- Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? -Daniel Webster, constitutional lawyer, orator, and 19th century US Congressman

- Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. -Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

- I oppose registration for the draft... because I believe the security of freedom can best be achieved by security through freedom. -Ronald Reagan

- War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. -John F. Kennedy

- Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. -Thomas Jefferson

- Let the people decide through the marketplace mechanism what they wish to see and hear. Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this box of transistors and tubes when we don't do the same for Time Magazine? -Mark Fowler, FCC Chairman

- Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas. -Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, 1953

- Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. -First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

- I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people. -John Anderson, Independent presidential candidate, 1980

- If sexual relations between consenting adults are not part of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution, then American democracy is in trouble. -Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

- No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. -Rita Mae Brown, novelist

- Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. -Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

- Decriminalization would take the profit out of drugs and greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the drug-related violence that is currently plaguing our streets. -Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke

- Although I am a strong political conservative, I now believe that the costs of our fruitless struggle against illegal drugs are not worth the modest benefits likely to be achieved. Prof. Ernest van den Haag, contributing editor, National Review

- Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state. -Mark Twain

- We propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders. People are the great resource, and so long as we keep our economy free, more people means more growth, the more the merrier. Study after study shows that even the most recent immigrants give more than they take. -The Wall Street Journal

- Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... -Inscription at base of Statue of Liberty

- Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state; Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution... -Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Dec. 10, 1948.) Approved by the United Nations with the nations of the Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia, & South Africa abstaining.

- For every new mouth to feed, there are two hands to produce. -Peter T. Bauer, British economist

- If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread. -Thomas Jefferson

- There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, "Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you." -Dr. Walter Williams, economist and syndicated columnist

- A policy of subsidizing failures will end in an economy strewn with capital-guzzling industries long past their time of profitability--old companies that cannot create jobs themselves, but can stand in the way of job creation. -George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty

- Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored ompanies. -Alan Burris, A Liberty Primer

- The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery. -Albert Jay Nock, writer

- A protective tariff is a typical conspiracy in restraint of trade. -Thorstein Veblen, economist

- Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers. -Frank Chodorov, writer

- When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will. -Fredric Bastiat, economist

- Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him. -Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty

- Reduced employment opportunities is one effect of minimum wage legislation. The minimum wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the disadvantaged members of our society. The only moral thing to do is to repeal it. -Dr. Walter Williams, economist and syndicated columnist

- The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books. -Milton & Rose Friedman, authors of Free To Choose

- The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. -James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

- The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave. -Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged

- Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. -Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick

- Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his. -John Locke, 1690

- I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS. -Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism

- Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation. -Fletcher Knebel, historian

- Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations--entangling alliance with none. -Thomas Jefferson

- It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. -George Washington

- America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. -John Quincy Adams

- The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. -Congressman Ron Paul, 1987

- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."........Benjamin Franklin

- "Dictators free themselves by enslaving others. They work not for your benefit, but their own." -- Charlie Chaplin, in "The Little Dictator"

- "A great nation is like a great man: \nWhen he makes a mistake, he realizes it. \nHaving realized it, he admits it. \nHaving admitted it, he corrects it. \nHe considers those who point out his faults \nas his most benevolent teachers. \nHe thinks of his competitor \nas the shadow that he himself casts." \n-- Lao Tzu in "Tao Te Ching", Chapter 61

- "Let us go back in time to the point at which we began to allow others to operate as authorities over us, and begin to confront the proposition that others have rightful power over our lives, that others have expertise superior to anything we could ever know on our own. Let us respond to such a proposition as any 3-year old would to anything so palpably absurd: "Why?" When we relearn to ask such questions - and to ask them of anyone who seeks to advance his or her authority over us - we shall have discovered the way to our psychological independence." - Butler D. Shaffer, Southwestern School of Law, Los Angeles

- "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it." --Abraham Lincoln, 1838

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

- "The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion." --Edmund Burke, 1784

- "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." --John F. Kennedy at Columbia University, (10 days before his assassination)

- "By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments ... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments -- that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity." --John Hospers

- "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." --Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States, United States supreme Court, 1928

- "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." --Justice William O. Douglas

- "That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support." --Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)

- "... the only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets ...." --Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)

- "If the price I must pay for my freedom is to acknowledge that the government was granted the power to infringe on them, then I am not free." --Paul Anderson (?? I think. _Not_ Poul)

- "Don't ever think you know what's right for the other person. He might start thinking he knows what's right for you." -- Paul Williams, "Das Energi"

- "There is no such thing as an achieved liberty; like electricity, there can be no substantial storage and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out." --Robert H. Jackson (1953)

- "If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us is capable of governing someone else?" -- Ronald Reagan

- "The best government is that which governs least. ... Government should be confined to the administration of justice, for the protection of the natural equal rights of the citizen, and the preservation of the social order. In all other respects, the voluntary principle, the principle of freedom ... affords the true golden rule." --John O'Sullivan, editor of the "United States Magazine and Democratic Review", wrote in 1837 (quoted on page 137 of the March, 1996, issue of "The Freeman", the journal of the Foundation for Economic Education)

- "If a nation or an individual values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too." --W. Somerset Maugham

- "I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's." --Kee Hinckley

- "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." -- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty", 1859

- "The constitutions of most of our states [and of the United States] assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press." -- Thomas Jefferson

- "Enlighten people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." -- Thomas Jefferson

- "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1774

- "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neigbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." -- Thomas Jefferson, in his chapter on religion in his 1781 "Notes on the State of Virginia", as quoted in Barry Loberfeld's "Freedom of Education: A Civil Liberty" printed in the August, 2001, issue of IDEAS ON LIBERTY, pp. 26-32

- "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 strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure." "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." --Albert Einstein

- "We hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest." --John Adams

- "Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people. Let us dare to read, think, speak and write". --John Adams

- "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined." --Patrick Henry [3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836]:

- "... a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own persuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." --Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address (as reported in the February, 1996, issue of "The Freeman", the journal of the Foundation for Economic Education)

- "Above all I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to so they won't forget the basic principles of freedom." --Thomas Jefferson

- "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." -- Thomas Paine

- I support car ownership although cars can be used to drive drunk. \nI support pharmaceutical manufacture although drugs can be abused. \nI support swimming pool ownership although kids can drown in them. \nI support steak-knife ownership although they can be used in stabbings. \nI support free speech although people say things I don't like to hear. \nI support freedom of religion although cults do the damnedest things. \nI support parenthood although parents can abuse their children. \nI support pregnancy although abortion couldn't happen without it. \nI support penis ownership although they are used in rapes. \nI support gun ownership although guns can be used in crime. \nI support open elections although a moron became President. \n From: etg002@email.mot.com (Tim Grothause) Date: 21 Oct 93 15:24:24 GMT Newsgroups: info.firearms.politics

- Most rape victims are under 21, but 70% of rapists are over 30. --US Justice Dept, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/soo.txt (March2000) \nWomen under 21 years old should not be allowed to own guns. -- Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton (March2000)

- Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. -- James Bovard (1994)

- The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. -- Thomas Jefferson

- When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. -- Gary Lloyd

- Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. -- H.L. Mencken

- The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. -- H.L. Mencken

- It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. -- Henry George

- Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable. -- Anonymous

- Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. -- Lord Acton

- The power to tax is the power to destroy. -- John Marshall

- [On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. -- Edward Gibbon

- Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. -- Lysander Spooner

- In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. -- Leo Tolstoy

- There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. -- Ayn Rand

- A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. -- Alexander Tytler

- A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

- The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. -- Frank Zappa

- It is sobering to 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. -- Charles A. Beard

- Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? -- Harlon Carter

- It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. -- Justice Casey Percell

- No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. -- Edmund A. Opitz

- The government was set to protect man from criminals -- and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but against the government -- as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power. -- Ayn Rand

- What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. -- Edward Langley

- I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights. -- Abraham Lincoln

- Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. -- Harry Emerson Fosdick

- It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge

- It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. -- Voltaire

- Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. -- Herbert Hoover

- First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I'm not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I'm not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I'm not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me. -- Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)

- Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one. -- Thomas Paine

- There's never been a good government. -- Emma Goldman

- We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk. -- Millicent Fenwick (1983)

- Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. -- Montesquieu

- Talk is cheap -- except when Congress does it. -- Cullen Hightower

- You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest. -- Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

- The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare. -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1976)

- Governments harangue about deficits to get more revenue so they can spend more. -- Allan H. Meltzer (1993)

- When important issues affecting the life of an individual are decided by somebody else, it makes no difference to the individual whether that somebody else is a king, a dictator, or society at large. -- James Taggart (1992)

- No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power. -- P. J. O'Rourke (1992)

- Here's your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute -- often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is. -- Charley Reese (1998)

- The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. -- Milton Friedman

- The best government is the one that charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone. -- Thomas Rudmose-Brown (1996)

- If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. -- P.J. O'Rourke (1993)

- The Government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. -- Ronald Reagan

- Americans have the right and advantage of being armed -- unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. -- James Madison

- I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. -- Thomas Jefferson (1800)

- Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto. -- Thomas Jefferson (1799)

- If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. -- Winston Churchill

- Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty. --John F. Kennedy

- The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. --Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

- The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure--Thomas Jefferson (1787)

- Forscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.--Abraham Lincon (Gettysburd Address- Nov. 19, 1863)

- Give me the librety to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.--John Milton ( 1608-1674)

- Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.--Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

- Among a people generaly corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.--Edmund Burke ( 1729-1797)

- Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.--George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

- Liberty isn't a gift, nor a right. People tend to expected gifts and rights, people tend to become complacent with gifts and rights, and then people take them for granted. Liberty is an obligation and a commitment, a duty and a mission, a passion and a desire. This is true for all peoples whom seek to maintain Liberty, Justice and Peace for all of mankind--Larry J. Brugh (1997)

- There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something. --Thomas Edison

- Libertarians stand opposed to power in lauding the natural right of all human beings to choose the course of their own lives, and to accept that fundamental, unquestionable responsibility for the consequences of their choices and actions. Any attempt to impose conformity on human beings through political means is an attempt to destroy what it is that makes them essentially and gloriously human. --Roy A. Childs

- The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or to impede their efforts to obtain it. --John Stuart Mill

- The provision speaks for itself…that a man’s house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion. --Justice Joseph Story

- Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you. --Benjamin Franklin

- Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end. --Lord Acton, The History of Freedom 1907

- There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. --P.J. O'Rourke, speech to the Cato Institute 1993

- A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. --P. J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores

- There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism. --Leonard E. Read, founder of FEE

- Freedom is the quality of being free from the control of regulators and tax collectors. If I want to be free their control, I must not impose controls on others. --Hans F. Sennholz

- The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. --George Eliot

- You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. --Abraham Lincoln

- I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the judicial safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice. --Frederich von Hayek, Economic Freedom and Representative Government

- A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves. --Betrand de Jouvenel

- Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. --Ronald Reagan

- The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression. --Alexander Berkman

- Live and let live. --Friedrich von Schiller

- Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. --Friedrich von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty 1960

- A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither. --Thomas Jefferson

- 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 inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable… --H. L. Mencken

- Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control. --Denis Diderot

- Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

- Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. --Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize Speech, December 11, 1964

- There is no “slippery slope" toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.--Alan K. Simpson

- ...There will be found to exist at all times an imperious necessity for restraining all the functionaries of the Government within the range of their respective powers thereby preserving a just balance between the powers granted to this Government and those reserved to the States and to the people. --President John Tyler

- Every great robbery that was ever perpetrated upon a people has been by virtue of an in-the-name-of law. --Albert Parsons

- If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Charles Yancy

- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. --The Declaration of Independence

- It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say…that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. --Etienne de la Boetie

- We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights, which they have delivered to our care; we owe it to our posterity, not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed. --Anonymous, 1769

- The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone expects to live at the expense of everyone else. --Frederic Bastiat

- And now that the legislators and do gooders have futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems. And try liberty.... --Frederic Bastiat, 1850

- This great republic, founded on the concept of inalienable rights and self-government, was never designed for a population of heel clickers and saluters. It was designed for thinking men and women who could independently assess situations and form their own independent judgements about what is good policy and what is bad policy. --Charley Reese, "What's In A Name?"

- It appears to me that one great cause of our difference in opinion on subjects which we often discuss is that you have always in mind the immediate and temporary effects of particular changes, whereas I put these effects quite aside, and fix my whole attention on the long-term effects that will result from them. --David Ricardo, letter to Thomas Malthus in 1821

- There is always an easy solution to every human problem - neat, plausible and wrong. --H. L. Mencken

- If a man begins with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content with doubts he shall end in certainties. --Francis Bacon

- Men are most apt to believe what they least understand. --Montaigne

- A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn’t the world of being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn’t flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. --Dresden James

- The Master said: 'Yu! Shall I teach you the meaning of knowledge? When you know a thing to recognize that you know it; and when you do not, to know that you do not know - that is knowledge. --Confucius

- Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an ‘independent’ agency operated by selfless public servants striving to ‘fine-tune’ the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat. --Thomas J. DiLorenzo

- When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was that things were as bad as we’d been saying they were. --John F Kennedy

- The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny. --Michael Parenti

- The Big Lie is a major untruth uttered frequently by leaders as a means of duping and controlling the constituency. --Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

- For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances as though they were realities…and are often more influenced by things that seem than by those that are. --Michiavelli

- If the lie is large enough, everyone will believe it. --Adolph Hitler

- 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 all. --Justice William O. Douglas

- Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are rountinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies. --E. L. Doctorow

- Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. -- Mark Twain

- Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.

- "Liberty is the prevention of control by others." –Lord John Acton

- "A man who doesn't stand for something will fall for anything." –Peter Marshall

- "A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." –Barry Goldwater

- "The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office." –Will Rogers

- "An armed society is a polite society." –Robert A. Heinlein

- "Politics is the womb in which war is developed." –General Karl von Clausewitz

- "A tyrant...is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." –Plato

- "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." –George Bernard Shaw

- "Both the oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." –Aristotle

- "We'd all like t'vote for th'best man, but he's never a candidate." –Kin Hubbard

- "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force." -- attributed to George Washington

- "The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted." –Edmund Burke

- "Force ought to follow justice and not to precede." –Sir Edward Coke

- "When man undertakes to be God's avenger, he becomes a demon." –House of Representatives Report on Sunday Mails, 1830

- "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." –Aesop

- "Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost." –Milton Friedman

- "A lie can travel around the world while the truth is putting on its boots." –Mark Twain

- "A little government and a little luck are necessary in life; but only a fool trusts either of them." –P.J. O'Rourke

- "Show me a nation possessed of a large navy, and I will show you a nation always at war." –Samuel McKee

- When everyone thinks alike, few are doing much thinking -Nashua Cavalier

- Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism--how passionately I hate them." Albert Einstein

- Resist much. Obey little. Think for yourself. --William Thomas

- He who dares not to offend cannot be honest. --Thomas Paine

- Behind every act of terrorism lies a curtain of cause

- It's a nonsense assumption that you can get rid of terrorism with war. Terrorism is taking the lives of innocent people to gain your objective. War is basically the same thing on a larger scale. -- Gene Sharp

-"It's not fair to say that Congress spends money like a drunk sailor. At least the sailor is spending his own money!" - President Ronald Reagan

- If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist. -- Joseph Sobran

- In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. -- Voltaire

- Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. -- Pericles

- Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. -- Judge Learned Hand

- Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. -- Douglas Casey

- Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -- P.J. O'Rourke

- Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederic Bastiat

- Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. -- Ronald Reagan

- I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. -- Will Rogers

- If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. -- P.J. O'Rourke

- No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. -- Mark Twain

- Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it. -- Anonymous

- The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill

- The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain

- There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. -- P.J. O'Rourke

- We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill

- What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. -- Edward Langley

- When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. -- P.J. O'Rourke

- IF you are not outraged you are not paying attention -- unknown

- People deserve the government they get and get the government they deserve. - Lester Lave