Quotable Quotes addressing American Liberty


OUR FOUNDING FATHERS ON FIREARMS:

THOMAS JEFFERSON: "No free man shall ever be debarred of use of arms."


PATRICK HENRY: "The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun."


JAMES MADISON: "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."


SAMUEL ADAMS: "The Constitution shall never be construed ... to prevent the People of the united States who are peaceable Citizens from keeping their own arms."


ALEXANDER HAMILTON: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."


JAMES MADISON: "The right of the people to keep (to have and to hold, openly or concealed) and bear (carry, transport and use) firearms (weapons of self- defense, including the handgun which predated the rifle and has existed for self-defense since the 1500's) shall not be infringed (invalidated, limited, abridged). A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country ..."


GEORGE MASON: "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."


ELBRIDGE GERRY: "I ask what is the purpose of the militia? To offset the need of large standing armies, the bane of liberty."


THOMAS JEFFERSON: "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 a all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press."


ABRAHAM LINCOLN: "Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our Fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."


THOMAS JEFFERSON: "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."


RKBA - QUOTES

What do you mean 'wait fifteen days'? This is America!

--- California citizen attempting to purchace a firearm for self-defense during rioting in Los Angelas, week of 30 April 1992


Velcomin to Amurika, Komrad!


Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.

--- George Washington, sixth President of The United States, (1st under the Constitution). (John Hanson was the First President).


... History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall.

--- Adolf Hitler, Edict of 18 March 1939


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 Earl Jones


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.

--- United States Constitution, Second Amendment, 1789


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 their struggle for independence.

--- C. A. Beard


"And we should -- then every community in the country could then start doing major weapon sweeps and then destroying the weapons, not selling them." - William J. Clinton, President, sworn defender(?) of the U.S. Constitution, traitor & womanizer.


"I'm convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily -- given the political realities -- going to be very modest. Of course, it's true that politicians will then go home and say, 'This is a great law. The problem is solved.' And it's also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time. So then we'll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strength that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal -- total control of handguns in the United States -- is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of *all* handguns and *all* handgun ammunition -- except for the military, policement, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors -- totally illegal."

-- Pete Shields, Chairman, HCI (Handgun Control Idiots) ["A Reporter At Large: Handguns", _The New Yorker_, July 26, 1976, 57-58]


"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."

THOMAS JEFFERSON -source-Oxford American Legal Quotes, pp23


"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ...


And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." (Komrad President Bill Klinton, 3-22-94, MTV's "Enough is Enough")


"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun."

--- Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution


"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks." --- Thomas Jefferson


"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article [the Second Amendment] in their right to keep and bear their private arms."

--- Trence Coxe in "Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution", under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, 18 June 1789


"What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."

--- Rep Elbridge Gerry, Mass., I Annals of Congress at 750, 8/17/1789


"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story


"If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution --- certainly would if such a right were a vital one." Abraham Lincoln


I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. -- Voltaire


Life & Liberty
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

-- Frederic Bastiat


"But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future Security." Declaration of Independence


"You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect."

--Edwin Meese III


The above statement has no meaning in an Article 1 court.


".... endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

--Declaration of Independance


"We, the People of the United States, (the Founding Fathers) in order to form a more perfect Union ... do Ordain and Establish this Constitution of the United States of America." (the several States).

-- Preamble to the US Constitution


"It's the misfortune of all Countries, that they sometimes lie under a unhappy necessity to defend themselves by Arms against the ambition of their Governors, and to fight for what's their own. If those in government are headless of reason, the people must patiently submit to Bondage, or stand upon their own Defence; which if they are enabled to do, they shall never be put upon it, but their Swords may grow rusty in their hands; for that Nation is surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it."

--- John Trenchard and Walter Moyle


"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."

--- George Mason, 3 Elliott, Debates at 425-426


"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

--- Richard Henry Lee writing in letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic (1787-1788)


"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." --- Thomas Jefferson


"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."

--- Andrew Ford


"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any body of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."

--- Noah Webster, An Examination into the Leading Principals of the Federal Constitution


"Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."

--- Trench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, 20 February 1788


"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the People of the united States who are peaceable Citizens from keeping their own arms..."

--- Samuel Adams


"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

--- Thomas Jefferson, proposal Virginia Constitution, June 1776,

1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334


"Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!"

--- Thomas Jefferson


"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them WILL DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF ALL PROPERTY until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

(It is important to remember the Federal Reserve and member banks are all PRIVATE CORPORATIONS and are no more federal than Federal Express)

--- Thomas Jefferson


Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any public official, save exactly to the degree he himself stands by the country. (Theodore Roosevelt)


The world can therefore seize the opportunity (Persian Gulf crisis) to fulfill the long-held promise of a New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind. (George Bush, Traitor)


Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its powers, but the truth is ... the Federal Reserve System has usurped the government. It controls everything here (Congress) and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will. (Louis T McFadden, ex-Chair of the House Committee on Banking & Currency. Believed to have been murdered.)


Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world as well as property. Horrid mischief would ensue where the law abiding deprived the use of them. (Thomas Paine)


In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. (Thomas Jefferson)


If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be ... The people cannot be safe without information. Where the press is free, and every man is able (and willing) to read, all is safe. (Thomas Jefferson)


The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves. (Dresden James)


The surest way to destroy a nation is to debauch its currency. (Vladimir Lenin)


The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. (Thomas Jefferson)


While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to conceal the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money system we have nationalized a system of oppression which, though more refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery. -Horace Greeley


People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (muscle 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 ... But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can 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 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


A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world -- no longer a Government of free opinnion, no longer a government of conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men. -Woodrow Wilson


We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied soon. -Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of Federal Reserve Bank, Atlanta, Ga.


The banks -- commercial banks and the Federal Reserve -- create all the money of this nation and its people pay interest on every dollar of that newly created money. Which means that private banks exercise unconstitutionally, immorally, and rediculously the power to tax the people. For every newly created dollar dilutes to some extent the value of every other dollar already in circulation. - Cong. Jerry Voorhis.


... legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions: every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. - James Madison


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


The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience rendered to them, are the obtaining of justice and protection; and they who cannot provide for both give the people a right of taking such ways as best please themselves, in order to their own safety. - Algernon Sidney (1672)


Californians seem to understand that government's major function is to entertain. No matter who is elected, the politicos end up swindling us, wasting our tax money on pork-barrel projects. The only way to reclaim at least some of that lost money is to elect politicians who put on a good show. - `Orange County Register'


If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy. - Thomas Jefferson


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. - Alan Bock, `Orange County Register'


Ye cannot serve God and mammon. - Luke 16:13


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


Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important. - T.S. Eliot


As nightfall does not come at once, neither does opression. 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
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A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will. - Alexander Hamilton


The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity -- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. - Henry Clay


My agency in promoting the passage of the National Bank Act was the greatest financial mistake of my life. It has built up a monopoly which affects every interest in the country. It should be repealed, but before that can be accomplished, the people will be arrayed on one side and the banks on the other, in a contest such as we have never before seen in this country. - Salmon P. Chase (1862)


I never thought the Federal Reserve System would prove such a failure. The country is in a state of irretrievable bankruptcy. - Sen Carter Glass (1983)


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)


They just might find that it's easier to drop out of the system than to fight the excessive fines or get social security numbers for their kids. - Stephen Nestor, IRS


... If the law does not assure that tax returns files by Americans will not be turned against them, our system of voluntary compliance with the tax laws faces a doubtful future. - Sen. Frank Church, Chairman, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, 94th Congress, First Session, Volume 3, Internal Revenue Service (October 2, 1975)


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


The task of government in this enlightened time does not extend to actually dealing with problems. Solving problems might put bureaucrats out of work. No, the task of government is to make it look as though problems have been solved, while continuing to keep the maximum number of consultants and bureaucrats employed dealing with them. - Bob Emmers, `Orange County Register'


In times when the government imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also the prison. - Henry David Thoreau


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. - Winston Churchill


Governments do not know what they cannot do until after they cease to be governments. Each government carries the seeds of its own destruction. - Frank Herbert


Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken


The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignonious and his success is disgraceful. - H.L. Mencken


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


Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone. - Frederic Bastiat


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


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


An unbiased person is someone who has the same bias as we have. - Mason City Globe-Gazette


A newspaper is not just for reporting the news, it's to get people mad enough to do something about it. - Mark Twain


The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that's good ... - George Washington, 6th President.

It's not ... how you play the game, but how you design the playing field. - Trevor Marshall, `Byte' (May 1988)

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; ... - James Madison


That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest porposes 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


... as all history informs us, there has been iin every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partizans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharoah, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ... - Benjamin Franklin, before the Constitutional Convention, (June 2, 1787)


Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance. - Frank Herbert


Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security. - Frank Herbert


Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal. - Frederic Bastiat `The Law'


In 1983 $21 billion was spent in agricultural subsidies - almost equal to the net income of all American farmers. - Patrick Detches. Letter to `The Register' (April 17, 1984)


If a tactic you try irritates the I.R.S. and its agents, you can assume it is legal - remember it for future use. - Congressman George Hansen


It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is percieved to be true. - Henry Kissinger


Those unaware are unaware of being unaware. - Merrill Jenkins


Redeemable in gold on demand at the United Stares Treasury or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank. - Series 1928 Federal Reserve Note


This note is legal tender for all debts public and private and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank. - Series 1934 Federal Reserve Note


This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. - Series 1963 Federal Reserve Note


If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, then you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things. - Adolph Hitler, `Mein Kamph'


"I didn't inhale" William J. Klin-o-kee-o. (Adolf is proud of you Billy).


The people are to the guerilla as water is to the fish. - Mao


In Germany they came first ... 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 no one was left to speak up. - Martin Niemoller


In recent years we have witnessed numerous marches on Washington in which one group or another has demanded new "rights." Frequently, such rights have not meant freedom from state control, but rather entitlement to state action, protection, or subsidy. In the process of yielding to the "will of the people" and creating new rights, the state invariably enlarges itself and its bureaucracy. Each new right seems to demand a new agency to guarantee it, administer it, or deliver it. - John W. Whitehead, `The Second American Revolution'


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. - Sen. Edward V. Long


[The] more corrupt the government, the greater the number of laws. - Tacitus


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 A. Kidney, `U.S. News & World Report'


[Judicial action in the last two decades] adds up to a radical transformation of the role and function of the judiciary in American life. Its chief function now is as a catalyst of social change with judges acting as planners of large scale. - Prof. Abram Chayes, Harvard law school


The Court has assumed, gradually, the role of deciding the problems on its own and ...the American people and their selected officials gradually have accepted the Court as the political instrument for lawmaking. - Prof. William Forrester, Cornell law school.


... any broad unlimited power to hold laws unconstitutional because they offend what this Court concieves to be the `conscience of our people' ... was not given by the Framers, but rather has been bestowed on the Court by the Court. - Justice Hugo Black.


... the discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny. - Edward Gibbon, `The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'


The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, ... would make the judiciary a despotic branch. - Thomas Jefferson


[Attorneys have been] prone to identify the judicial version of the Constitution as the authentic Constitution. - Prof. Edward S. Corwin


... the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, ... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. - Abraham Lincoln


... the Constitution is an intentionally incomplete, often deliberately indeterminate structure for the participatory evolution of political ideals and governmental practices.


... the highest mission of the Supreme Court, in my view, is not to conserve judicial credibility, but in the Constitution's own phrase, `to form a more perfect union' between right and rights within that charter's necessarily evolutionary design. - Laurence Tribe, Harvard law professor


[Law] is only what most of the people think at that moment of history, and there is no higher law. It follows, of course, that the law can be changed at any moment to reflect what the majority currently thinks.


More accurately, the law becomes what a few people in some branch of the government think will promote the present sociological and economic good. In reality the will and moral judgement of the majority are now influenced by or even overruled by the opinions of a small group of men and women. This means that vast changes can be made in the whole concept of what should and what should not be done. Values can be altered overnight and at almost unbelievable speed. - Schaeffer & Koop, `Whatever happened to the Human Race?'


Law has become utilitarian. It can be what the majority concieves as law, or it can be what an elite says it is. There is no absolute. In the end, it is always what a court or judge says it is. - `The Second American Revolution'


Ours is a sick profession. [A profession marked by] incompetence, lack of training, misconduct, and bad manners. Ineptness, bungling, malpractice, and bad ethics can be observed in court houses all over this country every day. - Chief Justice Warren Burger


... a 1973 Harris Poll found that only 18 percent of the public had confidence in lawyers, a somewhat lower approval rating than that of garbage collectors. - `The Second American Revolution'


In tribal times, there were the medicine men. In the Middle Ages, there were the priests. Today there are the lawyers. For every age, a group of bright boys, learned in their trade and jealous of their learning, who blend technical competence with plain and fancy hocus-pocus to make themselves masters of their fellow men. For every age, a pseudo-intellectual autocracy, guarding the tricks of its trade from the uninitiated, and running, after its own pattern, the civilization of its day.


It is the lawyers (article 1) who run our civilizatio for us - our governments, our business, our private lives. - Fred Rodell


In Massachusetts, the Body of Liberties (1641) permitted anyone who could not plead his own cause to retain someone else for assistance "provided he give him noe fee or reward for his paines". - 'The Second American Revolution'


In the first century of American independence, the [Blackstone] Commentaries were not merely an approach to the study of the law; for most lawyers they constituted all there was of the law. - Daniel Boorstin `The mysterious Science of the Law'


The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws and not men. - Chief Justice John Marshall


[The] whole culture seems to be facing the possibility of a kind of nervous breakdown ... One major symptom of this threatened breakdown is the massive loss in the confidence in law - not only on the part of law-consumers but also on the part of lawmakers and distributors. - Harold Berman, Harvard law professor


... the Constitution is what the judges say it is. - Charles Evans Hughes, Justice of the Supreme Court (1907)


"Article 1 Judges have No interest in Constitution, but are driven by self interest and the rule of the sea blended with equity". - Burton James.


A decision of the Fuhrer in the express form of a law or decree may not be scrutinized by a judge. In addition, the judge is bound by any other decision of the Fuhrer, provided that they are clearly intended to declare law. - 1936 Decree


The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded. - Edmund Burke, `Reflections on the Revolution in France'


Necessity is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves. - William Pitt (1783)


The way to resume [specie payments] is to resume. - Horace Greely


We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. - Thomas Jefferson


Under God we are determined that, wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever, we shall be called upon to make our exit, we will die freemen. - Josiah Quincy (1774)


There is a higher law than the Constitution. - William H. Seward (1850)


He smote the rock of the national resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of public credit, and it sprang upon its feet. - Daniel Webster, Speech on Hamilton


Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subject are rebels from principle. Edmund Burke, `Reflections on the Revolution in France'


The whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in bringing simply twelve good men into the box. - Lord Henry Brougham, `Present State of the Law'


Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. - Sir Edward Coke, First Institute


They [corporations] cannot commit treason ... for they have no souls. - Sir Edward Coke, Reports


To trace the mischievous effects of a mutable government would fill a volume. - James Madison


These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country. - Thomas Paine.


I do not feel, based on my studies, that the government has written any mysterious statutes to intentionally fraud or extort anything from the citizens. I do feel that it is a classic case of adopting customs during a period when a lot of legislation was taking place changing the course of life in the United States. The combination of illiteracy between government and citizens just followed these customs. We have transpired into 50 years of chaos and confusion which is only going to get straightened out through a series of effective and well set cases in the courts. - Leo Masters


Under this bill we are trying our best to eliminate tax returns for some 30,000,000 of our individual taxpayers by allowing them to use the so-called W-2 form, which results in the taxpayer not computing his own tax but having his tax computed by the collector ... This whole thing is for the purpose of removing complications and difficulties that have arisen by reason of the enactment of the so-called pay-as-you-go system. - Congressional Record Vol. 90 Sec. 271 (b)(1) p.2243 (1939)


Governments never do anything by accident; if government does something you can bet it was carefully planned. - Komrad Franklin Demoncrat Roosevelt (such as instituting Socialisim in America, Huh Komrad?)


The world is governed by far different personages than what is imagined by those not behind the scenes. - Benjamin Disraeli


To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of a citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals. . . is none the less robbery because it was done under the forms of law and is called taxation. - Supreme Court Justice Miller, Loan AAssociation v. Topeka, 20 Wall (87 US) 664 (1874)


It's time we rebelled. - Ronald Reagan


Let's do away with income taxes. - Sen. Gary Hart


We do many things at the federal level that would be considered dishonest and illegal if done in the private sector. - Donald T. Regan


The high-handed bureaucratic excesses of the IRS are a national disgrace ... riding roughshod over the taxpayers and making a joke out of our rule of laws. Sen. Paul Laxault


People are fed up. - Sen. Bill Bradley


Let's get rid of the income tax ... it's legalized confiscation ... too complicated ... destroying the middle class. - T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of the IRS


The real point of audits is to instill fear, not to extract revenue; the IRS aims at winning through intimidation and (thereby) getting maximum voluntary compliance. - Paul Strassel, Former IRS Headquarters Agent `Wall St. Journal' 1/28/80


The tax system is stacked against the average taxpayer. - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.


I'm a lawyer, and I can't make head or tail out of the current form. - Richard M. Nixon


"It's anti-American. It's anti-growth. It's anti-success. It's anti- upward mobility. It isn't a tax cut ... it's a scam. - Louis Rukeyser, host of Wall Street Week


The income tax is unconstitutional and was not part of the original intent of those who drafted our Constitution or government. - Rep. Steven D. Symms, Idaho


Strictly speaking, it probably is not "necessary" for the federal government to tax anyone directly; it could simply print the money it needs. However, that would be too bold a stroke, for it would then be obvious to all what kind of counterfeiting operation the government is running. The present system combining taxation and inflation is akin to watering the milk; too much water and the people catch on. - Ron Paul, House of Representatives, Texas


... 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. - Sen. Sam Ervin


When I am President, my number one priority will be to get big government off the back of the American people. - Ronald Reagan [ Thanks, Ron! Too Bad your plan didn't work!]


According to Roscoe Egger, commisioner of the Internal Revenue Service, some 35 million Americans have not yet filed their federal income tax returns for 1983. Egger describes citizen response to the current tax scheme as "the taxpayer's revenge against an unfair system." - `The Spotlight'


The federal income tax system is deeply flawed. - R.T. McNamar, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury


There is no law requiring a person to apply for a Social Security number, and there is no section of title 18, United States Code, making it a crime to not have a social security number. - Dorcas R. Hardy, Commissioner of Social Security


At times like the present, when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding or may even find profit from the fluctuations of values, but the wage earner - the first to be injured by a depreciated currency - is practically defenseless. - Grover Cleveland


If governments should refrain from regulation ... the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud upon the public can be conceeled no longer. - John Maynard Keynes


Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all commerce and industry. - President Garfield


External environmental indicators and internal compliance measures reflect a continuing decline in the extent to which taxpayers are willingor able to voluntarily comply with the federal tax laws ...


A "decay in the social contract" is detectable; there is a growing feeling, particularly among middle-income taxpayers, that they are not getting back, from society and government, their money's worth for taxes paid. The tendency is for taxpayers to try to take more control of their finances ... - IRS Strategic Plan, (May 1984)

The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges' views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation. -Justice Hugo Black, Columbia University's Charpentier Lectures (1968)


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)


A hand from Washington will be streached out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man's counting house. The law will of necessity have inquisitorial features, it will provide penalties. It will create a complicated machinery. Under it businessmen will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of Federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state. They will compel men of business to show their books and disclose the secrets of their affairs. They will dictate forms of bookkeeping. They will require statements and affidavits. On the one hand the inspector can blackmail the taxpayer and on the other, he can profit by selling his secret to his competitor. - Richard E. Byrd, Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates (1910)


{On Social Security} We must not allow this type of insurance to become a dole through the mingling of insurance and relief. It is not charity. It must be financed by contributions not taxes ... Let us keep out every element which is actuarily unsound. - Komrad Franklin Demoncrat Roosevelt


We can't ask for support for a [social security] plan not at least as good as any American could buy from a private insurance company. - The Congressional Record (June 12, 1935)


The same monetary system that was established on April 2, 1792, is in effect today. - Bruce A. Budlong, Dept. of the Treasury (1977) (however, it is not in use)


... U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 10, is binding on the states. - Michael J. Hodge, Asst. Attorney Genneral, State of Michigan


In the United States today we have in effect two governments ... We have the duly constituted Government ... Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government of the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution. - Congressman Wright Patman, Chairman, House Banking Committee


By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. - John Maynard Keynes, `The Economic Consequences of The Peace'


It is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand. - John Maynard Keynes, `The Economic Consequences of The Peace'


An inefficient, unemployed, disorganized Europe is an extant example of how much man can suffer and how far society can decay.


Economic privation proceeds by easy stages, and so long as men suffer it patiently the outside world cares little. Physical efficiency and resistance to disease slowly diminish, but life proceeds somehow, until the limit of human endurance is reached at last and counsels of despair and madness stir the sufferers from the lethargy which precedes the crisis. Then man shakes himself and the bonds of custom are loosed. The power of ideas is soverign, and he listens to whatever instruction of hope, illusion, or revenge is carried to him on the air. - John Maynard Keynes, `The Economic Consequences of The Peace'


If Congress won't keep its part of the Constitutional bargain and coin money of gold and silver like Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 commands, there's no way my court can require anyone to pay fines. I'm not here to protect certain people's investments, I'm here to carry out the mandate of the U.S. and the Kansas Constitutions. - Hon. Larry Moritz, Municipal Judge, Spearville Kansas (1981)


Estimates are that over 100 billion dollars from legitimate enterprises and 35 billion dollars from illegal business is not being reported on individual tax returns. - Minutes of Irs Central Region Bar Association Liasion, Nov 2, 1979


Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington


The most efficient form of government is a dictatorship. - Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall


Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it. - George Washington's Farewell Address


We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. - Abraham Lincoln


Mysteries of law and government may be made a cloak of unrighteousness. - Samuel Cooke (1770)


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'


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


The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

- Edmond Burke


When all else fails, read the directions.


We are ignorant of what we ignore. - Boyd Crabtree


If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. - Henry David Thoreau


Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. - James Madison, `The Federalist Papers'


At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us with a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its authou and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all times, or die by suicide. - Abraham Lincoln


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. - Daniel Webster


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 indepandence. - Butler D. Shaffer, Southwestern School of Law, Los Angeles


To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical. - Thomas Jefferson


Taxes on consumption, like those on capital or income, to be just, must be uniform. - Benjamin Franklin


Fidelity to the public requires that the laws be as plain and explicit as possible, that the less knowing may understand, and not be ensnared by them, while the artful evade their force. - Samuel Cooke (1770)


... 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 improvemrnt, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. - Thomas Jefferson


... the Union, which was constituted by consent, must be preserved by love. - George Bancroft (1845)


If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, then the people will have ceased to be their own rulers. - Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address.


Nothing was further from the minds of the Framers of the Constitution, than that the Supreme Court should ever make the Supreme Law of the Land. - Chief Justice Marlin T. Phelps, Arizona Supreme Court


The deterioration of a government begins almost always by a decay of its principles. - Montesquieu


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


If the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. - Thomas Jefferson


I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else a legal tender. - Thomas Jefferson


Money being naturally barren, to make it breed money is preposterous, and a perversion from the end of its institution, which was only to serve the purpose of exchange and not of increase. . . Usury is most reasonably detested as the increase arises from the money itself, and not by employing it to the purpose for which it was intended. - Aristotle


I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. - Thomas Jefferson


If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash. - Geo. Washington


It is apparent from the whole context of the Constitution as well as the history of the times which gave birth to it, that it was the purpose of the Convention to establish a currency consisting of the precious metals. These were adopted by a permanent rule excluding the use of a perishable medium of exchange, such as certain agricultural commodities recognized by the statutes of some States as tender for debts, or the still more pernicious expedient of paper currency. - Andrew Jackson, 8th Annual Message to Congress (Dec 5, 1836)


I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared ... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude ... The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the disposition of public money. We are endeavoring to reduce the government to the practice of rigid economy to avoid burdening the people ... - Thomas Jefferson


Since the federal constitution has removed all danger of our having a paper tender, our trade is advanced fifty percent. Our monied people can trust their cash abroad, and have brought their coin into circulation. - `The Pennsylvania Gazette' (Dec. 16, 1789)


Those who create and issue money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people. - Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna, Secretarry of the Exchequer, Midland Bank of England (1920)


A pro-International Monetary Fund Seminar of eminent economists couldn't agree on what 'money' is or how banks create it. - `The Wall Street Journal', (Sept. 24, 1971)


Who could have forseen that between 1923 and 1929, the Federal Reserve would print up a 62 per cent inflation and then suddenly stop, whiplashing the country into the crash of '29, followed by a numbing depression that lasted more than a decade? - `Miracle on Main Street'


Often the masses are plundered and do not know it. - Frederic Bastiat


God forbid, if anyone were to come out with a copper slug with a para- magnetic surface, it would look like silver to my {vending} machine. - Merril Jenkins, Inventor (1958)


Our government has found that the most effective way to control a person is not by the 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. - Byron C. Radaker, Chairman and C.E.O., Congoleum Corp.


Control of a man's subsistence is control of a man's will. - Alexander Hamilton


All acts of the legislature apparently contrary to natural rights and justice are, in our law and must be in the nature of things, considered void ... We are in conscience bound to disobey. - Robin v. Hardaway, 1 Jefferson 109, (Va., 1772)


All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void. - Marbury v. Madison


... The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance. - Thomas Payne


They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority. - Frederic Bastiat


All warfare is based on deception. A skilled general must be master of the complementary arts of simulation and dissimulation; while creating shapes to confuse and delude the enemy he conceals his true dispositions and ultimate intent. When capable he feigns incapacity; when near he makes it appear that he is far away; whan far away; that he is near. Moving as intangibly as a ghost in the starlight, he is obscure, inaudible. His primary target is the mind of the opposing commander; the victorious situation, a product of his creative imagination. Attacking the mind of the enemy is an indispensible preliminary to battle. - Sun Tzu


You've got to know where the machinery is and how it works before you can throw a monkey-wrench into it. - Michael H. Brown, `Brown's Lawsuit Cookbook'


Resistance to tyranny is service to God. - James Madison


If I don't have to do it, it only shows that you don't have to either. -

Abraham Lincoln


IRS employees are outnumbered by us at a rate of approximately 1,000 to 1 - `Who's Afraid of the I.R.S.?'
"FCC employees are outnumbered by us at 10,000 to 1 ... So, Who's afraid of the FCC?"


We must pity the poor wretched, timid soul who is too faint-hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the song of the dammed: "I can't fight back; I have too much to lose; I own too much property; I have worked too hard to get what I have; They will put me out of business if I resist; I might go to jail; I have my family to think about." Such poor miserable creatures have misplaced values and are hiding their cowardice behind pretended family responsibility - blindly refusing to see that the most glorious legacy that one can bequeath to posterity is liberty; and that the only true security is liberty. - Marvin Cooley


The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they opress. - Frederick Douglass (1857)


If you want irresponsible politicians to spend less, you must give them less to spend. - Irwin Schiff


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


At least 9,000 Orange County residents belong to organizations that believe it's unconstitutional to pay income taxes. - Randall Hackley, `The Register'


However, It IS Constitutional for Franchises of the District of Columbia to pay the income tax. One becomes enfranchised by entering into the so-called benefits/contracts that the "District" provides. (such as SSA-SSN).
- Burton James


IRS figures indicate that in 1983, 347,000 Californians owed the federal government back taxes totaling $1.2 billion, the highest numbers in the nation. - `The Register'


"Though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found to be generally true: that in ages in which the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people will have a chance..."

George Orwell, Essays, Volume IV


"Both ogliarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms."

Aristotle


"Certainly one of the chief gaurantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and beear arms.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safegaurd against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be possible."

Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (1960)


"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."
Ronald Regan


"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are constitutional rights secure."

Albert Einstein


"Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive."

Sidney Hook


"Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice in the act."
The Talmud


"If you are thinking a year ahead, sow seed. IF you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people."

Chinese Proverb


"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
Richard Henry Lee


"If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may abuse that power by wronging his adversary, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; not does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for htese reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them."

Alexis de Tocqueville


"Those who hate you can't harm you, unless you hate them back, and then you destroy yourself."

Richard M. Nixon, farewell speech to White House Staff


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

Charles M. Beard

"Experience should teach us to be most on our gaurd to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liverty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well- meaning but without understanding."

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 227 U.S. 438


"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 Catholics. I didn't speak up then because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up."

Reverend Martin Niemoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the gestapo in 1937


"They tell us we are weak--unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on out backs and hugging the delusive (sic) phantom of hope, until out enemies have bound us hand and foot?

"We are not weak if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature has placed in out power. Millions of people armed in the hold cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible. Besides, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

"Many cry 'Peace, peace'--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! Why stand we here idle? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me Liberty or give me death!"

Patrick Henry


"It was two by the village clock, when he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, and the twitter of the birds among the trees, and felt the breath of the morning breeze blowing over the meadow brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed who at that bridge would be the first to fall, who that day would be lying dead, pierced by the British musket ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read how the British regulars fired and fled, how the farmers gave them ball for ball, from behind each fence and farmyard wall, chasing the redcoats down the land, then crossing the fields to emerge again under the trees at the turn of the road, and only pausing to fire and load."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere"


"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time."

Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland


"Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge sucessfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four


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