"I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election... It adds up to a preconceived plan to distroy the economic and social independence of the United States!"
-- George W. Malone, U.S. Senator(Nevada) 1957
"To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States: Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, ... no nation, state, city, on this earth ever afterward assumes its liberty."
-- Walt Whitman - To the States
"Freedom is hunting, feeding, danger; that, that is freedom --that it is which makes the veins to swell, the breast to heave and glow; aye, that is freedom, --that is pleasure --life!"
-- Marie Lovell
"If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)
"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."
-- John F. Kennedy (Life member of the NRA)
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
-- Lyndon Johnson
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time. The completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the orthodoxies drummed in by nightly courses of sleep-teaching - these things were coming all right, but not in my time, not even in the time of my grandchildren....Twenty-seven years later,...I feel a good deal less optimistic... In the West,...individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But...this freedom and even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane."
-- Aldous Huxley Brave New World Revisited 1958
"They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?"
-- Paul Harvey 8/31/94
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
-- Justice Learned Hand
"The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights."
-- Erwin Griswold - (Dean, Harvard Law School - 1960)
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."
-- Barry Goldwater
"Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
-- Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789.
"I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor."
-- King George III of England
"Claim of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence is not ground for federal habeas relief."
-- US Supreme Court 1/93 (prisoner executed 5/93)
"There is no reason to set these guilty findings aside merely because the verdicts cannot rationally be reconciled."
-- U.S. District Judge Walter Smith (3/9/94), reinstating charges of weapons violations of Branch Davidians at the behest of federal prosecutors.
No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.
-- 16 Am. Jur. Sec. 177 late 2d, Sec 256
Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.
-- Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436 p. 491
Excellent quotes. I suppose there are some on this board who would consider them seditious. Here are a few more that we seem to have long since lost sight of:
Patrick Henry has noted: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not by religions, but by the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Samuel Adams, just after the 13 colonies voted to separate from England said: "We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come."
"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana.
"The only foundation for a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments." Benjamin Rush, college professor and physician.
"It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this official act my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the council of nations, and whose providential aid can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States...Every step by which they have advanced seems to have been distinguished by some providential agency. We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained." George Washington, President of the United States.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, Founding Father.
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are the gift of God?" Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States.
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers." First Chief Justice, John Jay, and Governor of New York.
"Where there is no religion, there is no morality...with the loss of religion...the ultimate foundation of confidence is blown up; and of life, liberty and property are buried in ruins." Timothy Dwight, President, Yale University, July 4, 1798.
"The moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." Noah Webster, compiler of the American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828.
"Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them." Jedidiah Morse, father of American Geography. Also father of Samuel Morse inventor of the telegraph and "Morse Code".
"It is impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people." Horace Greeley founder of the New York Tribune.
"It is my conviction that the fundamental trouble with the people of the United States is that they have gotten too far away from Almighty God." Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States.
"If we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God and shall respect His Commandments...we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country...But if we and our posterity neglect religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity." Daniel Webster