Notable Quotes
The best society, the best human existence, arrives when humans most closely determine the truth, and act on the truth, and separate it from superstition, falsity, or misinformation. And there is no better system for determining the truth than free speech: Testing the validity of an idea in the waters of public discussion and debate." --Dave Rodgers
"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence." --Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter
if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha
"To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle." --
Confucius
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing." --Edmund Burke
"The more restrictions and prohibitions in the world, the poorer people get." --
Lao Tzu
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." - Tacitus, Roman
historian
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up
being governed by your inferiors." --Plato
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by
those who are dumber." - Plato
"When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the
people, you have freedom." - Thomas Paine
"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, to the Penn State
Legislature
"That government is best which governs least" --Thomas Jefferson
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." --Thomas Jefferson
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a
last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson
"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms..." --Richard Henry Lee
"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the state." --Heinrich Himmler
"Once governments are given the authority to restrict the liberty of some sane adults for what it considers their physical or moral welfare, there is no principled stopping point in terms of what governments will have the authority to prohibit. The consequence will be that virtually anything which anyone holds of most value may become prohibited to them on grounds of its being judged immoral or dangerous to them. There are practically no forms of activity in which sane adults like to engage that others are not able to find reasons to condemn as morally or physically bad for those who engage in them. This ranges from drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco, to eating certain types of food, to not taking exercise, to taking too much, engaging in dangerous sports, practising certain religions, not practising any religion, reading books on science, etc. Unless government draws the line at only prohibiting conduct that harms others against their will, no member of society can be secure in being able to do or have anything they most want and value." --David Conway
"The ever-growing power of a soulless political bureaucracy which supervises and safeguards the life of man from the cradle to the grave is putting ever-greater obstacles in the way of co-operation among human beings." --Rudolph Rocker
"There can be little doubt that man owes some of his greatest successes in the past to the fact that he has not been able to control social life. His continued advance may well depend on his deliberately refraining from exercising controls which are now in his power." --Friedrich A. Hayek
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." --Albert Einstein
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." --Mahatma Gandhi
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans." --Bill Clinton, 1993.
"The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'." --Larry Hardiman
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops." -- Noah Webster
"It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that Gentlemen want? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" --Patrick Henry
"In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from." --Peter Ustinov
"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 con- -science, 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
"Too many people are only willing to to defend rights that are personally important to them. It's selfish ignorance, and it's exactly why totalitarian governments are able to get away with trampling on people. Freedom does not mean freedom just for the things *I* think I should be able to do. Freedom is for all of us. If people will not speak up for other's people's rights, there will come a day when they will lose their own." - Tony Lawrence
"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." -- Former Lord Chief Justice Halisham
"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." --Senator Hubert H. Humprey
"Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny." --Aeschylus
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." --Anais Nin
"Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better." --Martin Luther King, Jr
"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone." --Henrik Ibsen
"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its 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 A. Heinlein
"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" --Adolph Hitler, April 15, 1935
"In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." -- Martin Niemoller
"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself." --Potter Stewart
"Stop tolerating in your leaders what you would not tolerate in your friends." -- Michael Ventura
"There are seven sins in the world: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice and politics without principle." --Mahatma Gandhi
"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth." --Adolf Hitler
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious." --Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda
"With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions." -- Abraham Lincoln
"A lie told often enough becomes the truth." -- Vladimir Lenin
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -- Noam Chomsky
"He that will not reason is a bigot, He that cannot reason is a fool, He that dares not reason is a slave." - William Drummond
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." --George Orwell
"Educators have lost sight of the purpose of a liberal education -- to foster the values of freedom and growth in students and, ultimately, to produce good human beings ... Although most educators agree that a liberal education is important, they spend too much time bickering over course requirements and not enough time talking about the qualities those requirements should instill in students. ... Students' educational success should be a measure of how well they listen, read, write, solve problems,empathize with others, and participate in their communities, not how many credits they accumulate. ... All the required courses in the world will fail to give us a liberal education if, in the act of requiring them, we forget that their purpose is to nurture human freedom and growth." -William Cronon In autumn 1998 issue of "The American Scholar"
"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education." - Bertrand Russell
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walk." --Thomas Jefferson