Political QuotesWisdom on the Subject of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Posted on 09/06/2001 12:08:46 PM PDT by vannrox
Political QuotesWisdom on the Subject of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness |
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On Free Speech...
 Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. - Benjamin Franklin |
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.- Voltaire
A danger sign of the lapse from true skepticism in to dogmatism is an inability to respect those who disagree- Dr. Leonard George
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.- Justice William O. Douglas
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they never use.- Kierkegaard
Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.- Benjamin Franklin, 1722
In some of its more lunatic aspects, political correctness is merely ridiculous. But in the thinking behind it, there is something more sinister which is shown by the fact that already there are certain areas and topics where freedom of speech, in the sense of the right to open and frank discussion, is being gradually but significantly eroded.- Retiring Judge Neil Denison, who as Common Serjeant of London since 1993 was one of Britain's most prominent judges, as quoted by the London Daily Telegraph.
In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.- Hugo L Black, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court - Concurring opinion in 6-3 ruling that upheld the press’s right to publish the Pentagon Papers, 30 Jun 71
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.- Graham Greene, British novelist
I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.- H.L. Mencken, Letter to George S. Schuyler - June 15, 1931
Any racial reconciliation we've had in this country has come not out of confrontation but out of a spirit of reconciliation. If we continue to practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we'll eventually end up with a land of people who are blind and toothless.- Andrew Young, Former Atlanta Mayor and diplomat
Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.- Aryeh Neier, Civil Libertarian
You see these dictators up on their pedistals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought. ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind -- where children denounce their parents to the police -- where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endeur if it is continually in contact with the healthy oustside world.- Winston Churchill, explaining why Nazism is the enemy of Democracy in a BBC radio address - 10/16/1938
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every man has a right to knock him down for it.- Dr. Samuel Johnson English author, lexicographer
When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.- John Adams
The Internet is the next Kent State, and we're the ones who are probably going to get shot.- Yetzer-Ra, Hacker - Quoted in Inside the world of a 'hactivist', by Deborah Radcliff (cnn.com), October 18, 2000
And you have the right to free speech, as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it...- The Clash, "Know Your Rights"
We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech.- Kathleen Dixon, the director of the women's studies department at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government".- Lenny Bruce
On Suppression of Opinions & the Truth.....
 If [a] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose.- Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. |
Truth between candid minds can never do harm.- Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1791
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.- Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address. March 4, 1801.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia - 1787
History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again.- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.- Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.- Thomas Pynchon
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800
All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.- Arthur Schopenhauer
The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.- Sir William Osler
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.- M. Planck
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.- J. D. Watson, "The Double Helix"
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.- Mark Twain, Notebook 1904
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.- Mark Twain
You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.- Beverly Rubik
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you.- Don Marquis
Baldwin often times stumbles over the truth, but he always picks himself up and hurries on as if nothing had happened.- Winston Churchill, speaking of a political rival
Once you have made up your mind, facts are but a mere annoyance.- Unknown
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.- Unknown
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.- Unknown
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.- Mark Twain, Neider, Autobiography.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.- Bertrand Russell
If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.- Gen. George Patton
In times of disorder and stress, the fanatics play a prominent role; in times of peace, the critics. Both are shot after the revolution.- Edmund Wilson - "Memoirs of Hecate County" (1949)
The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.- Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics" (1677)
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.- Thomas Jefferson: 1779
In every country where man is free to think and to speak, differences of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently and leaving our horizon more bright and serene.- Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waring, 1801.
Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.- Heinrich Heine, a German-Jewish poet, (19th Century)
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.- Aldous Huxley
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.- Stendal
On Freedom...
 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 |
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.- Ben Franklin, 1755, to the Pennsylvania State Legislature
Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.- Germaine Greer
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.- Jean Jaqueas Rousseau
A slave is one who waits for someone else to free him.- Rosellen Brown
All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.- Lysander Spooner - "Trial by Jury" (19th century)
I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.- H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae"
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.- The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, (August 1, 1858?), p. 532.
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.- Alexis de Tocqueville - "Democracy in America" (1835)
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible.- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, p 176, 1955
The people of Asia were slaves, because they had not learned how to pronounce the word 'no'.- Winston Churchill (citing Alexander the Great), in a radio address - 10/16/1938
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.- Professor Bernardo de la Paz, _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, by Robert Heinlien
Too many people are only willing 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 people's rights, there will come a day when they will lose their own.- Tony Lawrence (apl@world.std.com) 12/28/95
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 there was nobody left to speak up.- Reverend Martin Niemoller, Germany, 1930's
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 which will reach to himself.- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795
No constitution, no court, no law can save liberty when it dies in the hearts and minds of men.- John Perkins
They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.- H. L. Mencken
It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father. - Thomas Jefferson.
The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.- Woodrow Wilson Speech in New York, September 9, 1912
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.- George Bernard Shaw
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.- James Madison
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.- H.L. Mencken
My freedom is more important than your good idea.- Bumper Sticker
The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.- Edmund Burke
In order for an act to be a crime, libertarians say, someone must be harmed -- there must be a victim. Anything that's peaceful, voluntary, and honest should be tolerated regardless of whether we agree with it. Part of the price of our own freedom is allowing others to be free.- Scott Banister, www.libertarian.org
There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.- Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court. Majority opinion in 6-3 ruling that refused to expand police powers to search or seize evidence that they suspect may be stolen, 3 Mar 87
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.- H. L. Mencken
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
I would remind you, that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.- Barry Goldwater
The Right to Bear Arms.....
 A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.- 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America |
That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there!- George Orwell, Orwell: The Authorized Biography (1940) by Michael Shelden
No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms.- Thomas Jefferson, proposal for Virginia's constitution of 1776.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and this without any qualification as to their condition or degree, as is the case in the British government. -- This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty... The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Whenever standing armies are kept up, and 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, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1803)
It's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.- Unknown
Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security, and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.- George Washington, in a speech to Congress, January 7,1790. (Note: There is a rumor that this quote was NOT made by Washington.)
One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offence to keep arms, and by substituting a regular army in the stead of a resort to the militia. The friends of a free government cannot be too watchful, to overcome the dangerous tendency of the public mind to sacrifice, for the sake of mere private convenience, this powerful check upon the designs of ambitious men..- Joseph Story, Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (1840)
The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues and tends to foment uprisings.- Toyotomi Hideyoshi, dictator of Japan, August 1588
When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state".- Claire Wolfe, "101 Things To Do Until The Revolution"
Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.- Niccolo Machiavelli
You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.- Rush Limbaugh, 17 Aug 1993
I say that the Second Amendment doesn't allow for exceptions -- or else it would have read that the right 'to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise.' And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong -- because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience.- Harry Bowne, Aug 8, 2000, at a Second Amendment rally in Arkansas
In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the "collective" right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.- Stephen P. Halbrook, "That Every Man Be Armed", 1984
The prohibition is general. No clause in the constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.- William Rawle, "A View of the Constitution of the United States of America" (1829)
(Those) who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right (are) courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.- Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School
If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.- H.L. Mencken
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.- Mahtma Gandhi, Indian Political Leader
The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government.- Thomas Jefferson (Note: It has been determined that this quote may be falsely attributed to Jefferson)
The militia is the dread of tyrants and the guard of freemen.- Gov. R. Lucas, former Major General of the Ohio Militia, 1832
Gun ControlIf guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns
- Bumper Sticker
Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws...It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem.
- Mike Royko, Chicago Tribune
According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured, as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively comply with the felon's demands. Three times as many were injured if they used other means of resistance.
- G. Kleck, "Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research"
Our most conservative estimates show that by adopting shall-issue laws(concealed carry laws), states reduced murders by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%... While support for strict gun-control laws usually has been strongest in large cities, where crime rates are highest, that's precisely where right-to-carry laws have produced the largest drops in violent crimes.
- "More Guns, Less Violent Crime", Professor John R. Lott, Jr.,The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 1996
[President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake.
- Charlton Heston, FOX News Sunday, 18 May 1997
If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying ... establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.
- Senator Orrin Hatch, in a 1982 Senate Report
Gun control advocates used to claim that more guns meant more crime. Research demonstrated, though, that more guns meant less crime. As the criminology argument faded, gun control advocates began arguing guns were a public health problem.
- Steven Milloy (www.junkscience.com), "Gun Control Science Misfires", Friday, Apr 13, 2001
Don't think of it as `gun control', think of it as `victim disarmament'. If we make enough laws, we can all be criminals.
- Unknown
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
- Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764
I am not sure of the legitimacy of this quote. It seems a little strange for Thomas Jefferson to make such a "modern" argument against gun control.Children younger than 5 are twice as likely to die from ingesting household poisons than by gunfire - So the question for the Legislature should be: Is a parent criminally responsible for leaving an unlocked container of bleach below the sink?
- Don Kates, civil rights lawyer, quoted from "Trigger locks may not be solution to gun problems," Detroit Free Press, March 29, 2000
The use of trigger locks requires the violation of a fundamental rule of gun safety. The rule: Keep your finger off the trigger unless you intend to shoot (in case you’re mistaken about whether the gun is loaded). - It’s easy to attach a trigger lock loosely so that it still allows the trigger to be pulled. Thus the gun may appear “safe” when it isn’t... Bottom line: I don’t use trigger locks. I wouldn’t leave a trigger-locked gun where a child could get it. If someone pointed a trigger-locked gun at me, I would duck for cover. And while I know many responsible gun owners and safety instructors, I don’t know any who use trigger locks.
- Ralph D. Sherman, a firearms safety instructor & an attorney,"Trigger locks are dangerous", "Op-ed" article published in The Hartford Courant, September 12, 1998 by
The White House Working Group praises the 1976 Bartley-Fox law in Massachusetts. This law imposes a mandatory one year term in prison for carrying a gun without a permit. In one notorious case, the law was applied to a man who started carrying a gun after a co-worker assaulted him, and repeatedly threatened to kill him. The co-worker did attack later, and the victim successfully defended himself. The crime victim was then sentenced to a mandatory one year in prison for carrying a gun without a permit. This is the kind of law that the Clinton/Gore administration wants to apply nationwide.
- Dave Kopel, The Gore Gun Agenda, 05/05/00
Brady has done little or nothing to stop felons from either getting guns or reducing crime. Figures from the BATF show that fewer than 7 percent of the guns used in a crime are bought over the counter from legitimate firearms dealers. The other 93 percent are stolen or bought on the black market, and Brady does not affect such sales.
- H. Sterling Burnett, "Brady Bill Will Soon Be Dead-Do Not Resuscitate!", Sept.1998
When innocent citizens are wrongfully denied their right to obtain a firearm in a timely fashion, the results are sometimes tragic. For example, when Phillip Coleman of Shreveport, Louisiana, attempted in 1995 to purchase a handgun for self-defense, the sale was mistakenly rejected. Coleman appealed the decision, pointing out the error. Unfortunately, he was shot to death outside of his work while his application was still pending. Three days after his murder, the approval arrived by fax.
- H. Sterling Burnett, "Brady Bill Will Soon Be Dead-Do Not Resuscitate!"
There already are 20,000 federal gun laws and regulations on the books. If those laws haven't made America safe by now, why should we think 20,001 laws will suffice?
- Harry Brown, Libertarian
On Revolution...
 I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!- Patrick Henry , March 1775 |
They tell us, Sir, that we are weak---unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power ... I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!- Patrick Henry , March 1775
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 William Stephens Smith, 1787
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.- Edward Abbey
The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.- Archibald Macleish
The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.- Robert Anthony
Nonconformists are all alike.- Bumper Sticker
All revolutions have failed?... Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying--a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.- Edward Abbey
If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.- Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy
(The Civil War) created in this country what had never existed before -- a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union; it was the rebirth of the Union.- Woodrow Wilson, Memorial Day Address, 1915
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.- Hannah Arendt, New Yorker 12 Sep 70
My belief has always been … that wherever in this land any individual’s constitutional rights are being unjustly denied, it is the obligation of the federal government—at point of bayonet if necessary—to restore that individual’s constitutional rights- Ronald Reagan, Press conference 17 May 83
We, the people, are the rightful masters of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the constitution.- Abe Lincoln
All we ask is to be let alone.- Jefferson Davis (1808–1889): First Message to the Confederate Congress, March, 1861.
If the States do not have the right to secede, then they have no rights at all.- Dr. Walter Williams , George Mason University Economics Dept.
When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default, it can never be recovered.- Dorothy Thompson
To those who had ordered them to death one of them said: 'We die because the people are asleep ... you will die because the people will awaken'.- Carl Sandburg - "The People, Yes" (1936)
If Abu Nidal is a terrorist, then so is George Washington .- Muammar Qaddafi, Libyan head of state, Reply to President Ronald Reagan in defense of Palestinian terrorist, Newsweek 20 Jan 86
We know that this mad dog of the Middle East has a goal of a world revolution.- Ronald Reagan, 40th US President, on Muammar Qaddafi of Libya
The man who carried out the attack is still in power and still insane, so we shall expect another attack any minute.- Muammar Qaddafi, Libyan head of state - On President Ronald Reagan, quoted in US News & World Report 27 Oct 86
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
If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. - Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America", 1835
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
For As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any condition be brought under English rule. For we fight, not for glory, nor for riches, nor for honour - but for freedom alone, which no good man surrenders but with his life.’- From theDeclaration of Arbroath, The Scottish Declaration of Independence to the Roman Pope, ratified by the Scots April 6, 1302.
McVeigh said he blew up the building in Oklahoma City to protest the federal government's actions in Waco -- and he was quickly apprehended, tried, and punished for his crime. That was proper, even if you might disagree with the morality of the death sentence. However, not a single FBI or BATF agent was arrested for their role in the fiery deaths of 86 people at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. There should not be one standard of justice for ordinary Americans, and another for government officials. Until that injustice is eliminated, many Americans will continue to view their government with suspicion, fear, and bitterness. People tend to turn to violence only when they feel they have no other way to be heard. When Americans feel they have a role in the political system, they will work through the political system to make productive changes. When that avenue is blocked -- either by restrictive ballot access laws, legal curbs on political speech, exclusion from debates, or by attempting to discredit unpopular political speech -- the Timothy McVeighs of the world turn to violence. That's why robust political debate -- especially about the abuse of government power -- is a healthy way to change the system. And that's why stifling such debate is downright dangerous.- Steve Dasbach, Libertarian Party Press release, June 12, 2001
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Abigail Adams, Paris, Feb. 22, 1787
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.- Samuel Adams
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.- Edmund Burke.
Anger or revolt that does not get into the muscles remains a figment of the imagination.- Simone de Beauvoir
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. Japanese proverb
On War...
 May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.- Gen. George S. Patton Jr. |
My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.- Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), The Dynasts. Spirit sinister.
Sixty years ago this week Hitler invaded Poland. This led to the creation of The History Channel.- Jay Leno
To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing.- Adolf Eichmann, while awaiting trial in Israel for death of 6 million Jews during World War II, Life 5 Dec 60
It has never happened in history that a nation that has won a war has been held accountable for atrocities committed in preparing for and waging that war. We intend to make this one different. What took place was the use of technological material to destroy a defenseless country. From 125,000 to 300,000 people were killed... We recognize our role in history is to bring the transgressors to justice.- Ramsey Clark, demanding that US leaders be held accountable for the deaths of Iraqi citizens.
Success is the sole earthly judge of right or wrong.- Adolf Hitler
The founders [of the United Nations] sought to replace a world at war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that a world of relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where freedom from violence prevailed…. But the awful truth is that the use of violence for political gain has become more, not less, widespread in the last decade.- Ronald Reagan, To General Assembly following Soviet downing of a Korean passenger plane, 26 Sep 83
I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supranational organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?"- Quote from "WHY SOCIALISM?", By Albert Einstein, Monthly Review, New York, May, 1949.
America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the [first] World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these "isms" wouldn't today be sweeping the continent in Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.- Winston Churchill, 1937, speaking with an American reporter
All [of the American's] foreign wars have been fought with foes either too weak to resist them or too heavily engaged elsewhere to make more than a half-hearted attempt. The combats with Mexico and Spain were not wars; they were simply lynchings.- Henry Louis Mencken
Pick battles important enough to fight and small enough to win.- Johnathan Kozol
The quickest way to end a war is to lose it.- George Orwell
Dear Madam,- Letter to Mrs. Bixby of Boston, who lost five sons killed in battle. Nov. 21, 1864
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.- George Washington, Speech to both Houses of Congress, Jan. 8, 1790.
Qui desiderat pacem præparet bellum (Who would desire peace should be prepared for war).- Vegetius: "Rei Militari 3, Prolog."
To insist on strength … is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering.- Barry M Goldwater, US Senator, NY Times 11 Aug 64
The Russians feared Ike. They didn’t fear me.- Lyndon B Johnson, 36th US President, On Korean War in contrast to Vietnam War, quoted by Richard M Nixon Time 29 Jul 85
One insult pocketed soon produces another.- Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1790. ME 3:80
My fellow Americans: I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.- Ronald Reagan, 40th US President - A joke made while testing a microphone before a broadcast 11 Aug 84
Our strategy is one of preventing war by making it self-evident to our enemies that they’re going to get their clocks cleaned if they start one.- Gen John W Vessey Jr, US Army, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, To soldiers at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii
[It is] my disposition to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself.- Thomas Jefferson to Noah Worcester, 1817. ME 18:298
There never was a good war or a bad peace.- Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), "Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773."
On Government...
 'Politics' is made up of two words, 'poli,' which is Greek for 'many,' and 'tics,' which are blood-sucking insects. - Gore Vidal |
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.- President Ronald Reagan
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.- Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1798.
All Governments, including the worst on earth and the most tyrannical on earth, are free Governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.- Lysander Spooner
Democracy's the worst form of government except for all the others.- Winston Churchill
In Germany, under the law everything is prohibited except that which is permitted. In France, under the law everything is permitted except that which is prohibited. In the Soviet Union, everything is prohibited, including that which is permitted. And in Italy, under the law everything is permitted, especially that which is prohibited.- Newton Minow, on his comparative study of legal systems, Time 18 Mar 85
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.- H.L. Mencken
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism it's just the opposite.- John Kenneth Galbraith
All I know is that I am not a Marxist- Karl Marx; Attr. in Engels, letter to C. Schmidt, 5 Aug 1890
A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.- Bertrand de Jouvenel
Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. - D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid.net) 10/15/1997
The State calls its own violence, law; but that of the individual, crime- Max Stirner, "The Ego and His Own" (1845)
The CIA is an organization with a known criminal record. Can we get them for racketeering?- Larry Taylor
Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.- Jeremy Bentham
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.- Voltaire
There aren't any three branches of government. It's all government. And it sucks.- John Matonis, speaking at the 1977 Libertarian national convention.
On Politicians...
 Suppose your were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself.- Mark Twain |
A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate.- Eric Idle
What do Washington's politicians and pro wrestlers have in common?... They're mostly overweight white guys pretending to hurt each other.- Unknown
Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.- H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae"
When the law’s on your side, pound the law. When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. And when neither is on your side, pound the table.- Unknown
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.- H.L. Mencken
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.- "Deep Thoughts", by Jack Handy
Please tell me you’re Republicans.- Ronald Reagan, 40th US President, to surgeons as he entered operating room after being wounded in an assassination attempt 30 Mar 81
Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.- Gore Vidal
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.- George Bernard Shaw
The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.- Will Rogers
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.- Paul Valery
It makes no difference who you vote for -- the two parties are really one party representing 4 percent of the people.- Gore Vidal
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right... The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds.- H.L. Mencken
Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties - 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. - In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.- Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.
The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.- Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is lord- Machiavelli
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.- H.L. Mencken
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.- Mark Twain
The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.- Mark Twain
A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.- Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.- Franklin Pierce Adams
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President -- I'm beginning to believe it.- Clarence Darrow
No matter how much evidence we uncover about this case or any others involving Mr. Clinton, millions of Americans simply will not care -- they will excuse the corruption because they like Bill Clinton.- Bill Oreilly, "The Oreily Factor", Jan 24, 2001
George W. Bush cannot out-talk Al Gore. Period. Mr. Gore thinks faster on his feet and is much more verbal. So if that is the criteria, Gore won the debate. But if that is the criteria, Don Rickles should be President.- Bill O'reilly, 10/04/2000
Thomas Jefferson once said, “We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.” And ever since he told me that I stopped worrying.- Ronald Reagan, 40th US President. On running for president at age 73, address at Dixon IL 6 Feb 84
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.- John F Kennedy, 35th US President, At dinner for 49 Nobel laureates 29 Apr 62
Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.- Dave Barry "Sweating Out Taxes"
Taxes and the National Debt
 When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?- H.D. Thoreau |
I ... place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared... And to preserve (our) independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. -Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Governor Plumer, July 21, 1816.
Blessed are the young, for they will inherit the national debt.- President Herbert Hoover
To steal from one person is theft. To steal from many is taxation.- Daiell's Law (a take-off on Felson's Law)
The federal income tax system is a disgrace to the human race.- Jimmy Carter, 38th President of the United States
The current tax code is a daily mugging.- Ronald Reagan, 39th President of the United States - Labor Day address, Independence MO, 2 Sep 85
Read my lips. No new taxes.- President George Bush, 40th President of the United States
I have no intention of raising taxes.- President Bill Clinton, 41st President of the United States
Congress tried to soak the rich, but drenched the middle class instead.- Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., during debate on H.R. 2264, the 1993 budget reconciliation bill
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.- Jean B. Colbert
The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.- Barry M. Goldwater
I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.- David Dinkins, Mayor of New York City
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.- Denis Healey
Don't steal. The government hates competition.- Bumper Sticker
Loophole: To liberals, any provision of the tax code that fails to claim money earned, inherited, saved, or otherwise pocketed by known taxpayers.- The Conservative's Dictionary
Taxation is theft; Conscription is slavery; War is murder.- Unknown
The power to tax involves the power to destroy. - Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819.
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see it with representation.- The Farmer's Almanac
Have you ever wondered if taxation without representation was cheaper?- Unknown
Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation.- Fletcher Knebel, 6/21/99
It's income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta.- Dave Barry
American workers spend more of their day working to pay taxes than they do to feed, clothe, and house their families.- The Tax Foundation
In 1950, American families sent 1 of 50 of their hard earned dollars to Washington: Today it is 1 in 4.- Rep. John Ensign D-NEV, C-SPAN I, 4 April 1995, 11:03 AM EST
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.- Robert Heinlein
Serfs in the Middle Ages had to give up 20% of their income yearly and that made them virtual slaves. Today the average American pays 47%. What does that make Americans?- Kenneth Prazak, Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Illinois (Apr 14, 2000)
This huge inventory of taxes has reduced once-proud Americans to the status of chattel slaves.- Paul Roberts in his Feb. 7, 1996 column
According to House of Representatives testimony government at all levels, including regulation, costs Americans 53% of their income.- C-SPAN, 4 April 1995
American workers spend more of their day working to pay taxes than they do to feed, clothe, and house their families.- The Tax Foundation 9/6/99
Taxpayers spend 4.3 billion hours in a year of income tax compliance. That is the equivalent of a work force of over 2,083,000 people, more than work in the auto industry, the computer manufacturing industry, the airline manufacturing industry, and the steel industry combined- Cost of Complying with Federal Income Tax, The Tax Foundation
The best thing we can do for family values is to repeal the income tax. Then families will have the resources they need to implement their own values -- and not those of the politicians. With the income tax gone, families will no longer be forced to have two breadwinners by necessity. Children will be raised better, family values will predominate, and crime will diminish. If your local school indoctrinates your child with values that are alien to you, you'll have the money to buy a private education.- Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
The reason there is a breakdown in family values is that there is no parent at home. The reason there is no parent at home is that one parent works to support the family and the other to support the government.- Representative from Family Research Council, CNN & COMPANY
Bush wants to grant a tax cut of $1.3 trillion over 10 years -- which, as he noted, would amount to 5% of the $25 trillion the federal government expects to collect in revenue over the next decade. Gore, by contrast, wants to dole out a tax cut of $500 billion. That amounts to 2% of the federal government's revenue over 10 years. And there you have it -- their so-called difference. Gore wants to make sure the government gets 98% of its expected revenue; Bush wants the government to pocket 95% of its expected revenue. That isn't a debate; that's a profound agreement, with some quibbling over a few minor details.- Libertarian Party Press Release, October 4, 2000
It's absurd. Mr. Bush believes that paying a third of your income to the Feds is enough. He is following the Republican mantra, smaller government, fewer taxes for everybody, because you should keep more of your own money. That's who the Republicans are. Now you may disagree with that philosophy, and I'll respect your belief, but don't sit there trying to tell me there's some secret pact to make the rich richer. The truth is the wealthy will still pay the overwhelming portion of federal income taxes.- Talking Points: Bush Wins Florida, Again!, Bill O'Reilly, Monday, April 09, 2001
Now some people don't like the rich and want to punish them, some people want to buy votes from the poor and working class, and some people are simply not so smart, but the relentless propaganda continues, "A tax cut for the rich," just like "Every vote must count," just like, "It's only about sex." Enough already! Political disagreement is good. Hysterical propaganda is bad.
If Congress were to pass a flat tax, you'd simply pay a fixed percentage of your income, and you wouldn't fill out any complicated forms, and there would be no loopholes for politically connected groups, and normal people would actually understand the tax laws, and giant talking broccoli stalks would come around and mow your lawn for free, because Congress is NOT going to pass a flat tax, you pathetic fool.- Dave Barry
There is an ancient belief that the gods love the obscure and hate the obvious. Without benefit of divinity, modern men of similar persuasion draft provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 341 is their triumph.- Martin D. Ginsburg
The Tax Code is a monstrosity and there's only one thing to do with it. Scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize the American people.- Steve Forbes
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided that you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, because in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: 'Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?'- Dave Barry "Sweating Out Taxes"
It's a game. We [tax lawyers] teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich--and the IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich teaching them.- John Grisham
The nation ought to have a tax system which looks like someone designed it on purpose.- William E. Simon
For every $50 you earn, you get $10 and they get $40.- Jay Leno explaining Form 1040
The IRS has 480 different tax forms, plus 280 more to explain how to fill out the first 480. The original Tax Code had 11,400 words; today it has 7 million.- Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas
Your profits are going to be cut down to a reasonably low level by taxation. Your income will be subject to higher taxes. Indeed in these days, when every available dollar should go to the war effort, I do not think that any American citizen should have a net income in excess of $25,000 per year after payment of taxes.- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Radio Broadcast, April 28, 1942 (Referring to Seven-Point Program)
Shouldn’t someone tag Mr Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother.- Ronald Reagan, In a 1960 letter to Richard M Nixon, which was disclosed in final weeks of 1984 presidential campaign, NY Times 27 Oct 84
I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.- George Bernard Shaw
The taxing power of the Federal Government, my dear; the taxing power is sufficient for everything you want and need.- Supreme Court Justice Harlan F. Stone to Frances Perkins (1934) on how the new "Social Security" program was constitutional, offering his opinion that the federal governmnet's recently bestowed power to tax income gives them a carte blanche to begin any sort of government program they wish.
I believe that the 16th amendment has created a system that is economically destructive, impossibly complex, overly intrusive, unprincipled, dishonest, unfair, and inefficient- Rep. Sam Johnson R-Texas on April 10, 1997
All taxes are a drag on economic growth. It's only a question of degree.- Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.- Ronald Reagan, 40th US President - campaign remark recalled when Reagan participated in dedication of Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, ib 2 Oct 86
The income tax has destroyed the concept of financial privacy. It has demolished the idea that a man's home is his castle. It has provided unlimited funding for politicians to wreck lives and property. It has forced one-earner families to become two-earner households -- leading to decreased parental supervision of children; loss of family values; and increased crime, promiscuity and drug use. So long as the government has the power to invade our lives, rummage through our records, and take what it wants from our income, we will have only as much freedom and take-home pay as the politicians condescend to let us have.- Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200 and a substantial tax cut saves you 30 cents?- Peg Bracken
The trouble with an income-tax reduction is that it will stimulate business just enough to put everybody in a higher tax bracket.- Harold Coffin
On Government Programs
 We may not always recognize it, but government plays a bigger role in our lives than any other single person or institution. We spend nearly half of our lives working to pay for it. Children spend more time in government schools than they do with their parents. Birth, death, marriage, every area of our lives feels the influence of government.. - Harry Browne - Presidential Candidate of the Libertarian Party |
A good government is one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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 that it has earned.- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) (inaugural address)
Good government is that which delivers the citizen from the risk of being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently - one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified and more agreeable undertakings...- H. L. Mencken, "On Government"
Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.- Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821.
So what is government?... Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercion -- such as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has flags in front of its offices.- Harry Browne, Libertarian
A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.- Jeane J Kirkpatrick, US Ambassador to UN - On Sandinista government in Nicaragua
If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick BATF.- U.S. Representative John Dingell, 1983
Former president George Bush resigns his NRA life membership in protest to an NRA fund raising letter that calls BATF agents "jack-booted thugs."- CNN Headline News, 15 May, 1995, 9:32:51 AM
- Brief History of a Banana Republic, Compiled by L. Reichard White
- In what turns out to be the most expensive law enforcement operation in history, BATF agents begin assault on the Branch Davidian church compound near Waco, Texas, culminating with the incineration of 60 church members, including 25 children. The BATF agents, dressed in battle gear, are indeed wearing "jack-boots." Government agents, participating in this massacre, including Larry Potts, are rewarded with advancements and medals. No government agent is prosecuted for any crime in connection with this action.
- US Marshal William F. Degan, after killing the Weaver's dog, and shooting their fourteen-year-old son Samuel Weaver in the back, killing him instantly, is himself killed, apparently by friendly fire. Also in battle gear, Degan is wearing "jack-boots."
- FBI Hostage Rescue Team sniper Ron Harucci shoots Vicki Weaver through the head while she is holding her ten-month old infant daughter. In battle gear, he is also wearing jack-boots.
- An Idaho jury finds Randy Weaver innocent of all but minor charges, and in a nearly unprecedented event, the U.S. Government pays what's left of the Weaver family over $3 million in damages. This payment for damages comes from taxes and/or Federally borrowed money.
- FBI agent Michael Kahoe is indicted and pleads guilty to obstruction of justice charges for attempting to cover-up details of the Ruby Ridge murder of the Weavers. Although chief FBI agent Larry Potts (promoted for his role in the Waco massacre) is suspended, the other participants in the Weaver murders are awarded medals and given advancements, hailed as heros and "models for all law enforcement officers".
The much hullabalooed line "jackbooted thugs" used in the controversial NRA fundraising letter was originally "jackbooted fascists" and used by Congressman John D. Dingell D-MICH, in [1981.]- C-SPAN, 24 May, 1995 ~~0800
The people I put in jail have more honor than the top administration in this organization.- Bob Hoffman, B.A.T.F. agent, "60 Minutes", January of 1993
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever.- From George Orwell's Novel, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Cornelius Tacitus - "Annals" (c. 116 A.D.)
The greater the number of laws and enactments, the greater the number of thieves and robbers. - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.- National Review
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.- H.L. Mencken
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.- Barry Goldwater
Your federal government needs your money so that it can perform vital services for you that you would not think up yourself in a million years.- Dave Barry
The politician's promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.- W.L. Mackenzie King
For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.-Bob Wells
Every country gets the government it deserves.- Benjamin Disraeli
Pol Pot was a consistent practitioner of the philosophy of altruism-collectivism -- the widespread view that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the so-called "good of humanity" -- the same philosophy that underlies our health-care system, welfare programs and countless other altruist-collectivist schemes.- Glenn Woiceshyn (http://www.capitalism.org/glennw/letters_may98/pol_pot.htm)
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”- Ronald Reagan - Opening Chicago press conference with acknowledgment of farmers’ need for federal assistance, 12 Aug 86
Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.- Daniel P Moynihan, US Senator, NY Post 14 May 1969
Liberals want the government to be your Mommy. Conservatives want government to be your Daddy. Libertarians want it to treat you like an adult.- Andre Marrou
[Democrats] can’t get elected unless things get worse—and things won’t get worse unless they get elected.- Jeane J Kirkpatrick, US Ambassador to UN, Time 17 Jun 85
Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15.- Ronald Reagan, 40th US President
There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.- Thomas Paine
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.- George Bernard Shaw
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.- Robert Heinlein
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.- Gore Vidal
Your federal government needs your money so that it can perform vital services for you that you would not think up yourself in a million years.- Dave Barry
Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove.- Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804.
The State, it cannot be too often repeated, does nothing and can give nothing which it does not take from somebody. The Forgotten Man works and votes--generally he prays--but his chief business in life is to pay.- William Sumner - "The Forgotten Man" (1883)
In the nature of things, those who have no property and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it becomes clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at times, for violence and revolution.- Daniel Webster - 1820
The federal government knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and then say, 'If it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.'- Harry Brown - Libertarian Party
No man is free who depends on his government for his sustenance, job, home, or hope.- John Perkins
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.- Henry Louis Mencken
The politician's promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.- W.L. Mackenzie King 11/3/99
Someone must stand up to those who say, “Here’s the key, there’s the Treasury, just take as many of those hard-earned tax dollars as you want.”- Ronald Reagan - On vetoing a bill that would have extended $2 billion in federal loan guarantees to farmers, Time 18 Mar 85
I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers. Go ahead—make my day.- Ronald Reagan - Picking up dialogue from Clint Eastwood’s 1983 movie "Sudden Impact", ib 25 Mar 85
I have no intention of raising taxes.- President Bill Clinton
: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.- Groucho Marx, Recalled on his death 19 Aug 77
Given the government's record with the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, we can assume that a War on Abortion would lead within five years to men having abortions.- Harry Browne - Libertarian Party
Democratic politicians want to solve the crisis of poor education by taking more of your money and using it to reduce classroom sizes in the government schools. Republican politicians want to solve the crisis by taking more of your money to provide vouchers to a handful of the poorest students in each area, paying for a part of the tuition expense at private schools. But before long this 'reform' would make those private schools indistinguishable from the government schools ... Vouchers are an excellent way for the government to increase control over private schools.- Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
Right now, I'd rather be in Sweden than in the U.S. because we have seen the problems and are moving away from the welfare state. On your side of the Atlantic you are moving right into it, and you risk destroying your country.- Ian Wachmeister, by Paul Klebnikov, "The Swedish Disease," Forbes, May 24, 1993.
I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.- Thomas Jefferson to William Ludlow, 1824.
Where there is a man who does not labor because another is compelled to work for him, there slavery is.- Leo Tolstoy - "The Slavery of Our Times" (1900)
There are two distinct classes of men . . . those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.- Thomas Paine
There's only one kind of tax that would please everybody -- one that nobody but the other guy has to pay.- Earl Wilson
Social Security is inherently unsound for the simple reason that it's a political program run by politicians for political purposes...Social Security operates on a very simple principle: the politicians take your money from you and squander it.- Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
[Social Security is] a Ponzi scheme -- named after Charles Ponzi, who set up a similar plan in Boston in 1920. He promised to pay investors 50% profit on their money in just 45 days. Gullible people poured money into his plan. But he couldn't possibly earn enough on the money to equal the rate of return he promised. So when someone wanted to withdraw his principal and interest, Ponzi simply paid him from money received from new investors. Eventually he couldn't meet the demands for repayment, and his scheme collapsed. He ended up in jail. But another such scheme was started in 1935, and this one is still going. It's called Social Security. Social Security differs from a Ponzi scheme in only two ways: 1. The politicians won't arrest themselves. 2. The politicians can change the rules whenever necessary to keep the scheme going.- Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
Insurance is meant for extraordinary circumstances. You don't use car insurance to pay for oil changes or gasoline; you have it as protection in case you have a terrible accident or your car is stolen. You don't use homeowners' insurance to pay your electricity and water bills; you have it as protection in case a fire or other catastrophic event produces a large expense. Obviously, any insurance policy that promises to cover every small, ordinary expense is going to be much more expensive than one that covers only extraordinary expenses.- Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
[Medicare] was created in 1965 to make it easier for the elderly to get health care. But by reducing the patient's out-of-pocket costs, it increased the demand for doctors and hospitals. It also reduced the supply of those services by requiring doctors and other medical personnel to use their time and attention handling paperwork and complying with regulations -- and looking for ways to circumvent these things. So the price of medical care rose sharply as the demand soared and the supply diminished.- Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
As a result, the elderly now pay from their own pockets over twice as much for health care (after adjusting for inflation) than they did before Medicare began. Many older people now find it harder to get adequate medical service. Naturally, the politicians point to the higher costs and shortages as proof that the elderly would be lost without Medicare -- and that government should be even more deeply involved.
When Medicare was set up in 1965, the politicians projected its cost in 1990 to be $3 billion -- which is equivalent to $12 billion when adjusted for inflation to 1990 dollars. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billion -- eight times as much.
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.- H.L. Mencken
From the cranberry cancer scare of the 1950s to the Alar-in-apples hysteria of the 1980s, from the "new ice age" of the 1960s to the "global warming" of the 1990s, environmental alarms almost always turn out to be false. Few non-political scientists fear ozone loss, global warming, or acid rain. These are just issues that some people hope to use to reorder the lives of the rest of us.- Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
After the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a nuclear power critic estimated that 1 million cancer cases, half of them fatal, would occur. A less hysterical estimate was 5,000 to 10,000 Chernobyl-linked cancer deaths. Reality has been quite different. The UN recently reported that about 1,800 children developed treatable thyroid cancer and that "with this exception, there is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality or in nonmalignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure." The Chernobyl plant's crude design would never be approved in the U.S. anyway.- Steven Milloy (creator of www.junkscience.com), Friday, May 25, 2001
Somebody told me how frightening it was how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.- "Deep Thoughts", by Jack Handy
Even the EPA, charged with enforcing the country's environmental laws, has been fined for violating toxic waste laws at its laboratories. At the EPA's lab in Lexington, for example, mercury was discovered leaching into the ground water three years ago.- The Nation's Dirty Big Secret, The Boston Globe, November 14, 1999
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.- A petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which was signed by over 17,000 scientists (none of whom has a vested interest in polluting industries)
Consider this. The same groups now preaching environmental hellfire and brimstone were predicting a new ice age just twenty years ago. In the 1970s headlines warned "Earth may be headed for another ice age" (The New York Times) with "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation" and "a full-blown 10,000-year ice age" (Science magazine). "Brace Yourself for Another Ice Age" (Science Digest), because there were "ominous signs" that "the Earth's climate seems to be cooling down," and "meteorologists are almost unanimous" that "the trend will reduce agricultural productivity" (Newsweek). "Glaciers had "begun to advance" and armadillos were retreating south from Nebraska (The Christian Science Monitor).- Jon Perdue, "Global Warming is Hot Air",The New Australian, 15-21 March 1999
Proponents of the `Hockey Stick' should recall George Orwell's `Nineteen Eighty-Four', a black SF drama in which his fictional totalitarian regime used `memory holes' to re-invent past history. In this age of instant communication, there is no `memory hole' big enough to overturn the historical truth about the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.- The `Hockey Stick', A New Low in Climate Science, by John L. Daly
One of the Mississippi's oddest peculiarities is that of shortening its length from time to time ... In the space of 176 years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242 miles. This is an average of a trifle over (1.3 miles) per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of 1,300,000 miles long. And by the same token any person can see that 742 years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only (1.75 miles) long. -- There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.- Mark Twain, "Life on the Mississippi", 1883 Read the full quote here!
The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.- H.L. Mencken
The federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, enacted in the wake of the mid-1970s oil shocks, require each auto maker's annual output of new cars to meet a set fuel economy level. The current passenger-car CAFE standard is 27.5 miles per gallon; for light trucks, the standard is a more lenient 20.7 mpg. Smaller cars, however, are less crashworthy than similarly equipped large cars in practically every type of accident. According to a 1989 Harvard-Brookings study, CAFE-induced downsizing has increased car occupant fatalities by between 14% and 27%; that translates to between 2,000 and 4,000 extra deaths a year.- Sam Kazman, in an Atricle printed in the Wall Street Journal, March 12, 1998
Lately, I have been going through statistics about terrorism (usually direct responses to crimes our government has committed against foreigners-although, recently, federal crimes against our own people are increasing). Only twice in 12 years have American commercial planes been destroyed in flight by terrorists; neither originated in the United States. To prevent, however, a repetition of these two crimes, hundreds of millions of travelers must now be subjected to searches, seizures, delays....In any case, whatever mad rule of thumb is applied, a customs official has every right to treat anyone as a criminal on no evidence at all; to seize and to search without, of course, due process of law.- Gore Vidal, THE WAR AT HOME, November 1998
[Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964], many governments in southern states forced people to segregate by race. Civil rights advocates fought to repeal these state laws, but failed. So they appealed to the federal government, which responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But this federal law didn't simply repeal state laws compelling segregation. It also prohibited voluntary segregation. What had been mandatory became forbidden. Neither before nor after the Civil Rights Act were people free to make their own decisions about who they associated with.- Harry Browne
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.- H.L. Mencken
The EPA takes the extreme position that, provided it has probable cause to believe that there is even a thimbleful of a hazardous substance spilled in a person's yard, or we suppose even a drop, it has an absolute right to an access order regardless of the action it proposes to take once it gains that access, such as excavating the entire yard and removing the soil to a depth of ten feet, thus rendering the property wholly useless to its owner. The court not only must, the EPA argues, issue the order no questions asked; the court cannot limit the extent of the remedial measures that the EPA can take once it gains access. All the EPA will concede is that if it wanted to do the excavation at 3 a.m., or wanted to use a stick of dynamite to dislodge the topsoil, the court might refuse to order access. Similarly, while the agency claims the absolute right to an access order if it learns that a single flake of asbestos is lying on the floor of Tarkowski's house, it acknowledges that the court could forbid it to use a battering ram to gain access to the house for purposes of removing the flake.
The EPA makes no pretense that the position it advocates serves a public purpose, strikes a reasonable balance be tween property rights and community rights, rationally advances the agency's mission, or even comports with the limitations that the Constitution has been interpreted to place on federal regulation of purely local activities, not to mention the limitations that the Fourth Amendment places on searches and seizures. Access orders are orders to seize as well as search, because of the control that the agency exerts over the property even when it is just doing test borings and other investigative work. That such orders must comply with the Fourth Amendment is apparent from Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc., 436 U.S. 307 (1978). Rather, the EPA defends its position as ineluctably compelled by statutory language that we have now to examine in order to determine whether the case can be decided without our having to reach any constitutional issues.
...In effect the agency is claiming the authority to undertake warrantless searches and seizures, of a peculiarly destructive sort, on residential property despite the absence of any exigent circumstances. It is unlikely, even apart from constitutional considerations, that Congress intended to confer such authority on the EPA.
Posner, Circuit Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. April 18,2001
Prohibition & the "War on Drugs"
 Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of Temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for 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 at the very principles upon which our government was founded. - Abraham Lincoln ... Did Lincoln really say this? |
When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.- George Pataki
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.- Robert Frost, 1935
A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.- H.L. Mencken
The prohibition law, written for weaklings and derelicts, has divided the nation, like Gaul, into three parts -- wets, drys, and hypocrites.- Florence Sabin
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
I feel the law is a mistake. It is certainly a mistake so far as addicts are concerned. I feel that it has handicapped our efforts to salvage and rehabilitate them and has complicated our institutional problems. Association within a prison tends to spread addiction among criminals and criminality among addicts. The stigma of criminality and the influence of prison associations make the drug habit more difficult to break.- James V. Bennett, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 1951
...But I still have this feeling of the ‘last days of the Weimar Republic’ when I visit countries with high incarceration rates that are taken for granted as a trend that must continue. Then I ask myself: when is enough enough? How many people can you execute? How large a prison population can you have before you change the kind of country you live in? It is the same kind of question as to whether you want a national theatre or libraries. What kind of country would it be without them? How many prison camps can we have before my Norway isn’t Norway any more, or your Canada isn’t Canada?- Nils Christie (Source)
Prohibitions are always enacted by US, to govern the conduct of THEM- Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School
Racial minorities comprised a strikingly disproportionate percentage of the prison population. African Americans constituted 46.5% of state prisoners and 40% percent of federal prisoners, although they constituted only 12 percent of the national population.- Human Rights Watch World Report 2001: United States
The U.S. Bill of Rights is being steadily eroded, with two million telephone calls tapped, 30 million workers under electronic surveillance, and, says the author, countless Americans harassed by a government that wages spurious wars against drugs and terrorism.- Gore Vidal, THE WAR AT HOME, November 1998
Although drugs are immoral and must be kept from the young, thousands of schools pressure parents to give the drug Ritalin to any lively child who may, sensibly, show signs of boredom in his classroom. Ritalin renders the child docile if not comatose. Side effects? "Stunted growth, facial tics, agitation and aggression, insomnia, appetite loss, headaches, stomach pains and seizures." Marijuana would be far less harmful.- Gore Vidal, THE WAR AT HOME, November 1998
Under this law (Controlled Substances Act) a bureaucrat—usually not elected—decides whether or not a substance is dangerous and how dangerous that substance is. There's no more messing around with legislatures, presidents, or other bothersome formalities. When MDMA (ecstasy) was made illegal in 1986, no elected official voted on that. It was done "in house." People are now in jail because they did something that an administrator declared was wrong.- Peter McWilliams, "A Closer Look at the Consensual Crimes"
When we turn to the government to stop someone from ruining his life with drugs, we convert a personal tragedy into a national disaster.- Harry Brown, Libertarian Party
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.- Noah Webster
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.- Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791.
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.- Sallust, Roman historian, c. 40 B.C.
I see that you, too, put up monuments to your great dead.- An Unknown Frenchman, on viewing the Statue of Liberty during Prohibition
Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.- Gore Vidal, THE WAR AT HOME, November 1998
If police win the right to haul you off in handcuffs for not wearing a seatbelt, scan your house at whim with a thermal imaging gun, and set up random roadblocks so dogs can sniff your car for drugs then victimless crimes will be to blame...The War on Victimless Crimes has turned into an all-out War on the Bill of Rights.- Steve Dasbach, National director of the Libertarian Party, Oct. 2000
It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect - good or bad - the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don't say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know -- unlike "speed," which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which can be addictive and difficult to kick. Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each person has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbors' pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor's idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit). .- Gore Vidal, 1970
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
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.- Fletcher Knebel
There are no violent gangs fighting over aspirin territories. There are no violent gangs fighting over whisky territories or computer territories or anything else that's legal. There are only criminal gangs fighting over territories covering drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other victimless crimes. Making a non-violent activity a crime creates a black market, which attracts criminals and gangs, which turns what was once a relatively harmless activity affecting a small group of people into a widespread epidemic of drug use and gang warfare.- Harry Brown, Libertarian Party
Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use.- President Jimmy Carter, August 2, 1977
Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.- Hugo L Black, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court. Dissenting opinion in 6-2 ruling that upheld federal law making possession of heroin sufficient evidence of illegal importation of drugs, 20 Jan 70
I would decriminalize marijuana, but you step out of your house high and you bother somebody else in any way, shape or form, I’m going to slap a fine on you that’s going to curl your hair!- Bill O’Reilly - Quoted in in the 10/9/2000 edition of The New York Observer
Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.- H. L. Mencken, "The American Mercury"
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.- Georg Wilhelm Hegel
Obviously crime pays, or there'd be no crime.- G. Gordon Liddy
Federal Banks
 If Congress has a right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to them to use by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.- Andrew Jackson |
The Golden Rule : He who has the gold, makes the rules.- Unknown
The colonies would have gladly born a little tax on tea, & other matters, had it not been that the Bank of England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction..- Benjamin Franklin
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
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.- Milton Friedman
When the President signs this act, the invisible government by the money power will be legalized. -Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr. to Congress after the vote on The Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve is sometimes considered a fourth branch of the U.S. government because it is made up of a powerful group of national policymakers freed from the usual restrictions of governmental checks and balances. Indeed, the Board of Governors is formally independent of the executive branch and protected by tenure well beyond that allotted to the president.- Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, 1993, Vol. 10, pg. 125:
The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.- Abraham Lincoln
By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some... The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose.- John Maynard Keynes, Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920.
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin... Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... Take this great power away from them, or if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.- Sir Joseph Stamp, former president of the Bank of England.
People who will not turn a shovel of dirt on the project [Mussel Shoals Dam?] nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest [usury] ... But here is the point: If the nation can issue a DOLLAR BOND, it can also issue a DOLLAR BILL. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution, pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the people were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the national wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan.- Thomas A. Edison
Language
 Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. - George Orwell, Politics and the English Language |
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action. (you liberate a city by destroying it.) Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests- Gore Vidal
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. -- When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.- George Orwell, From his 1941 book "The Lion and the Unicorn"
Hitler and Joseph Goebbels understood that if you say something loud and long enough many people will believe it. A good journalist's first priority should be to separate propaganda from fact -- but sometimes its very hard to do that.- Bill Oreilly, The Oreily Factor, Jan 24, 2000
A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?- Gore Vidal, in a Foreword to Marion Elizabeth Rogers' "The Impossible H. L. Mencken"
Our common language is … English. And our common task is to ensure that our non-English-speaking children learn this common language.- William J Bennett, US Secretary of Education - NY Times 26 Sep 85
Liberals insist that the phrase "the average Black" is meaningless because there is no specific person who can be called "Mr. Average Black." On the other hand, if we were discussing physics instead of crime, and I described the behavior of "the average atom," the Liberals would have no trouble with my language. If I were to tell them that "the average house" in my neighborhood has 2.125 stories, again the Liberals would know exactly what I meant. If I were to tell a Liberal how many calls "the average fire department" receives in "an average week," then once again no Liberal would express outrage or pretend confusion. Calm comprehension would be the rule among them. But when I describe the behavior of the average Black in that same way, suddenly the Liberals have problems. Those problems are political problems. They have nothing to do with conveying concepts or with understanding them as they were conveyed.- Jerry's Aryan Battle Page
I'm still not sure if I understand ambiguity.- Unknown Oxymoron
Give me ambiguity or give me something else.- Unknown Oxymoron
Not only am I redundant & superfluous, but I also tend to use more words than necessary.- Unknown Oxymoron
Prejudiced people are all alike.- Unknown Oxymoron
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's intolerance.- Unknown Oxymoron
The world's full of apathy, but I don't care.- Unknown Oxymoron
One should never generalize.- Unknown Oxymoron
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.- Unknown Oxymoron
Avoid cliches like the plague.- Unknown Oxymoron
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.- Unknown Oxymoron
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.- Unknown Oxymoron
Avoid Alliteration. Always.- Unknown Oxymoron
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.- Unknown Oxymoron
Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.- Unknown Oxymoron
On one hand, I'm indecisive; but on the other, I'm not.- Unknown Oxymoron
Other Worthy Quotes....
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations.- Winston Churchill
Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.- Henry W. Fowler
What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar"
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.- George Orwell, Quoted by US Secretary of Education William J Bennett, address to National Press Club, Washington DC, 27 Mar 85
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.- Lord Peter Wimsey
A witty saying proves nothing.- Voltaire
Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.- Benjamin Franklin
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.- Douglas Adams
All love affairs, in truth, are farcical - that is, to the spectators. When one hears that some old friend has succumbed to the blandishments of a sweet one, however virtuous and beautiful she may be, one does not gasp and roll one's eyes; one simply laughs. When one hears, a year or two later, that they are quarreling, one laughs again. When one hears that the bride is seeking consolation from the curate of the parish, one laughs a third time. When one hears that the bridegroom, in revenge, is sneaking his stenographer to dinner at an Italian restaurant, one laughs a fourth time. And so on.- H. L. Mencken, "Reflections on Human Monogomy"
Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law. Aleister Crowley
Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.- Albert Einstein
There is a theory that states that if anyone discovers exactly why the universe is here and what it is for, it will instantly be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory that states that this has already happened.- Douglas Adams
Reality is whatever refuses to go away after I stop believing in it.- Phillip K. Dick
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.- from 'Contact' by Carl Sagan
...the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading...- Henry Louis Mencken
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.- H.L. Mencken
We need laws that protect everyone - men and women, straights and gays, regardless of sexual perversion...ah, persuasion.- Bella Abzug, New York politician addressing a rally for the Equal Rights Amendment
The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.- Robert Heinlein
If it wasn't for lawyers, we wouldn't need them.- Unknown
I hope the terms of Excellency, Honor, Worship, Esquire, forever disappear from among us... I wish that of Mr. would follow them.- Thomas Jefferson to William Carmichael, 1789.
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.- Teddy Roosevelt, Speech before the Knights of Columbus
Suburbs … have become the heirs to their cities’ problems. They have pollution, high taxes, crime. People thought they would escape all those things in the suburbs. But like the people in Boccaccio’s Decameron, they ran away from the plague and took it with them.- Charles Haar, NY Times 16 Mar 80
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.- Eric Hoffer
China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders.- Chou En Lai
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny...'- Isaac Asimov
Name the greatest of all the inventors. Accident.- Mark Twain
You have to know the past to understand the present.- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.- Kurt Vonnegut
There are, indeed, only two kinds of music: German music and bad music.- H.L. Mencken
Wagner's music isn't as bad as it sounds.- Mark Twain
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.- "Deep Thoughts", by Jack Handy
Never use a large word when a diminutive one will suffice.- Unknown
"I do not believe that kind of society I describe (in 1984) necessarily will arrive, but I believe... that something resembling it could arrive. I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere".George Orwell,1949
Lack of Foresight:
So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value.- Spanish Royal Commission, rejecting Christopher Columbus' proposal to sail west.
I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky.- Thomas Jefferson, after hearing reports of meteorites.
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. - Lord Kelvin,president, Royal Society, 1895
Everything that can be invented has been invented.- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899 (Note: Some dispute whether or not Mr. Duell actually said this)
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.- Lord Kelvin, 1900?
Man won't fly for a thousand years.- Wilbur Wright, to brother Orville after a disappointing flying experiment, 1901
The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be.- Astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906
This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists.- A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926
The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished.- Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's "Rockets in Space", Nature, March 14, 1936
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.- Popular Mechanics, 1949
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.- President and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
640K ought to be enough for anybody. -Bill Gates, 1981
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