"Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain every thing they have no need of particular reservations. "WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Here is a better recognition of popular rights, than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our State bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government.

"There are other things so clearly out of the power of Congress, that the bare recital of them is sufficient. I mean "rights of conscience, or religious liberty ― the rights of bearing arms for defence, or for killing game ― the liberty of fowling, hunting and fishing."

"RESIST MUCH, OBEY LITTLE,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this Earth,
ever afterward resumes its liberty."

"The congress of the United States possesses no power to regulate, or interfere with the domestic concerns, or police of any state: it belongs not to them to establish any rules respecting the rights of property; nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people; or of peaceable assemblies by them, for any purposes whatsoever, and in any number, whenever they may see occasion."

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress....

..."Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."

"17th. That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated militia, including the body of the people capable of bearing arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that the militia shall not be subject to martial law, except in time of war, rebellion, or insurrection; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and ought not to be kept up, except in eases of necessity; and that at all times, the military should be under strict subordination to the civil power....18th. That any person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms ought to be exempted..."

- Page 160 - Journal of The Senate, Ratification of the constitution by the convention of the state of Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations. (Rhode-Island,Newport, June 9, 1790).

"The Judiciary...has no influence over either the sword or the
purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of
the society, and can take no active resolution whatever. It may
truly be said to have neither force nor will."

- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #78, 1788

"It is not that government has accomplished the 'impossible' of practically denying the right [of petition], but rather that the 'spirit of liberty' has almost 'wholly disappeared and the people have become servile and debased.' But 'fitness' to exercise the rights of freemen is never determined by the many who have become servile, but by the few who refuse, at any cost, to surrender their rights to government."

"State disarmament of citizens frequently served to enable one social or economic class to suppress another, as witness Charles II’s disarming of Protestant subjects in England. The common law tradition, as Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England articulates it, favored the citizen’s right to possess and carry arms for both collective defense and individual self-defense. The Founding Fathers had learned a painful lesson in how entrenched states may assault the liberty of disarmed citizens during the Revolutionary War. The British Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, General Gage, sought to hamstring armed protest and the formation of the rebel’s citizen militia by his attempts to disarm the colonists and confiscate their magazines of arms. Chief Justice Earl Warren has noted how much the Revolutionary War was a protest against government standing armies and was largely fought by a civilian army, the militia."

- Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979).

"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."

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

"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."

"If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right - its reason for existing, its lawfulness - is based on individual rights. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force - for the same reason - cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups."

"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."

"Those, who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people." - Aristotle, quoted by John Trenchard and Water Moyle, An Argument Shewing, That a Standing Army Is Inconsistent with a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy [London, 1697].

"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 heedless 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, Authors known as 'Cato' in early 1700's

"Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."

"From this prevailing spirit of the times, the art of war became the study of every one who was desirous of maintaining the character of a gentleman. The youth were early initiated in the profession of arms, and served a sort of apprenticeship under persons of distinguished eminence. The young squire became in reality the servant of that leader to whom he had attached himself, and whose virtues were set before him as a model for imitation. He was taught to perform with ease and dexterity those exercises which were either ornamental or useful; and, at the same time, he endeavoured to acquire those talents and accomplishments which were thought suitable to his profession. He was taught to look upon it as his duty to check the insolent, to restrain the oppressor, to protect the weak and defenceless; to behave with frankness and humanity even to an enemy, with modesty and politeness to all."

- John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, Section IV: The consequences of the introduction of Agriculture, with respect to the intercourse of the Sexes. [1771]

"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."

"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."

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

"if raised, whether they could subdue a Nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?"

- Delegate Sedgwick, during the Massachusetts Convention, rhetorically asking if an oppressive standing army could prevail, (Johnathan Elliot, ed., Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol.2 at 97 (2d ed., 1888).

"...every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. .... The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property."

Government "can never have a Power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the Subjects Property, without their own consent. For this would be in effect to leave them no Property at all." .... Rulers "must not raise Taxes on the Property of the People, without the Consent of the People, given by themselves, or their Deputies."

"'Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many."

"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." ... whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society, and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty."

"Wherever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm; an whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command to compass that upon the subject which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate, and acting without authority may be opposed, as any other man who by force invades the right of another. This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He that hath authority to seize my person in the street may be opposed as a thief and a robber if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ, notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant and such a legal authority as will empower him to arrest me abroad. An why this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I would gladly be informed..."

- John Locke, "True end of government", late 1600's; chapter 28 "Of Tyranny". 202.

"Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."

"What reason demonstrates history proves by facts. When was Holland capable of efforts truly incredible? When her admirals lived as her sailors did—when the arms of all her citizens were employed in enriching or defending the state; and none in cultivating tulips, or paying for pictures. All subsequent events, political and commercial, have united in causing its decline. It has preserved the spirit of economy—it has still considerable riches in a country in which every other people could with difficulty live. Make of Amsterdam the residence of a gallant and magnificient court, transform its vessels into embroidered clothes, and its magazines into ball rooms; and you will see if in a very few years they will have remaining even the means of defending themselves against the irruptions of the sea."

- Antoine Louis Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy, A Treatise on Political Economy, Chap. XI.: Of the employment of our Riches, or of Consumption. (Georgetown: Joseph Milligan, 1817).

"He admits he came to the bench with "impeccable conservative law-and-order credentials" and left the bench eight years later cognizant of "how the criminal justice system works to subvert and shred the Constitution." Taking a cue from Thomas Jefferson, Napolitano iterates that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty".

- Ryan Setliff, about Judge Andrew Napolitano, in his Article 'Constitutional Chaos'.

"[The prosecutor] will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to, or in the way of, the prosecutor himself."

- Robert Jackson, Former Supreme Court Justice , explaining the vast power of prosecutors, which is ever liable to abuse. As quoted from 'Constitutional Chaos' by Ryan Setliff

Napolitano meticulously documents how Orwellian the administration of justice is become when those charged with enforcing laws routinely break the law:

"Once the government invests time and money to trap you, it will not stop. When it gets in so deeply that lawful means can no longer trap you, it will not stop. And if there is no law that criminalizes your conduct, it will create one. What can these government agents think of the oaths they swore to uphold the law?"

- 'Constitutional Chaos' by Ryan Setliff, concerning Andrew Napolitano's book by the same name.

"Napolitano reveals the culture of lawlessness, conceit, and personal ambition which saturates the U.S. Justice Department. Many of their actions and conduct in various cases clearly runs roughshod over the Constitution. Such a culture has given rise to a blatant disregard for the Constitution, due process of law and the rights and dignity of the individual. Napolitano iterates some of the worst abuses from the Clinton-Reno reign of terror from Waco to Ruby Ridge, and paints a startling picture of how this maladministration of justice is fast becoming the norm."

"How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

"Similar practices have probably taken place in most countries, when the inhabitants first applied themselves to the cultivation of the earth. “The Suevi,” according to Caesar, “are by far the greatest and most warlike of the German tribes. They are said to possess an hundred villages; from each of which a thousand armed men are annually led forth to war. The rest of the people remain at home; and cultivate the ground for both. These the following year take arms, and the former, in their turn, remain at home. Thus neither agriculture, nor the knowledge and practice of the military art is neglected."

- John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, Section I: The origin of a Chief, and the degrees of influence which he is enabled to acquire. [1771]

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall we expect some trans-atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasures of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, 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 this 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 author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide."

- Abraham Lincoln, as quoted by Stephen H. Taft Sept. 25, 1899 in "??? Answered By Rev. Stephen H. Taft"

"During the war of secession the United States sold its bonds in Europe to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars, bringing back arms, ammunition, clothing and other supplies. The latter went into the statistics of imports; while the statistics of exports took no account of the former. As these bonds had many years to run, the value of the goods so imported did not enter into the amount to be paid for abroad in those years. In the same way, many of our great railroads have been built mainly or wholly with foreign capital, shares in the stock of those railroads, or more commonly, first-mortgage bonds, being sent abroad without passing through our custom-houses, while rails and other supplies were brought back through the custom-house, thus swelling our tables of imports. In like manner, large quantities of foreign goods, of all sorts, have been sent to us year after year, in consideration of which foreigners have received from us, not our corn, cotton or petroleum, but the titles to mines, to agricultural and grazing lands, mortgages on western farms, the bonds of cities and counties, etc."

- Francis Amasa Walker, Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1892) 3rd revised and enlarged edition.

"Gun control has not worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates. It's quicker to pull your Smith & Wesson than to dial 911 if you're being robbed."

- Lieutenant Lowell Duckett, Special Assistant to DC Police Chief; President, Black Police Caucus, The Washington Post, March 22, 1996

"[The Constitution] is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1787

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

"Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both."

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."

"I'm often asked why I left politics and went to Halliburton and I explain that I reached the point where I was mean-spirited, short-tempered and intolerant of those who disagreed with me and they said 'Hell, you'd make a great CEO', so I went to Texas and joined the private sector."

"What it means to take rights seriously is that one will honor them even when there is significant social cost in doing so."

"In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas."

"About all the bugaboo concerning folks burning the flag, I'd always learned that burning was the proper, respectful way to dispose of a flag when it's become obsolete and worn out its usefulness."

"Laws are like spider webs. If some poor weak creature comes up against them it is caught. But the bigger one can break through and get away."

"Without freedom there will be no firearms among the people; without firearms among the people there will not long be freedom. Certainly there are examples of countries where the people remain relatively free after the people have been disarmed, but there are no examples of a totalitarian state being created or existing where the people have personal arms."

"Among the natives of Indostan, there are a great number of families who have been immemorially trained up to arms, and who enjoy a superior rank to most of the other inhabitants. They form a militia capable of enduring much hardship, and wanting nothing to make good soldiers but order and discipline."

- John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, Section II: The natural progress of government in a rude kingdom. [1771]

"What! Buckingham and Clifford, are ye so brave? And you, base peasants, do ye believe him? will you needs be hanged with your pardons about your necks? Hath my sword therefore broke through London Gates, that you should leave me at the White Hart in Southwark? I thought ye would never have given out these arms till you had recovered your ancient freedom; but you are all recreants and dastards, and delight to live in slavery to the nobility. Let them break your backs with burdens, take your houses over your heads, ravish your wives and daughters before your faces: for me, I will make shift for one, and so, God’s curse light upon you all!"

- William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth, Scene VIII.—: The Same. Southwark. (The Oxford Shakespeare), ed. with a glossary by W.J. Craig M.A. (Oxford University Press, 1916).

"All the causes which produced these effects among the Greeks acted still more strongly on the modern Italians. Instead of a power like Sparta, in its nature warlike, they had amongst them an ecclesiastical state, in its nature pacific. Where there are numerous slaves, every freeman is induced by the strongest motives to familiarise himself with the use of arms. The commonwealths of Italy did not, like those of Greece, swarm with thousands of these household enemies. Lastly, the mode in which military operations were conducted during the prosperous times of Italy was peculiarly unfavourable to the formation of an efficient militia. Men covered with iron from head to foot, armed with ponderous lances, and mounted on horses of the largest breed, were considered as composing the strength of an army. The infantry was regarded as comparatively worthless, and was neglected till it became really so. These tactics maintained their ground for centuries in most parts of Europe. That foot soldiers could withstand the charge of heavy cavalry was thought utterly impossible, till, towards the close of the fifteenth century, the rude mountaineers of Switzerland dissolved the spell, and astounded the most experienced generals by receiving the dreaded shock on an impenetrable forest of pikes."

- Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, Vol. 1, Machiavelli. (March, 1827.). [Critical and Historical Essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review, 5th ed. in 3 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848). Vol. 1.]

"As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom."
- Pythagoras

"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace."
- Tacitus, c. 55-120 A.D.

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion."

- James Burgh, Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses. London, 1774-1775

"The power of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress have NO POWER to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the BIRTH-RIGHT of an American...[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it ever will remain, IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE."

"The President, and government, will only control the militia when a part of them is in the actual service of the federal government, else, they are independent and NOT under the command of the president OR the government. The states would control the militia, ONLY when called out into the service of the state, and then the governor would be commander in chief where enumerated in the respective state constitution."

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right."

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people 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 article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."

- Tench Coxe in 'Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution' under the Pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1.

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

"The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions."

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States...Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America."

"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.

"THE LAW of resolution and constancy does not imply that we ought not, as much as in us lies, to decline and secure ourselves from the mischiefs and inconveniences that threaten us; nor, consequently, that we shall not fear lest they should surprise us: on the contrary, all decent and honest ways and means of securing ourselves from harms, are not only permitted, but, moreover, commendable, and the business of constancy chiefly is, bravely to stand to, and stoutly to suffer those inconveniences which are not possibly to be avoided. So that there is no supple motion of body, nor any movement in the handling of arms, how irregular or ungraceful soever, that we need condemn, if they serve to protect us from the blow that is made against us."

- Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Montaigne, Vol. 1, Of Constancy, trans. Charles Cotton, revised by William Carew Hazlett (New York: Edwin C. Hill, 1910).

"No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state...Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen."

"The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..."

"In modern war the great expence of fire-arms gives an evident advantage to the nation which can best afford that expence, and consequently to an opulent and civilized over a poor and barbarous nation. In ancient times the opulent and civilized found it difficult to defend themselves against the poor and barbarous nations. In modern times the poor and barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against the opulent and civilized. The invention of fire-arms, an invention which at first sight appears to be so pernicious, is certainly favourable both to the permanency and to the extension of civilization."

- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - Part I, by Adam Smith, edited with an Introduction, Notes, Marginal Summary and an Enlarged Index by Edwin Cannan (London: Methuen, 1904). Vol. 2.

"Giving others the freedom to be stupid is one of the most important and hardest steps to take in spiritual progress. Conveniently the opportunity to take that step is all around us every day."

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."

"Until you do what you believe in, you don't know whether you believe it or not."

"Of course if I refused to leave it then becomes a criminal act, Geez. I am talking about being a hired employee . What is so hard to understand about that. Just because you give me a job how does that make me any less of a citizen. By saying I can't carry on the job that means that unless you provide a safe and secure place to check my weapon into I can't carry to or from work. Are you suggesting I give up my rights in order to hold a job? How does that work? How is that not an infringement on my rights?"

"To whom then, does the restriction of 'shall not be infringed' then apply? Just government, no one else? Hard to believe this is a Second Amendment Rights site. Considering all the 'property owners' that would deny the Right to self-preservation to their own fellow citizens. Because they possess property, and have extended the invitation to customers and employees, they automatically assume power over them(?) Prizing the ownership of your own Right, and the Principles that allowed you to gain ownership. (which the tyranny of the crown disallowed, and from which the Founders fled). While preventing the exersize of your fellow citizen's Right?

Real class act. That is Socialism or Communism, not a true Republic. The founders would be sick."

Serf - Sire, may I enter into your realm?

Feudal Lord - Certainly knave. Provided you first disarm yourself! For I've deemed you have no Rights on MY property! Nor, will I be held liable in the event that there is ANOTHER TERRORIST ATTACK. Or, if a slobbering idiot comes in with a gun and kills all of you subjects! If my UNCONSTITUTIONAL DICTATES are acceptable to you, then you may enter!

Serf - Thank you, Highness!

Exult each patriot heart! this night is shewn
A piece, which we may fairly call our own;
Where the proud titles of "My Lord!" "Your Grace!"
To humble Mr. and plain Sir give place.

"Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace."

"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world, as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them."

"These lawyers, and men of learning and moneyed men, that...make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pill...they will swallow up all us little folks like the great Leviathan; yes, just as the whale swallowed up Jonah!"

- Amos Singletary, delegate at the 1788 Massachusetts Constitutional convention.

"I am a plain man, and get my living by the plough....I have lived in a part of the country where I have known the worth of good government by the want of it. There was a black cloud [Shays' Rebellion] that rose in the east last winter, and spread over the west....It brought on a state of anarchy and that led to tyranny. I say, it brought anarchy. People that used to live peaceably, and were before good neighbors, got distracted, and took up arms against government....

"Our distress was so great that we should have been glad to snatch at anything that looked like a government. Had any person that was able to protect us come and set up his standard, we should all have flocked to it, even if it had been a monarch, and that monarch might have proved a tyrant."

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."

"Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction....Complaints are every where heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty; that our governments are too unstable; that the public good is disregarded in the conflict of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party; but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority"....The Federalist, 1799

Thomas Jefferson, generally in favor of the new government, wrote to Madison that a bill of rights was "what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."

- A More Perfect Union: The Creation of the U.S. Constitution, The Bill of Rights

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

- Tench Coxe, in Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution' under the Pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1

"I was born an American. I live as an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career. I mean to do this with absolute disregard to personal consequences. What are the personal consequences? What is the individual man with all the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the good and evil which may befall a great country, and in the midst of great transactions which concern that country's fate? Let the consequences be what they will, I am careless, No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall, in the defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country."

"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."

"Rome that was constituted for war, and sought its grandeur by that means, could never have arriv’d to any considerable height, if the people had not been exercised in arms, and their spirits raised to delight in conquests, and willing to expose themselves to the greatest fatigues and dangers to accomplish them. Such men as these were not to be used like slaves, or oppressed by the unmerciful hand of usurers."

- Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, (LF ed.), Section 17: Good Governments admit of Changes in the Superstructures, whilst the Foundations remain unchangeable. [1698]

"Once again let us blame inanimate objects instead of the evil people who harm others. Take away a murderer's firearm, and he will kill with a knife. Take away his knife, and he will kill with a rock. Take away his rock, and he will kill with his bare hands. A murderer is not a murderer because he kills. He kills because he is a murderer."

"The congress of the United States possesses no power to regulate, or interfere with the domestic concerns, or police of any state: it belongs not to them to establish any rules respecting the rights of property; nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people."

- St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries (1803), Volume 1, Appendix, Note D

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

"If those in government are heedless 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."

- J. Trenchard & W. Moyle, An Argument Showing, That a Standing Army is Inconsistent With a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarch (London, 1697).

"...'the people' seems to have been a term of art employed in select
parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution
is ordained and established by the People of the United States.' The
Second Amendment protects the right of the people to keep and bear
arms,' and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights
and powers are retained by and reserved to the people.' See also U.S.
Const. Amdt. I ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right
of the people peaceably to assemble") .... While this textual exegesis
is by no means conclusive, it suggests that the people' protected by
the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, refers to
a class of persons who are part of a national community..."

"Today's liberals wish to disarm us so they can run their evil and oppressive agenda on us. The fight against crime is just a convenient excuse to further their agenda. I don't know about you, but if you hear that Williams' guns have been taken, you'll know Williams is dead."

..."I was surprised to find in the Senate that it was proposed we should postpone the consideration of Amendments until Experience had shewn the necessity of any — As if experience was more necessary to prove the propriety of those great principles of Civil liberty which the wisdom of Ages has found to be necessary barriers against the encroachments of power in the hands of frail Men!"...

"A majority of the Senate for not allowing the militia arms & if two thirds had agreed it would have been an amendment to the Constitution. They are afraid that the Citizens will stop their full Career to Tyranny & Oppression."

"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state controlled police and the military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an 'equalizer.' Egalite implies liberte. And always will. Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny."

"They who are already fallen into all that is odious, shameful and miserable, cannot justly fear. When things are brought to such a pass, the boldest counsels are the most safe; and if they must perish who lie still, and they can but perish who are most active, the choice is easily made. Let the danger be never so great, there is a possibility of safety whilst men have life, hands, arms, and courage to use them; but that people must certainly perish, who tamely suffer themselves to be oppress’d, either by the injustice, cruelty and malice of an ill magistrate, or by those who prevail upon the vices and infirmities of weak princes. ’Tis in vain to say, that this may give occasion to men of raising tumults or civil war; for tho these are evils, yet they are not the greatest of evils. Civil war in Machiavelli’s account is a disease, but tyranny is the death of a state. Gentle ways are first to be used, and ’tis best if the work can be done by them; but it must not be left undone if they fail. ’Tis good to use supplications, advices and remonstrances; but those who have no regard to justice, and will not hearken to counsel, must be constrained. ’Tis folly to deal otherwise with a man who will not be guided by reason, and a magistrate who despises the law: or rather, to think him a man, who rejects the essential principle of a man; or to account him a magistrate who overthrows the law by which he is a magistrate. This is the last result; but those nations must come to it, which cannot otherwise be preserved. . . . Pontius the Samnite said as truly as bravely to his countrymen, That those arms were just and pious that were necessary, and necessary when there was no hope of safety by any other way. This is the voice of mankind, and is dislik’d only by those princes, who fear the deserved punishments may fall upon them; or by their servants and flatterers, who being for the most part the authors of their crimes, think they shall be involved in their ruin."

- Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, (LF ed.), Section 40: Good Laws prescribe easy and safe Remedies against the Evils proceeding from the vices or infirmities of the Magistrate; and when they fail, they must be supplied. [1698]

"Tyranny derives from the oligarchy's "mistrust of the people; hence they deprive them of arms, ill-treat the lower class, and keep them from residing in the capital. These are common to oligarchy and tyranny.""

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors

"This [Second Amendment] may be considered as the true palladium of liberty.... The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty."

"A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life."

"To trust arms in the hands of the people at large has, in Europe, been believed...to be an experiment fraught only with danger. Here by a long trial it has been proved to be perfectly harmless...If the government be equitable; if it be reasonable in its exactions; if proper attention be paid to the education of children in knowledge and religion, few men will be disposed to use arms, unless for their amusement, and for the defence of themselves and their country."

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is
striking at the root."

"Real courage is found, not in the willingness to risk death, but in the willingness to stand, alone if necessary, against the ignorant and disapproving herd."

"Some people think that the Second Amendment is an outdated relic of an earlier time. Doubtless some also think that constitutional protections of other rights are outdated relics of earlier times. We The People own those rights regardless, unless and until We The People repeal them. For those who believe it to be outdated, the Second Amendment provides a good test of whether their allegiance is really to the Constitution of the United States, or only to their preferences in public policies and audiences. The Constitution is law, not vague aspirations, and we are obligated to protect, defend, and apply it. If the Second Amendment were truly an outdated relic, the Constitution provides a method for repeal. The Constitution does not furnish the federal courts with an eraser."

"It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion."

"The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the high powers delegated directly to the citizen, and is excepted out of the general powers of government. A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power."

"... They may lose battle after battle, be discomfited in every encounter, be defeated & beaten
by land & by sea, they can not be made to submit to conquerors. They may be exterminated, but
will never be vassals. The American Union cannot be maintained by force. It can be upheld alone by affection & by moral power, but never by the power of the sword. Even if this were not true of any one state, whose people were not wholly unanimous, it is certainly true of a number of states solemnly leagued to defend their separate independence against all opposition...."

"While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny."

"The argument that today's National Guardsmen, members of a select
militia, would constitute the only persons entitled to keep and bear
arms has no historical foundation."

- Joyce Lee Malcolm, Harvard Law and NEH Fellow, To Keep and Bear Arms
163 (Harvard University Press 1994)

"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church, for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

- Robert A. Heinlein, 'Revolt in 2100', Pg. 68-69, Baen Books paperback edition, 1999

"At Waco, was there really an urgency to get those people out of the compound at that particular time? Was the press going to make it look heroic for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? At Ruby Ridge, there was one guy in a cabin at the top of the mountain. Was it necessary for federal agents to go up there and shoot a 14-year-old in the back and shoot a woman with a child in her arms? What kind of mentality does that?"

"Abuse of power isn’t limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we’re not vigilant."

"John Adams was deadly serious when he remarked, "I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a disgrace, two men are called a Law Firm, and three or more are called a Congress." Nine are called a Supreme Court."

"... but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights..." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, #29

"The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the King of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable: There is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable, no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, #65

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws."

- Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, August 28, 1794

""Every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government."

"Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don't know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields."

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government."

"Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised..."

""The right of ordinary citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his government."

- Joyce Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. IX

"It was during the eighteenth century -- a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances within the English constitution -- that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate check on tyranny."

- Joyce Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 128

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.”

– First Annual Message to Congress; Federal Hall, New York City (January 8, 1790)

“... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.”

“That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit.”

– Richard Henry Lee, proposed by the Virginia delegation to the Constitutional Convention (defining the phrase “well-regulated militia” which was used exactly in the final draft of the Second Amendment); and suggested in their state ratification debates, June 1788, to clarify the right.

"When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state ... this violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people."

"The light that first broke over the thirteen colonies lying along the Atlantic Coast was destined to illuminate the world. It has been - and is - a struggle against the forces of darkness. Victory has been - and still is delayed - but the result is not in doubt."

"... in all countries where personal freedom is valued, however much each individual may rely on legal redress, the right of each to carry arms -- and these the best and the sharpest -- for his own protection in case of extremity, is a right of nature indelible and irrepressible, and the more it is sought to be repressed the more it will recur."

- James Paterson, Commentaries on the Liberty of the Subject and the Laws of England Relating to the Security of the Person, (London, 1877), Vol. 1, p. 441; quoted in Joyce Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms. The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 169-170

"I find that Amendments are once again on the Carpet. I hope that such may take place as will be for the Best Interest of the whole. A Bill of rights well secured that we the people may know how far we may Proceade in Every Department then their will be no Dispute Between people and rulers in that may be secured the right to keep and bear arms for Common and Extraordinary Occations such as to secure ourselves against the wild Beast and also to amuse us by fowling and for our Defence against a Common Enemy you know to learn the Use of arms is all that can Save us from a forighn foe that may attempt to subdue us for if we keep up the Use of arms and become well acquainted with them we Shall allway be able to look them in the face that arise up against us for it is impossible to Support a Standing armey large Enough to Guard our Lengthy Sea Coast and now Spare me on the subject of Standing armeys in a time of Peace they allway was first or last the downfall of all free Governments it was by their help Caesar made proud Rome Own a Tyrant and a Traytor for a Master..."

"For we may not think ever to keep that people in subjection which hath always lived in liberty, if they be not disarmed."

"Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."
- Helen Keller

"The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He who has nothing, and belongs to another, must be defended by him, and needs no arms: but he who thinks he is his own master, and has anything he may call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself and what he possesses, or else he lives precariously and at discretion. And though for a while those who have the sword in their power abstain from doing him injury; yet, by degrees, he will be awed into submission to every arbitrary command. Our ancestors, by being always armed, and frequently in action, defended themselves against the Romans, Danes and English; and maintained their liberty against encroachments of their own princes."

in A Discourse of Government with Relation to Militias in Political Works 6, 1749 AD (London, 1798, pg. 221)

"To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form."

"There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right."

"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work."

"The Novatian peasants, animated by despair and religious fury, boldly encountered the invaders of their country; and, though many of the Paphlagonians were slain, the Roman legions were vanquished by an irregular multitude, armed only with scythes and axes; and, except a few who escaped by an ignominious flight, four thousand soldiers were left dead on the field of battle."

- Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. XXI, ed. J.B. Bury with an Introduction by W.E.H. Lecky (New York: Fred de Fau and Co., 1906), in 12 vols. Vol. 3.

"Yet General Washington has taken post in a very Strong part of the Country
close behind Mr Howe and is prepared for offensive or difensive War just as
the Case may require. The Armies are nearly equal in Numbers; But they have
the advantage of better Discipline, better arms and cloathing. Our Men are
more Active, better Marksmen and Fight in a better Cause---;they will also
be supported by the Militia of the Country; if Needful, A Militia that have
already shared the Glory of defeating this formidable Enemy.

"Our Army at Tyconderoga under General Gates is also prepared for the reception
of General Sir Guy Carleton and General Burgoinge. In short we are pretty well
prepared but our soldiers being new, expect the beginning of the Campaign may
probably turn against us, altho we have no doubt of closing it much to the
Honor and advantage of America and that finally we shall so firmly establish
our Liberty and Independence that no Earthly power will ever again be able to
deprive us of them."

- The original of this letter has not been found. This text was sent with
Congress' next letter to Gálvez in October, for which see Committee of
Commerce to Gálvez, October 24, 1777, below. For the creation of the committee
of commerce July 5, 1777, and the demise of its predecessor secret committee,
see these Letters, 7:194n.3.

"Just because you yourself cannot readily accept, as to whether something is indeed true. Does not diminish the fact that it is, most certainly, the TRUTH."

"If you choose to dance with the devil, the devil will not change his tune. The devil will however, most certainly change you, and you will dance to his tune."

"An ostrich is very easy to behead, and this because its head is in the sand."