Political Quotes You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves. ~ Abraham Lincoln "A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right and evil doesn't become good just because it's accepted by a majority." ~ Booker T. Washington "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." ~ Desmond Tutu "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." ~ George Santayana "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." ~ James Madison "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." ~ Voltaire "The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws." ~ Edward Abbey "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.... But then I repeat myself." ~ Mark Twain "I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." ~ Winston Churchill "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." ~ George Bernard Shaw "A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man .... which debt he proposes to pay off with your money." ~ G Gordon Liddy "Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." ~ James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994) "Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." ~ Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ~ P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian "Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." ~ Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850) "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." ~ Ronald Reagan (1986) "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." ~ Will Rogers "In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." ~ Voltaire (1764) "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!" ~ Pericles (430 B.C.) "No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session." ~ Mark Twain (1866) "Talk is cheap ... except when Congress does it." ~ Unknown "The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other." ~ Ronald Reagan "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." ~ Winston Churchill "Capitalism is the uneven distribution of wealth. Socialism is the even distribution of poverty." ~ Winston Churchill (a variation of the above) "Socialism is a philosophy of failure. The creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." ~ Winston Churchill (another variation of the above) "The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin." ~ Mark Twain "There is no distinctly Native American criminal class ... save Congress." ~ Mark Twain "What this country needs are more unemployed politicians." ~ Edward Langley, Artist (1928 - 1995) "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." ~ Thomas Jefferson "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." ~ Fredric Bastiat, "The Law", 1846 "The library is the arsenal of liberty." ~ Unknown "The school is primarily a social institution whose central purpose is not science, nor literature, nor history nor geography . . but the child's own social activities." ~ John Dewey "When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson "A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins." ~ Ben Franklin "If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower "If the people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. Lately it seems to bear a close resemblance to the first." ~ Author Unknown "I believe there are more instances of abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations...." ~ James Madison "Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality" ~ Michael Ellner "Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who still have swords." ~ Author Unknown "Do not let either the medical authorities or the politicians mislead you. Find out what the facts are, and make your own decisions about how to live a happy life and how to work for a better world." ~ Linus Pauling "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power 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 take it from them, but to inform their discretion" ~ Thomas Jefferson "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law", because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." ~ Thomas Jefferson "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 "The Founding Fathers knew that even the best designed government wouldn't work if the people were not righteous, moral and God fearing - if they didn't love liberty and cherish it." "If a nation or individual values anything more than freedom, it will lose it's freedom; and the irony is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too." ~ W. Somerset Maugham "'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 "In Germany they came first 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 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 Neimoller, reflecting upon Germany's fall to the Nazis "Lethal injections are for criminals. We need to keep it that way." ~ Author Unknown "Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could easily defeat us." ~ William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court Justice 1939-1975 "The dangers of a government that abuses it's powers are all too real to me. The dangers of a government that allows certain vested special interest groups to do as they wish, is all to real to us all. Fair is fair - A government that fears its own people, should be feared by the people it governs." "Love your country but fear its government." ~ N.E. folk wisdom "1935 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." ~ Adolf Hitler, 'Berlin Daily', April 15th, 1935 "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." ~ P.J. O'Rourke "MTV may talk about lighting fires and killing children, but Janet Reno actually does something about it." ~ Spy Magazine "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt." ~ Cicero, 63 BC "Tell a lie loud enough and long enough and people will believe it." ~ Adolph Hitler "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, co-signer of the Declaration of Independence "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." ~ Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), paraphrasing John Philpot Curran (1808) "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive." ~ Thomas Jefferson, February 22, 1787 "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." ~ Thomas Jefferson "Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." ~ Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II "There is Tranquility in Ignorance, but Servitude is its Partner." "Judicial verbicide is calculated to convert the Constitution into a worthless scrap of paper and to replace our government of laws with a judicial oligarchy." ~ Senator Sam Ervin, of Watergate hearing fame "There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. 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. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing." ~ Daniel Webster "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." ~ Plato (427-347 B.C.) "The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." ~ Albert Einstein "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. "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 intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." ~ 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 B. Rush, Sept. 23, 1800) "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." ~ Thomas Jefferson "Nothing is more essential... than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable character." ~ Samuel Adams "The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the Americans freedom, and before I leave office, I must inform the citizen of this plight." ~ John F. Kennedy- Columbia University, Nov. 12, 1963 "In war, there are no unwounded soldiers" ~ Jose Narosky Judge Learned Hand said: "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." Americans no longer understand what liberty means. They think it has something to do with tax-free shopping and their right never to be offended by others' opinions. "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." ~ Justice of the Supreme Court, William O. Douglas "It is sheer folly to expect justice from the unprincipled" ~ Proverb "Where might is master, justice is servant" ~ Proverb "Much law, but little justice" ~ Proverb "Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all" ~  Edmund Burke "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. "There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes". ~ John Swinton, Chief of Staff at the New York Times (toast at the New York Press Club, 1880) http://www.constitution.org:80/pub/swinton_press.htm  "The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." ~ Frederick Douglass 1857 "The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the Americans freedom, and before I leave office, I must inform the citizen of this plight." ~ John F. Kennedy - Columbia University, Nov. 12, 1963 "If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." ~ Thomas Jefferson "To hold a pen is to be at war." ~ Voltaire "Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword." ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton "Rome did not die from lack of the right social programs. Rome died for lack of Men." ~ (paraphrase) The great Romanian patriot Cornelieu Codreanu "How fortunate for leaders that men do not think." ~ Adolf Hitler "The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evil." ~ (Albert Einstein, 1949) "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." ~ Mark Twain "The only way for a reporter to look on a politician is down." H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) "The mere title of Lawyer is sufficient to deprive a man of public confidence. The most innocent and irreproachable life cannot guard a lawyer against the hatred of his fellow citizens." ~ John Q. Adams "The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges' views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice." ~ Justice Hugo L. Black ( U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1886 - 1971). "If we know the truth, we must tell it; if we don't, we must learn it! It is critical to our spirit." "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." American Communications Ass'n v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 442. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~ Aristotle "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." ~ Thomas Jefferson "Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who will not." ~ Thomas Jefferson "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. … We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant." ~ Sir Karl Popper "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws." ~ Abraham Lincoln "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England; nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for their lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." ~ Hermann Goering - Nazi Technique "All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it. People can be made to perceive paradise as hell, and the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." ~ Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland." ~ Adolf Hitler, proposing the creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany "Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate." ~ Hubert H. Humphrey "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and passed on, or we will spend our sunset years telling our children's children what it was like in the United States when men were free." ~ Ronald Reagan "We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." ~ Abraham Lincoln "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." ~ Madison (Federalist Papers, No. 51, page 322) "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." ~ Patrick Henry "Every US president since Eisenhower has either belonged to the Bilderberg Group or its older parallel group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), or been approved by them. The race is no contest when you own both horses. That is why no matter which political party is in power nothing really changes other than the packaging. The puppets who drink at the champagne fountains of the powerful do the bidding of their masters. The people are superfluous to the process." ~ Daniel Estulin "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." ~ Abraham Lincoln Hitler explained the believability of the Big Lie as compared to the small lie: "In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation." ~ Adolf Hitler "I do not reject peace, but I am afraid of war disguised as peace." ~ Cicero 43 B.C. "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 "How do wars start? Diplomats lie to reporters and then believe what they read in the newspapers." ~ Karl Krause "As an American I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials." ~ Newt Gingrich "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." ~ Benjamin Franklin "It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." ~ Samuel Adams "We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times." ~ George Washington "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." ~ Thomas Jefferson "The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of 'other' people's money." ~ Margaret Thatcher: "When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." ~ James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union "A Liberal is a person who will give away everything 'he doesn't own'." ~ Unknown "Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us." ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to F. W. Gilmer, 1816 "To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter." ~ Aleister Crowley "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their country." ~ George Washington "Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond [i.e. an ‘alien’ invasion], (whether real or promulgated), that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government." ~ Henry Kissinger was reported to have said this at the Bilderberger Conference in Evians, France, 1991 "Although the means of coming into power differ, still the method of ruling is practically the same. The tyrant has nothing more than the power you confer upon him to destroy you. How does he have any power over you except through you? Tyrants need only be deprived of the public's continuing supply of funds and resources. *Resolve to serve no more!* and you are at once free. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer. Then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces." ~ Etienne de la Boetie 1553 "For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and provide for it." ~ Patrick Henry "That measures of this nature [military conscription] should be debated at all in the councils of a free government is cause of dismay. The question is nothing less than whether the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered and despotism embraced in its worst form." ~ Daniel Webster "The Constitution is not an instrument for the 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 "I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning." ~ (T.P.J.S., p. 313) "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrations), too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." ~ President Thomas Jefferson "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." ~ Thomas Jefferson "Individual sovereignty is not a license for all individuals to do anything they want, it is not moral relativism and it is not anarchy where each individual decides subjectively which rights of other people one will respect and which laws one will obey and which will be ignored, individual sovereignty is universal sovereignty of the individual to live freely and not infringe upon the right of other individuals to enjoy the same freedom, that is the law, that is what is enforced and that is what all individuals are obligated to respect. Individual sovereignty is the basis from which all rights are derived and upon which all legitimate government is founded and it is the only way that a truly good and just society may emerge." - Gregory Flanagan "It is a known fact that the policies of the government today, whether Republican or Democrat are closer to the 1932 platform of the Communist Party than they are to either of their own party platforms in that critical year." ~ Walter Trohan (1903-2003) Chicago Tribune reporter (1929-1972) and bureau chief in Washington, D.C. Source: CHICAGO TRIBUNE, October 5, 1970 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Walter.Trohan.Quote.9F58 (Look at us now -- 40 years later.) "If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them." ~ Candidus (Pen name of Samuel Adams during the era of the Sons of Liberty) Source: in the Boston Gazette, 1772 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Candidus.Quote.2561 "The limits of tyrants is prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." ~ Frederic Douglas, 1857 "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves." ~ Charles de Mo  "If a man neglects to enforce his rights he cannot complain if, after a while, the law follows his example." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes. "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons' 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 own conscience." ~ (C.S. Lewis) "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty." ~ Thomas Jefferson "The limits of tyrants is prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." ~ Frederic Douglas, 1857 "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.” ~ Charles de Montesquieu "How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!" ~ Samuel Adams "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it...and a moral code that glorifies it." ~ Frederic Bastiat "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." ~ Thomas Jefferson “A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns.” ~ Vito Corleone "Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehood's school. And the one man who dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool." ~ Plato "Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. It’s one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself." ~ H. L. Mencken "What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. ... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789) "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." ~ William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice "If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being a gift from God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave." ~ Samuel Adams, Father of the American Revolution. "I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." ~ Thomas Jefferson Letter to William Ludlow, 1824 "The people who had once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else now longs eagerly for just two things, bread and circus games.." ~ Juvenal, poet, upon observing the decline of the Roman empire. "The real destroyers of the liberties of any people is he who spreads among them bounties, donation and largesse." ~ Plutarch, Greek historian. "[W]hat more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? ... a wise and frugal government ... which shall leave [men] free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned ... We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude ... If we can prevent government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, the people will be happy." ~ Thomas Jefferson "Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." ~ Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857. "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." ~ Lao Tze, circa. 2300 B.C. "Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created." ~ Ludwig von Mises ("Socialism", 1922) "The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now." ~ United States Supreme Court in South Carolina vs. United States (1905) "Let it [the Constitution, etc.] be taught in schools, seminaries and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, enforced in courts of justice. In short, let it become the political religion of the nation." ~ President Abraham Lincoln "I do not believe there are more than a very limited number of persons, perhaps a hundred who really know what is in the Constitution of the United States." ~ Dr. John J. Tigert, United States Commissioner of Education, October, 1924. "Lawyers are being graduated from our law schools by the thousands who have little knowledge of the Constitution. When organizations seek a lawyer to instruct them on the Constitution, they find it nearly impossible to secure one competent." ~ report of the Committee on American Citizenship, presented at the meeting of the American Bar Association, Denver, Colorado, July 14-16, 1926. "... ours is a sick profession marked by incompetence, lack of training, misconduct and bad manners. Ineptness, bungling, malpractice, and bad ethics can be observed in court houses all over this country every day ... these incompetents have a seeming unawareness of the fundamental ethics of the profession. ... the harsh truth is that ... we may well be on our way to a society, overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated." ~ Chief Justice of the United States Warren Burger "... the intent of the lawmaker is to be found in the language that he has used." ~ United States Supreme Court in U.S. v. Goldberg (1897) "In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." ~ Thomas Jefferson "Every child in American who enters school with an allegiance toward our elected officials, toward our founding fathers, toward our institutions, toward the preservation of this form of government ... all of this proves the children are sick, because the truly well individual is one who has rejected all of those things and is what I would call the true international child of the future." ~ Chester M. Pierce, Harvard University psychiatrist, at a 1973 International Education Seminar, as quoted in "Educating For The New World Order" by B.K. Eakman "The CFR [Council On Foreign Relations, New York City] is the American Branch of a society which originated in England and believes national directives should be obliterated and one-world rule established. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years, and was permitted in the early 1960's to examine its papers and secret records ... I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known." ~ Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor of International Relations, Georgetown University Foreign Service School, Washington, D.C., author of the epic "Tragedy & Hope", advocate of one-world government and personal mentor of President William Clinton (who acknowledged Professor Quigley during his 1992 presidential inauguration speech) "We shall have world government whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World government will be achieved by conquest or consent." ~ James Paul Warburg, Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, 1921 - 1932, before the U.S. Senate, February 17, 1950 "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men, their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas." ~ Brock Chisolm, former Director of the World Health Organization "The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence and submergence into an all powerful, one world government." ~ Chester Ward, Rear Admiral and former Navy Judge Advocate 1956 - 1960 and CFR member for 15 years "You had me on (before) to talk about the new world order ... I talk about it all the time ... It's one world now ... The council (Council on foreign Relations) can find, nurture and begin to put people in the kinds of jobs this country needs. And that's going to be one of the major enterprises of the Council under me.." ~ New CFR president Les Celb (former editor of The New York Times), May 4, 1993 on the "Charlie Rose Show". "That the CFR has been in control of the foreign policy of the United States for some time should now be beyond question.." ~ Richard Harwood, Oct. 30, 1993, on the op-ed page of the Washington Post. "The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists." ~ J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI "The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes" ~ Felix Frankfurter, United States Supreme Court Justice "Gentlemen, Comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about glasnost and perestroika and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal change within the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep." ~ Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union, to the Politburo in November of 1987 "I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the past forty-nine years, they would move on Washington. It adds up to a preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States." ~ Senator George Malone of Nevada, speaking before Congress in 1957 "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~ Abraham Lincoln "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." ~ Thomas Jefferson "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism", they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." ~ Norman Thomas, for many years the U.S. Socialist Party presidential candidate "America is like a healthy body and its resistance is three-fold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." ~ Joseph Stalin, former dictator of the Soviet Union "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promise of discretion for almost forty years ... It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries." ~ David Rockefeller, in an address given to Catherine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post and other media luminaries in attendance in Baden Baden, Germany at the June 1991 annual meeting of the world elite Bilderberg Group "There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." ~ John Swinton, former chief of staff, The New York Times, in a 1953 speech before the New York Press Club "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 "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 "I pledge allegiance to the flag, and to the Republic for which it stands ...." ~ United States Pledge of Allegiance (... hey, I thought it was a Democracy) "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." ~ James Madison "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" "Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism." ~ Fisher Ames (1758 - 1808) "If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." ~ Samuel Adams "It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution." ~ James Madison, Father of the Constitution "No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts in the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have been advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency." ~ George Washington "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto the inhabitants thereof." ~ Leviticus 25:10 (inscription on the Liberty Bell) "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?" ~ Thomas Jefferson "The independence and liberty you possess are the work of ... joint efforts, of common dangers, suffering and successes." ~ George Washington "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." ~ United States Supreme Court - American Communications Association v. Douds "Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself." ~ Louis D. Brandeis, former Supreme Court Justice "To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy." ~ Thomas Jefferson "It is inherent in government's right, if necessary, to lie ... that seems to me basic - basic." ~ Arthur Sylvester, former Assistant Secretary of Defense "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." ~ Johann W. Von Goethe "Fear can only prevail when victims are ignorant of the facts." ~ Thomas Jefferson "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." ~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 US 479 (1928) "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 "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it ... While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it." ~ Learned Hand, jurist "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered ... deeply, ... finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." ~ George Washington, First Inaugural Address, Apr. 30, 1789 "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 "God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: 'This is my country.'" ~ Benjamin Franklin, letter to David Hartley, December 4, 1789 "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or 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 "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~ Thomas Jefferson "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." ~ Thomas Jefferson "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." ~ Montesquieu, 1742 "The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." ~ Justice William O. Douglas "We can no more blame our loss of freedom on congressmen than we can prostitution on pimps. Both simply provide broker services for their customers." ~ Dr. Walter Williams "He who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." ~ Thomas Jefferson "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." ~ Samuel Clemens, author who wrote under the nom de plume, Mark Twain "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 "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson "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 "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, ... pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." ~ Thomas Jefferson "I believe that there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear" ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero 42 BC "1935 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 "It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains ..." ~ Patrick Henry "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?" ~ Thomas Jefferson "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." ~ Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961) "[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue." ~ Samuel Adams "A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom." ~ Patrick Henry "No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of patriotism ..." ~ Andrew Jackson "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." ~ John Adams "There is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves." ~ Henry Ward Beecher "A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society." ~ Thomas Jefferson "I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs ... we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country ... we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." ~ John Danforth, Republican Senator from Missouri, in an interview in The Arizona Republic on April 22, 1992 "Give me your four year-olds and in a generation I will build a socialist state ... destroy the family and the society will collapse." ~ Vladimir Lenin "You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe." ~ John Adams "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." ~ Abraham Lincoln "Any truth is better than make-believe ... rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth" ~ Henry David Thoreau "Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business as if nothing had happened." ~ Winston Churchill "Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehood's school. And the one man who dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool." ~ Plato "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." ~ Thomas Jefferson "I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Ludlow, 1824 "The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind." ~ Rousseau "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken "When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all Power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." ~ Thomas Jefferson (1821) in a letter to Gideon Granger. "An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.." ~ Ambrose Bierce "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, it was planned that way." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt "Dear Fellow American Patriot, When this country was in its very infancy, our Founding Fathers pledged their fortunes, their sacred honor, indeed their very lives to stand against tyranny. These men and their families led us on to victory. Historians have calculated the total membership of these true heroes to be only 3% of the country at that time. To these men, Liberty was worth more than life itself. The nation that was born from their sacrifices has never since been duplicated in the history of the world. Our nation is once again in peril of losing its very essence to tyrants who would steal from us the life blood that has made our country great. It is by the [favor] of Almighty God that you have been chosen to join with us in the fight to restore our Nation back to its original greatness; back to a Nation where wo/men are free to believe as they choose, work for themselves and prosper according to their efforts and faith - where Rights are again protected by Law, not ignored or destroyed by the policies of bureaucrats. So welcome brothers and sisters! Knowing that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God, I am honored to call you my countrymen. May God Bless you!" ~ Thomas Brissey, St. Simons Island, Georgia, Independent Representative for the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship "The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe." ~ Thomas Jefferson "Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ...". ~ William Jefferson Clinton, March 11, 1993 in USA Today. "When we got organized as a country ... we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... A lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it." ~ William Jefferson Clinton, March 22, 1994 on MTV (Music Television). "All animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others" ~ George Orwell in "Animal Farm". "The lust for power, for dominating others, inflames the heart more than any other passion" ~ Tacitus "... there is much truth in the Italian saying, 'Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you.'" ~ Benjamin Franklin "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance does whatever is dictated to it." ~ Thomas Paine, Rights of Man "The only new thing in this world is the history you do not know" ~ President Harry S. Truman "... 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 its 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. Nov. 13. 1787, letter to William S. Smith. "How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!" ~ Samuel Adams (1722-1803), letter to John Pitts, January 21, 1776 "A person is a legal concept both permitting rights to and imposing duties on one by law." ~ Defined "Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars." ~ Unknown "That measures of this nature [military conscription] should be debated at all in the councils of a free government is cause of dismay. The question is nothing less than whether the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered and despotism embraced in its worst form." ~ Daniel Webster "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." ~ Theodore Roosevelt 1907 "When WORDS lose their meaning, people will lose their liberty." ~ Confucius "To a liberal, Paradise would be a place where everybody has guaranteed employment, free comprehensive health care, free education, free food, free housing, free clothing, free utilities... and only Law Enforcement has guns. Believe it or not, such a place indeed exists... it's called prison." ~ Sheriff Joe Arpaio "The right to labor or earn one's livelihood in any legitimate field of industry or business is a right of property, and any lawful or unreasonable interference with or abridgment of such right is an invasion thereof, and a restriction of the liberty of the citizen as guaranteed by the Constitution." ~ Yee Gee v. City and County of San Francisco "Americans would die on their feet rather than live on their knees." ~ George Washington "The only way for a reporter to look on a politician is down." ~ H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) "The mere title of Lawyer is sufficient to deprive a man of public confidence. The most innocent and irreproachable life cannot guard a lawyer against the hatred of his fellow citizens." ~ John Q. Adams "The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges' views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice." ~ Justice Hugo L. Black (U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1886 - 1971) "If we know the truth, we must tell it; if we don't, we must learn it! It is critical to our spirit." ~ "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." ~ American Communications Ass'n v. Douds "It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf." ~ Thomas Paine (1776) "“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.”—Psalm 32:8 “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.” [Proverbs 3:27] "When a man who is honestly mistaken is confronted with the truth, he will either cease to be mistaken or cease to be honest. " ~ Anonymous Lord John Dalberg Acton, 1st Barron Acton 1834-1902 Quotes: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." "Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority." "espotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality." "Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force."   "Absolute power demoralizes." "Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, but nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance." "We become accomplices with those who fail to oppose tyranny" ~ unknown "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." ~ Thomas Jefferson "An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens." ~ Thomas Jefferson "The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." ~ John Hay