More Quotes IV

"The whole of the Bill of Rights is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals. It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." 

- Albert Gallatin, New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789.

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"I enclose a letter from the collector of Gloucester (Cape Ann, Massachusetts), together with copies of my answer and of a letter to the district attorney, on the subject of forcible opposition to the embargo. Be pleased to return both the letter and copies. I am verbally informed this morning that still more gross proceedings have taken place at Newburyport,—a vessel having sailed by force under the protection of a large armed mob assembled on the wharf, and who prevented the interference of the custom-house officers."

- Albert Gallatin, New York, Aug. 17, 1808 letter to Thomas Jefferson. [The Writings of Albert Gallatin, ed. Henry Adams (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1879). 3 vols.]. Vol. 1.

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"Self-defence is justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the laws of society."

- Sir William Blackstone (1723 - 1780), Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765).

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"When the day of conflict came, the issue of the contest was
necessarily changed. The People of the Colonies had maintained
the contest on the principle of resisting the invasion of
chartered rights--first by argument and remonstrance, and,
finally, by appeal to the sword. But with the war came the
necessary exercise of sovereign powers. The Declaration of
Independence justified itself as the only possible remedy for
insufferable wrongs. It seated itself upon the first foundations
of the law of nature, and the incontestable doctrine of human
rights. There was no longer any question of the constitutional
powers of the British Parliament, or of violated colonial
charters. Thenceforward the American Nation supported its
existence war: and the British Nation, by war, was Contending
for conquest. As, between the two parties, the single question
at issue was Independence--but in the confederate existence of
the North American Union, Liberty--not only their own liberty,
but the vital principle of liberty to the whole race of civilized
man, was involved."

- John Quincy Adams, House of Representatives, Dec. 31st, 1834
[ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF GILBERT MOTIER DE LA FAYETTE].

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"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

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"Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor."

- James Russell Lowell

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 "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the geat enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worth cause; who, at the best, knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory or defeat."

- President Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris April 23, 1910

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 "Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them."

- John Milton

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"It is a commonplace that the history of civilization is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found to be generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance.Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon, so long as there is no answer to it, gives claws to the weak."

- George Orwell (1903 - 1950), You and the Atom Bomb, essay for the Tribune, October 19th, 1945

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"Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order."

- John V. Lindsay

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"Let us then enumerate the functions of a state, and we shall easily elicit what we want . . . thirdly, there must be arms, for the members of a community have need of them, and in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority both against disobedient subjects and against external assailants."

- Aristotle, Politics, 7:8.

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"As of oligarchy so of tyranny....Both mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms."

- Aristotle (384 - 322 BC), Politics, 5:10.

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"The right men have by nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no covenant be relinquished."

- Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679), Leviathan (1651).

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"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope...build(ing) a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

- Robert F. Kennedy

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"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."

"If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people."

- James Madison

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."

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"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

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"Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage."

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"Freedom of press is limited to those who own one."

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"Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency."

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"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be lead to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

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"Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods."

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"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."

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"Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them."

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"Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of."

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"Liberals have many tails and chase them all."

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"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."

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"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."

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"It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts."

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"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

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"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."

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"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

 "Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights."

- Benjamin Rush

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"Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money."

- Thomas Hobbes

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"The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your daily victory or defeat."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

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"The possession of arms is the distinction between a free man 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 [the government] abstain from doing him injury; yet, by degrees, he will be awed into submission to every arbitrary command. Our ancestors [the Caledonians and Picts], 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."

- Andrew Fletcher, (1653 - 1716), A Discourse of Government with Relation to Militias in Political Works, 1698, p.47

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"Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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"General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked."

- Edmund Burke

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"Always stand on principle, even if you stand alone."

- John Quincy Adams

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"Every man has a right to do what he wills,
provided he interferes not with a like right
on the part of his neighbors."

- Herbert Spencer, as quoted by Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr., in 'The Path of the Law'

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"The end of such rules is obvious, but what is the justification
for depriving a man of his rights, a pure evil as far as it goes,
in consequence of the lapse of time? Sometimes the loss of evidence
is referred to, but that is a secondary matter. Sometimes the
desirability of peace, but why is peace more desirable after twenty
years than before? It is increasingly likely to come without the aid
of legislation. Sometimes it is said that, if a man neglects to
enforce his rights, he cannot complain if, after a while, the law
follows his example....But the connection is further back than the
first recorded history. It is in the nature of man's mind. A thing
which you have enjoyed and used as your own for a long time, whether
property or an opinion, takes root in your being and cannot be torn
away without your resenting the act and trying to defend yourself,
however you came by it. The law can ask no better justification than
the deepest instincts of man."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 'The Path of the Law'

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"I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both."

- Thomas Babington Macaulay

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"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for ills, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty -- so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator - and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer?

 Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree."

- Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria (1738 - 1794), On Crimes and Punishments, ch. XL: False Ideas of Utility (1764).

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"When a nation's government becomes more fearful of its citizens' rights than protective of them, that nation's future is only despotism and extinction." 

-Unknown, as quoted in ‘In crowd’ may be a detriment to U.S. by Col. Daniel M. Smith (Ret.)
 
"He who allows oppression, shares the crime."

- Erasmus Darwin

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"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom."

- F.A. Hayek

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning."

- Frederick Douglass

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"It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order."

- Thomas Jefferson

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"He admitted that we had been too democratic but was afraid we sd. incautiously run into the opposite extreme. We ought to attend to the rights of every class of the people. He had often wondered at the indifference of the superior classes of society to this dictate of humanity & policy; considering that however affluent their circumstances, or elevated their situations, might be, the course of a few years, not only might but certainly would, distribute their posterity throughout the lowest classes of Society. Every selfish motive therefore, every family attachment, ought to recommend such a system of policy as would provide no less carefully for the rights and happiness of the lowest than of the highest orders of Citizens."

- James Madison, about George Mason, (The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 reported by James Madison : May 31)

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"Arbitrary rule has its basis, not in the strength of the state or the chief, but in the moral weakness of the individual, who submits almost without resistance to the domineering power."

- Friedrich Hatzel

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"Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith."

- Paul of Tarsus, Galatians - Chapter 6

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

"Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
- George Bernard Shaw 

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"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."

- Giordano Bruno

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"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."

- Groucho Marx

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"The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open."

- Gunther Grass

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"The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois."
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

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"For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible, which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against, as will be explained later. Because there is no comparison whatever between an armed and a disarmed man; it is not reasonable to suppose that one who is armed will obey willingly one who is unarmed; or that any unarmed man will remain safe among armed servants."

- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

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"A free government is a complicated piece of machinery, the nice and exact adjustment of whose springs, wheels, and weights, is not yet well comprehended by the artists of the age, and still less by the people."

- John Adams to Thomas Jefferson

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"Any doctrine that weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state."
- John Dewey

"It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own."

- Herbert Clark Hoover

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"Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social, and even political."

- Ignazio Silone

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"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."

- Judge Gideon J. Tucker

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"Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity." 
- Thor-Heyerdahl, Norwegian ethnologist, 1914-2002

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"Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury? I answer: self-defence is a part of the law of nature, nor can it be denied the community, even against the King himself."

- John Locke (1632 - 1704), Two Treatises of Government (1689).

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"We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life-physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. 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, The Law
 
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"Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects."

- Lev Tolstoy

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"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority."

- Lord Acton

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"Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power."

- Ludwig von Mises

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...Mr. Davis submitted the following resolutions for consideration; which were ordered to be printed:

"...14. Resolved, That the present executive government of the United States has subverted,
for the time, in large portions of the loyal States, the freedom of speech, the freedom
of the press, and free suffrage, the constitutions and laws of the States and of the
United States, the civil courts and trial by jury; it has ordered, ad libitum, arbitrary
arrests by military officers, not only without warrant, but without any charge or
imputation of crime or offence; and has hurried the persons so arrested from home and
vicinage to distant prisons and kept them incarcerated there for an indefinite time; some
of whom it discharged without trial, and in utter ignorance of the cause of their arrest
and imprisonment; and others it caused to be brought before courts created by itself, and
to be tried and punished without law, in violation of the constitutional guarantee to the citizen of his right to keep and bear arms, and of his rights of property; it has forcibly deprived as welt the loyal as the disloyal of both; it has usurped the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and to proclaim martial law, and establish military tribunals
in States and parts of States where there was no obstruction to the due administration of
the laws of the United States and the States by the civil courts and authorities; and
ordered many citizens, who were not connected with the army or navy, to be dragged before
its drumhead courts, and to be tried by them for new and strange offences, declared by
itself, and by undefined and undefinable law, being but the arbitrary will of the court;
it has ordained at pleasure a military despotism in the loyal States, by means of courts-
martial, provost marshals, and military forces, governed neither by law, principles, nor
rules, from whose tyranny and oppressions no man can claim immunity; all of which must be
repudiated and swept away by the sovereign people."

- Journal of the U.S. Senate ,Jan. 5, 1864

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"[T]here is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility."

- Theodore Roosevelt

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"In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place."

"There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations."

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
 
"Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt."
- Mahatma Gandhi

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"Any law which violates the indefeasible rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all."
- Maximilien Robespierre

"Having long toiled with you my dear friend in the Vineyard of liberty, I do with great pleasure submit to your wisdom and patriotism, the objections that prevail in my mind against the new Constitution proposed for federal government--which objections I did propose to Congress in form of amendments to be discussed, and that such as were approved might be forwarded to the States with the Convention system. You will have been informed by other hands why these amendments were not considered and do not appear on the Journal, and the reasons that influenced a bare tranmission of the Convention plan, without a syllable of approbation or disapprobation on the part of Congress. I suppose my dear Sir, that the good people of the U. States in their late generous contest, contended for free government in the fullest, clearest, and strongest sense. That they had no idea of being brought under despotic rule under the notion of "Strong government," or in form of elective despotism: Chains being still Chains, whether made of gold or iron.
 
"The corrupting nature of power, and its insatiable appetite for increase, hath proved the necessity, and procured the adoption of the strongest and most express declarations of that Residuum of natural rights, which is not intended to be given up to Society; and which indeed is not necessary to be given for any good social purpose. In a government therefore, when the power of judging what shall be for the general welfare, which goes to every object of human legislation; and where the laws of such Judges shall be the supreme Law of the Land: it seems to be of the last consequence to declare in most explicit terms the reservations above alluded to. So much for the propriety of a Bill of Rights as a necessary bottom to this new system--It is in vain to say that the defects in this new Constitution may be remedied by the Legislature created by it. The remedy, as it may, so it may not be applied--And if it should a subsequent Assembly may repeal the Acts of its predecessor for the parliamentary doctrine is "quod leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant" 4 Inst. 43. Surely this is not a ground upon which a wise and good man would choose to rest the dearest rights of human nature."
 
- Richard Henry Lee, to Samuel Adams in a letter 5 Oct. 1787
 
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"The Constitution, in a very significant sense, is not a mechanism for making decisions but preventing them."

- Michael Gilson De Lomos

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"Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty."

- Calvin Coolidge

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"It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do."

- Moliere

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"Who's more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?"

- Obi Wan Kenobi

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"Be not afraid of any man, no matter what his size; when danger threatens, call on me and I will equalize." - Slogan of a 19th century gun manufacturer.

"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."

- Aristotle, Politics

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"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."

- Oscar Wilde

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"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

"Justice will only exist where those not effected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended."

- Plato

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"He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience."

- Samuel Johnson

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"The more corrupt the state, the numerous the laws."

- Tacitus

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"Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress."

- Thomas A. Edison


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