Replies

Some of my favorites:

"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."

"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not... the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army... our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms." --Abraham Lincoln, 1858

Alan Bock, `Orange County Register': "The median family of four ... paid $4,722 in federal taxes last year. That's enough to pay for a new curtain for the secretary of commerce's office, to bribe a farmer not to plant 38 acres with corn ... seven weeks of salary for a Customs man assigned to save us from the terror of high-quality, low priced foreign TV sets, or the subsidy on 6,000 bushels of wheat to prop up the Soviet regime. Surely civilization would collapse without such essential services."

Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921: "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."

Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, 7 October 1789: "The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."

Alexis de Tocqueville: "The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."

Andrew Ford (UseNet): "The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood: The person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that person's liberty! Are you free?"

Andrew Ford (UseNet): "Without either the first or second amendment, we would have no liberty; the first allows us to find out what's happening, the second allows us to do something about it! The second will be taken away first, followed by the first and then the rest of our freedoms."

Benjamin Franklin, 1759 (Franklin B. Historical Review of Pennsylvania. 1759): "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Bill McIntire, Spokesman for the National Rifle Association, on Norfolk, Va. council's vote to cancel four gun shows, 1992: "Banning gun shows to reduce violent crime will work about as well as banning auto shows to reduce drunken driving."

"Guns cause crime, like flies cause garbage." --Author unknown.

Byron C. Radaker, Chairman and C.E.O., Congoleum Corp.: "Our government has found that the most effective way to control a person is not by the ballot or the bullet, but rather by the 'bucket'. Today, in a country that fought a revolution to rid itself of a repressive government and excessive taxes, government takes 40 percent of everything we earn in the form of taxes."

California citizen attempting to purchase a firearm for self-defense during rioting in Los Angeles, week of 30 April 1992: "What do you mean 'wait fifteen days'? This is America!"

Calvin Coolidge: "Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody."

Charles Evans Hughes, Justice of the supreme Court (1907): "... the Constitution is what the judges say it is."

Daniel Webster: "God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."

Daniel Webster: "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."

David Veal (Usenet): "For every action there is an equal, and opposite, government program"

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Edmund Burke, 1784: "The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion." [Contrast the above with U.S. Senator Joseph Biden's statement: "Banning guns is an idea whose time has come" as reported on 18 November, 1993, by the Associated Press.]

Edward Abbey: "The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state controlled police and the military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy... If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government - and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."

"See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." --Frederic Bastiat

Gandhi: "You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won't help, but that is no excuse, you must still act."

George Bush, Made to Robert Sherman of American Atheist Press at the Chicago airport, August 27 1988. The exchange appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on Monday February 27, 1989. It can also be found in "Free Enquiry" magazine, Fall 1988 issue, Volume 8, Number 4, page 16.: "I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

George Washington, Farewell Address: "Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it."

George Washington: "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that's good ..."

H.L. Mencken: "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

Harlon Carter: "Those who will not fight for their rights deserve to lose them."

Henry Ford: "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."

James A. Kidney, `U.S. News & World Report': "Despite growing unease among the public and legal experts, judges ... are reaching into areas once considered the exclusive preserve of legislators, public administrators and the family."

James Earl Jones: "The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose."

James Madison: "Resistance to tyranny is service to God."

John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the Government of the USA, 471 (1787-88): "Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense..." [Contrast the above with Attorney General Janet Reno's statement: "Gun registration is not enough. I've always proposed state licensing... with some federal standards." as reported by the Associated Press and by ABC on 10 December, 1993.]

John F. Kennedy at Columbia University, (10 days before his assassination): "The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight."

Leroy Pyle on Assault Rifles: "You didn't hear Elliot Ness whining about Al Capone's machine gun."

Mark Twain: "What if you were an idiot, and what if you were a member of Congress? But I repeat myself."

"Those unaware are unaware of being unaware."

Mohandas Gandhi: "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good."

Robert Heinlein, in a 1949 letter concerning "Red Planet": "...I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals...I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose."

Ronald Reagan: "It's time we rebelled."

Ronald Reagan: "When I am President, my number one priority will be to get big government off the back of the American people."

Samuel Adams: "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

Senator Edward V. Long: "The IRS has become morally corrupted by the enormous power which we in Congress have unwisely entrusted to it. Too often it acts like a Gestapo preying upon defenseless citizens."

Dem Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (sponsor) during the floor debate of the Brady Bill, 1993 "I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns." "No, we're not looking at how to control criminals ... we're talking about banning the AK-47 and semi-automatic guns." "I'm not interested in getting a bill that deals with airport security... all I want to do is get at plastic guns."

Senator Sam Ervin: "... judicial verbicide is calculated to convert the Constitution into a worthless scrap of paper and to replace our government of laws with a judicial oligarchy."

Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.: "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."

Thomas Jefferson [A quote from Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787. Taken from Jefferson, On Democracy 20, S. Padover ed., 1939]: "And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants"

Tom Anderson: "I wonder why some of the so-called guardians of freedom are so anxious to register guns and so reluctant to register Communists."

Winston Churchill: "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." - President Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)

Don't think of it as `gun control', think of it as `victim disarmament'. If we make enough laws, we can all be criminals.

"Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security." --William F. Buckley

"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." --General George S. Patton

"It appears that the murder rate inside prisons is ten times higher than that outside prisons. It must be due to all those Kalashnikov rifles that are issued to prisoners upon their incarceration." --Jeff Cooper in Guns & Ammo magazine, August, 1989.

"...and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." --Luke 22:36

Charles A. Beard: "You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."