"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights." --Marquis de Lafayette, "Declaration Of The Rights Of Man" (1789)

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo Galilei

"A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles -- whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled -- is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these ''anti-conditions,'' your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years." - Ryszard Kapuscinski

"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance." Woodrow Wilson: Address, New York Press Club, May 9, 1912

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea." Robert Anton Wilson

"I would never rob your cradles to feed the dogs of war" Huey P Long

"A man is a sovereign unto himself, and may only be ruled by his own consent." John Wilkes - 1766

"Progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority." Oscar Wilde

"Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others." Willian Allen White 1868-1944 Editor, Emporia Gazette

"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger." Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837

"I tell ye true, liberty is the best of all things; never live beneath the noose of a servile halter." William Wallace, Address to the Scots, circa 1300

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

"Conservatives are afraid the people WON'T understand; Liberals are afraid the people WILL understand!!!" Unknown

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." Mark Twain

"It were not best that we should all think alike; it is the difference of opinion that makes horseraces." Mark Twain, 1894

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them." Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain." "Tom Sawyer," by Mark Twain, Chapter 2, "The Glorious Whitewasher"

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." Mark Twain: Manuscript note, c.1882

"Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship." Harry S. Truman, speech at Columbia University, Apr.28 1959

"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." Alexis de Tocqueville

"When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?" Henry David Thoreau

"There will never be a really free and enlightened state, until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." Henry David Thoreau

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. " Henry David Thoreau

"Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law." Henry David Thoreau

"As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." Henry David Thoreau

"Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning" Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

"The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind. ... In this field every person must be his own watchman for the truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the truth from the false for us." Thomas v Collins, 323 U.S. 516 (1945)

"Corruptisima republica plurimae leges." Tacitus (The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.)

"No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession & control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear & unquestionable authority of law." Supreme Court, 1891, Union Pacific RailWay Co v Botsford 141 US 250, 251

"The United States should get rid of its militias." Joseph Stalin

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime." U.S. Justice Potter Stewart

"Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity--in short, of tyranny--and it is committed to making tyranny universal." Adlai E. Stevenson

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools." Herbert Spencer, Essays, vol. 3, "State Tamperings with Money and Banks" (1891). from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

"Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed - first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf." Gerry Spence, "From Freedom To Slavery"

"There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims." Thomas Sowell

"Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes" Thomas Sowell

"Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric." Thomas Sowell

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." Joseph Sobran

"If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. there is no other." Carl Schurz ,(1829-1906) German-american statesman, journalist

"I think that the war on drugs is domestic Vietnam. And didn't we learn from Vietnam that, at a certain point in the war, we should stop and rethink our strategy, ask ``Why are we here, what are we doing, what's succeeded, what's failed?'' And we ought to do that with the domestic Vietnam, which is the war on drugs." Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." George Bernard Shaw. Man and Superman, "Maxims for Revolutionists: Liberty and Equality" (1903)

"How can we live in freedom and maintain that we are entitled to *anything* that we can't get without the labor of others? Remember, if we are entitled to the labor of others, that makes slaves of those others." Marilyn vos Savant, Parade Magazine, 12/31/95 - Marilyn vos Savant is listed in "The Guiness Book of World Records" Hall of Fame for the "Highest IQ".

"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." Richard Salant, former President of CBS News

"There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action." Bertrand Russell: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish

"Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit." Bertrand Russell: Saturday Review, 1951

"Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws." Baron M.A. Rothschild (1744 - 1812)

"My own party can succeed at the polls only so long as it continues to be the party of militant liberalism." Franklin D Roosevelt, Introduction to volume 7, The Public Papers and Addressess of Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Americans, both politicians and voters, may have become corrupted by big government beyond redemption. A virtuous government requires a virtuous people. A frugal government requires a self-reliant people. A free country requires people who value liberty more than money." Charley Reese

"The liberal party is a party which believes that, as new conditions an problems arise beyond the power of men and women to meet as individuals, it becomes the duty of the government itself to find new remedies with which to meet them." Franklin D. Roosevelt, Introduction to volume 7, The Public Papers and Addressess of Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows." Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value." Francisco D'Anconia, in ATLAS SHRUGGED, by Ayn Rand

"Do what's right for you, so long as it don't hurt no one." Elvis Presley

"He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it." Plato

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." Plato

"A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake, at the moment." Willis Player

"The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack." Wendell Phillips, American abolitionist,(1811-1884), speech, 1863

"Democracy is the name we give to other people when we need them." Robert Pellevue, Marquis de Flers (1872-1927)

"Fascism finds it necessary, at the outset, to take away from the ordinary human being what he has been taught and has grown to cherish the most: personal liberty. And it can be affirmed, without falling into exaggeration, that a curtailment of personal liberty not only has proved to be, but necessarily must be, a fundamental condition of the triumph of Fascism." Mario Palmieri, "The Philosophy of Fascism" (1936)

"It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves." Thomas Paine

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." William Pitt, 1783

"According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, with this need of raising the State to its rightful position." Mario Palmieri

"When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have freedom." Thomas Paine

"When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon." Thomas Paine

"Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself--that is my doctrine." Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

"The colonists are by the law of nature free-born, as indeed all man are, white or black...It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own." James Otis (1725-1783), The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, 1764

"The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind." Thomas Paine

"The religious conservatives aren't trying to get a nose under the tent anymore. They are the tent." Wis. GOP Chair David Opitz, Washington Times, 5/18/95

"The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes-- thank God these people don't actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already." P.J. O'Rourke, 1991, "Dirt of The Earth: The Ecologists"

"There is only one basic human right: the right to do as you please, without causing others harm. With it comes our only basic human duty: the duty to accept the consequences of our actions." P.J. O'Rourke

A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money-if a gun is held to his head." P.J. O'Rourke, Rolling Stone Magazine

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." P.J. O'Rourke

"Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose." Friedrich Nietzsche: The Antichrist

"The biggest killer on the planet is stress and I still think the best medicine is and always has been cannabis." Willie Nelson

"We ARE speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $ 70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 percent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect." New York Bar Association, statement to panel of lawyers on the drug question

"Family - see Fascist State." Benito Mussolini's Fascist dictionary

"The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, and there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words." Letter from David McIntosh former member of V.P. Quayle's Council on Competitiveness to Grover C. Norquist, Oct. 13, 1992

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill

"Liberty consists in doing what one desires." John Stuart Mill 1859

"So Long as we do not harm others we should be free to think, speak, act, & live as we see fit, without molestation from individuals, law, or gov't." John Stuart Mill 1859

"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." John Stuart Mill 1859

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant." John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), "On Liberty", 1859

"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still." John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_

"Over himself, over his own body & mind the individual is sovereign." J.S. Mill

"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages." H.L. Mencken

"Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are the most tolerable are arbitary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent." H.L. Mencken

"Liberals have many tails and chase them all." H.L. Mencken

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong." H.L. Mencken

"Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation." Karl Marx, 1848 author of "The Communist Manifesto"

"A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them." H. L. Mencken, 1918

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

"When we get to the point we try to use the law to oppose the law, it would seem laws are contradictory. When the laws are contradictory, it would seem there is opportunity for selective enforcement. Where there is selective enforcement the people are confused... but only for a little while. They soon make the rational leap and have no respect for law whatever." Chuck Marsh

"One man should not be afraid of improving his posessions, lest they be taken away from him, or another deterred by high taxes from starting a new business. Rather, the Prince should be ready to reward men who want to do these things and those who endeavour in any way to increase the prosperity of their city or their state." Machiavelli, "The Prince"

"The principal foundations of all states are good laws and good arms; and there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms." Machiavelli

"I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule and also ruled I will not be." John Henry Mackay

".... the ultimate authority... resides in the people alone." James Madison, in Federalist Papers No. 46

"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." President James Madison

"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation." James Madison (1751-1836)

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government." James Madison

"Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them." John Locke (1632-1704)

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common." John Locke, _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_

"There cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason. Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." John Locke

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." Abraham Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Abraham Lincoln

"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 consciences." C.S. Lewis

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn, and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." C.S. Lewis

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." Abraham Lincoln

"Before we head down a road that leads to censorship we must think long and hard about its consequences. It is

harmful and dangerous conduct, not speech, that justifies adverse legal consequences." Patrick Leahy, 1995-05-11

"Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it." Richard Lamm

"It went left-right, left-right, left-right." Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, calling Clinton's State Of The Union address a "great marching speech," 1/26/95

"Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior race. They think they're it. They believe they're more intelligent than the general run of mankind, better suited than the little people are to manage the little people's lives. They think they have the one true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century. They prefer big government because that is the first step to totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite. And of course they see themselves as the elite." Dean Koontz, from "The Face of Fear"

"Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. Like Martin, I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others." Coretta Scott King

"Don't you think it would be better to legalize victimless crimes like drugs & prostitution & divert the resources to more important things like the rapes & assaults & things like that?" Larry King, 1992

"All authority belongs to the people... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with chains of the Constitution." Thomas Jefferson

"I have sworn before the alter of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800

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