liberty is too high, even though the intrusion undoubtedly would result in an enormous boon to the public if the efficient apprehension of criminals were the sole criterion to be considered. 'The easiest course for [law enforcement] officials is not always one that our Constitution allows them to take.'" [Wolfish, 441 U.S. at 595] ------- BATTERED SOUL: You have to rise now (unless you're dead) when they play the "Star Spangled Banner" and you have to salute the flag unless you're paralyzed or they beat you up and send you to jail. INGERSOLL: O, yes, the "Star Spangled Banner." The flag of the free--the flag born in revolution, the flag of revolution, free opinion. RABELAIS: Ah, I see. This flag is the symbol of freedom, so they beat you up to show you how free you are? ... INGERSOLL: The flag of freedom has become an idol for tyranny. JEFFERSON: The symbol remains but the spirit is dead. The flag is a lie. INGERSOLL: The spirit of the people makes the flag--without perfect freedom it is a cheating rag. PAINE: If the right of a single one to freely express his opinion at all times, anywhere, be denied, it is tyranny, no matter by what empty name the form of government is called.... The flag has become the symbol of government, and when you are taught to worship the flag you are taught to worship the existing government though it be a tyranny. Dangerous, dangerous. Shall a flag be holier than a man? A mere symbol become greater than what it stands for? INGERSOLL (to Francis Key): You little thought, Key, that when you wrote your song to that impossible tune that it would be sending free men to jail.... GOD: Do I understand you were broken to bits because you didn't salute me, or was it the piece of cloth? [Charles Erskine Scott Wood, _Heavenly Discourse_ (1927). XVII, "A Pacifist Enters Heaven--In Bits."] ------- "No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves." [John Peter Zenger] ------- "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing centre stage advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as a land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms -- then you can stand up and sing about the "Land of the Free." ["The American President"] ------- "This country is founded, at least in part, on the firm belief that unpopular speech is absolutely vital to the health of our nation." ["The People v. Larry Flynt"] -------