"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." ~ Thomas B. Reed

Albert Einstein

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." ~ Albert Einstein

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."  ~ Albert Einstein

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."
~ Albert Einstein

Adlai Stevenson

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." ~ Adlai Stevenson

Vanya Cohen

"When there's a single thief, it's robbery.  When there are a thousand thieves, it's taxation."  ~Vanya Cohen

H.L. Mencken

"Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." ~ H.L. Mencken

"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

"The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'."  ~ H.L. Mencken

"All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." ~ H.L. Mencken

"My old suggestion that public offices be filled by drawing lots, as a jury box is filled, was probably more intelligent than I suspected. It has been criticized on the ground that selecting a man at random would probably produce some extremely bad State governors....But I incline to believe that it would be best to choose members of the Legislature quite at random. No matter how stupid they were, they could not be more stupid than the average legislator under the present system. Certainly, they'd be measurably more honest, taking one with another. Finally, there would be the great advantage that all of them had got their jobs unwillingly, and were eager, not to spin out their sessions endlessly, but to get home as soon as possible." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling." ~ H.L. Mencken

"No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time." ~ H.L. Mencken

"There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives." ~ H.L. Mencken

"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time." ~ H.L. Mencken

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Sunday — A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." ~ H.L. Mencken

"If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say." ~ H.L. Mencken

"I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and coloured and put into cans." ~ H.L. Mencken

"When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel." ~ H.L. Mencken

"[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle — a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?
A: Why do men go to zoos?" ~ H.L. Mencken

"What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar." ~ H.L. Mencken

"[The average man] is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth." ~ H.L. Mencken
 

"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl." ~ H.L. Mencken

"To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am — a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions — can be so happy as he can be in the United States." ~ H.L. Mencken

"To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride." ~ H.L. Mencken

"It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground." ~ H.L. Mencken

"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H.L. Mencken

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre...." ~ H.L. Mencken

"All government, of course, is against liberty." ~ H.L. Mencken

"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time." ~  H. L. Mencken

"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl." ~ H.L. Mencken, epitaph

"It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly." ~ H.L. Mencken

"I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air -- that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave." ~ H.L. Mencken

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

"The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have." ~ H.L. Mencken

"I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave." ~ H.L. Mencken

"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." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable." ~ H.L. Mencken
 

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

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses." ~ H.L. Mencken

"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." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war… The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." ~ H.L. Mencken

"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

"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." ~ H.L. Mencken

"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money." ~ H.L. Mencken

"A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in." ~ H.L. Mencken

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." ~ H.L. Mencken

Bertrand Russell

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

E.B. White

"The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war." ~ E.B. White

Georg Christoph Lichtenber

"Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own." ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenber

David Galland

"...the very idea that some faceless government functionary can walk into my house, or my office, at any time and on any pretense and require me to spend my time and resources assisting him in going over my books so that he may demand more money from me ­ money that will then flow through the machine to be used to purposes I find personally abhorrent -- is a truly warped and disturbing concept." ~ David Galland

Charles Bukowski

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." ~Charles Bukowski

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." ~ Charles Bukowski

Henry Miller

"Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another's way of life - so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!" ~ Henry Miller

C.P. Snow

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C.P. Snow

 "No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ... And if he does know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to decide a single human fate." ~ C.P. Snow

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the State." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

"In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Liberty is a slow fruit."  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Liberty is a slow fruit." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A man's library is a sort of harem." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

"Liberty is slow fruit." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lord Acton

"At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities...." ~ Lord Acton

John Adams

"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people." ~ John Adams

"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." ~ John Adams

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" ~ John Adams

"You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments: rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws...." ~ John Adams

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." ~ John Adams

"Corruption, like a cancer … eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society." ~ John Adams

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." ~ John Adams

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." ~ John Adams

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." ~ John Adams

Friedrich von Hayek

"It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.” ~ Friedrich von Hayek

"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." ~ Friedrich von Hayek

"All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest." ~ Friedrich von Hayek

"I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice." ~ Friedrich von Hayek

"What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free." ~ Friedrich von Hayek

John Quincy Adams

"The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy." ~ John Quincy Adams

Samuel Adams

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." ~ Samuel Adams

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." ~ Samuel Adams

"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader..." ~ Samuel Adams

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." ~ Samuel Adams

"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can." ~ Samuel Adams

"The liberties of our country...are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men." ~ Samuel Adams

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." ~ Samuel Adams

Joseph Addison

"A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage." ~ Joseph Addison

Mortimer Adler

"Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men." ~ Mortimer Adler

Aeschylus

"Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny." ~ Aeschylus

Donald Alexander

"We now have so many regulations that everyone is guilty of some violation." ~ Donald Alexander

Dante Alighieri

"For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?" ~ Dante Alighieri

"Mankind is at its best when it is most free." ~ Dante Alighieri

Florence Allen

"Liberty cannot be caged into a charter or handed on ready-made to the next generation. Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times. Whether or not we establish freedom rests with ourselves." ~ Florence Allen

ACLU

"Liberty is always unfinished business." ~ American Civil Liberties Union

Margaret Atwood

"The use of 'religion' as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time." ~ Margaret Atwood

Mikhail Bakunin

"Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it." ~ Mikhail Bakunin

"Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it." ~ Mikhail Bakunin
 

Bertrand Barere de Vieuzac

"The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants." ~ Bertrand Barere de Vieuzac

Alan Barth

"Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions." ~ Alan Barth

Bruce Barton

"What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage." ~ Bruce Barton

Frederic Bastiat

"It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder." ~ Frederic Bastiat

"The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended." ~ Frederic Bastiat

"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve..." ~ Frederic Bastiat

"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't 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. Then abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic." ~ Frederic Bastiat

"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

"By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others." ~ Frederic Bastiat

“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 politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder." ~ Frederic Bastiat

"The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun — reject all systems, and try of liberty...." ~ Frederic Bastiat

Henry Ward Beecher

"Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight." ~ Henry Ward Beecher

"Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight." ~ Henry Ward Beecher
 

Clive Bell

"Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open." ~ Clive Bell

"Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open." ~ Clive Bell

Hilaire Belloc

"Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty." ~ Hilaire Belloc

Alan Bloom

"Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities." ~ Alan Bloom

William Borah

"Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense -- the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen." ~ William Borah

James Bovard

"The first step in saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose it unless fundamental political changes occur." ~ James Bovard

"Politicians nowadays treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer’s patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued. It doesn’t matter what untruths the people are fed because they will not long remember. But in politics, forgotten falsehoods almost guarantee new treachery." ~ James Bovard

"America needs fewer laws, not more prisons." ~ James Bovard

Louis Brandeis

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent....The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." ~ Louis Brandeis

"Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears." ~ Louis Brandeis

"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty." ~ Louis Brandeis

"The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people." ~ Louis D. Brandeis

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." ~ Louis Brandeis
 

Tom Braun

"If you think we are free today, you know nothing about tyranny and even less about freedom." ~ Tom Braun

Harry Browne

"A welfare state is frightened of every poor person who tries to get in and every rich person who tries to get out." ~ Harry Browne

Pearl S. Buck

"None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free." ~ Pearl S. Buck

"None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free." ~ Pearl S. Buck

William F. Buckley, Jr.

"We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down." ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

"All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law." ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
 

Thomas Jefferson

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
 

“Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

“The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
 

"...I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity... is but swindling futurity on a large scale." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately...." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"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." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?" ~ Thomas Jefferson

"May [the Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"...we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessities and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society." ~ Thomas Jefferson

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

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

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"[The People] are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing....this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither." ~ Thomas Jefferson

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

"Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?" ~ Thomas Jefferson
 

"I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." ~ Thomas Jefferson
 

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"When all government...in little as in great things...shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." ~ Thomas Jefferson
 

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty." ~ Thomas Jefferson

Voltaire

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." ~ Voltaire

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." ~ Voltaire

"The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death." ~ Voltaire

"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." ~ Voltaire

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." ~ Voltaire

"It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster." ~ Voltaire

"It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere." ~ Voltaire

"The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force." ~ Voltaire

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." ~ Voltaire

"The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned with it." ~ Voltaire
 

"A great many laws in a country, like many physicians, is a sign of malady." ~ Voltaire

Benjamin Franklin

“Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
 

“Where liberty is, there is my country.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.  As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own.  Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"Little strokes fell great oaks." ~ Benjamin Franklin
 

"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"No man's life, liberty or fortune is safe while our legislature is in session." ~ Benjamin Franklin

“Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
 

Unknown

“No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” ~ Unknown

"A library is an arsenal of liberty." ~ Unknown

"A great war always creates more scoundrels than it kills." ~ Unknown

"Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don’t think." ~ Unknown

Thomas Paine

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.” ~ Thomas Paine

“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.” ~ Thomas Paine
 

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." ~ Thomas Paine

"The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood." ~ Thomas Paine

"When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon." ~ Thomas Paine

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher." ~ Thomas Paine

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."  ~Thomas Paine

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression: for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach unto himself." ~ Thomas Paine

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

Archibald MacLeish

“There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American Dream.” ~ Archibald MacLeish

"Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing." ~ Archibald MacLeish

Josiah Warren

“Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost.” ~ Josiah Warren
 

Kahlil Gibran

“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

Geoffrey Fisher

“There is a sacred realm of privacy for every man and woman where he makes his choices and decisions-a realm of his own essential rights and liberties into which the law, generally speaking, must not intrude.” ~ Geoffrey Fisher

Edmund Burke

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one...." ~ Edmund Burke
 

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." ~ Edmund Burke
 

"Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist." ~ Edmund Burke
 

"The greater the power the more dangerous the abuse." ~ Edmund Burke
 

"Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist." ~ Edmund Burke

Sir Richard Francis Burton

"Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
From none but self expect applause:
He noblest lives and noblest dies
Who makes and keeps his self-made laws." ~ Sir Richard Francis Burton
 

Lord Byron

"Who would be free themselves must strike the blow." ~ Lord Byron
 

"The wish, which ages have not yet subdued In man, to have no master save his mood." ~ Lord Byron
 

John Cage

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." ~ John Cage
 

Albert Camus

"Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne...Oh no! It's a...long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting." ~ Albert Camus

"Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all." ~ Albert Camus

"Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne...Oh no!  It's a...long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting." ~ Albert Camus

Cato

"Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing Freedom of Speech...." ~ Cato
 

"By Liberty I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private Actions and Property." ~ Cato

Carrie Chapman Catt

"There are two kinds of restrictions on human liberty -- the restraint of law and that of custom.  No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion." ~ Carrie Chapman Catt
 

Cervantes

"Liberty is one of the choicest gifts that heaven hath bestowed upon man, and exceeds in value all the treasures which the earth contains within its bosom, or the sea covers. Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable." ~ Cervantes

Edmund Chaffee

"The majority of us are for free speech when it deals with subjects concerning which we have no intense feelings." ~ Edmund Chaffee
 

William Ellery Channing

"The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed.  A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.  If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny." ~ William Ellery Channing
 

"The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot." ~ William Ellery Channing
 

"The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated." ~ William Ellery Channing

John Jay Chapman

"Attack another’s rights and you destroy your own." ~ John Jay Chapman
 

Winston Churchill

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the uneven division of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal division of misery." ~ Winston Churchill
 

"Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] ... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks ... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly." ~ Winston Churchill

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter." ~ Winston Churchill

"You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken -- unspeakable! -- fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! -- of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic." ~ Winston Churchill

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." ~ Winston Churchill

Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered."  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born...is to live the life of a child forever." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Ramsey Clark

"A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you." ~ Ramsey Clark

W.K. Clifford

"It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." ~ W.K. Clifford

Charles Caleb Colton

"Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed." ~ Charles Caleb Colton
 

"Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty." ~ Charles Caleb Colton

"Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind." ~ Charles Caleb Colton

"Liberty will not descend to a people. A people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed." ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Henry Steele Commager

"Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment." ~ Henry Steele Commager

Anthony Ashley Cooper

"Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty." ~ Anthony Ashley Cooper
 

William Cowper

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it.  ~ William Cowper

Oliver Cromwell

"It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it." ~ Oliver Cromwell

John Philpot Curran

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active.  The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime...." ~ John Philpot Curran
 

Czech proverb

"The big thieves hang the little ones." ~ Czech proverb

Voltarine de Cleyre

"Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that “freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license,” and they will define freedom out of existence." ~ Voltarine de Cleyre

Bertrand de Jouvenel

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." ~ Bertrand de Jouvenel

Etienne de la Boetie

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

"Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces." ~ Etienne de la Boetie
 

Salvador De Madariaga

"He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power." ~ Salvador De Madariaga

Alexis de Tocqueville

"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it."  ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

"When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters." ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
 

"It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity." ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

"Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to destroy either of these contrary instincts, they seek to satisfy both at once. They imagine a single, omnipotent, tutelary power, but one that is elected by the citizens. They combine centralization with popular sovereignty. This gives them some respite. They console themselves for being treated as wards by imagining that they have chosen their own protectors. Each individual allows himself to be clapped in chains because that the other end of the chain is held not by a man or a class but by the people themselves." ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

"What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?" ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Bill Bonner

"Anyone who wants to vote probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Voting is the first step towards zombification – trying to get something without actually working for it." ~ Bill Bonner
 

“Printing up extra money – with no backing – used to be the sort of thing only counterfeiters did. Now it is done by the central bankers and Treasury Secretaries themselves. They don’t apologize for it. They don’t hang their heads and contemplate blowing their brains out. Instead, they’re proud of it... announcing that they ‘saved civilization,’ or some such claptrap.” ~ Bill Bonner

"Central planning doesn’t work. A little bit of it is a drag. A lot is fatal." ~ Bill Bonner

Rick Rule

“What's interesting then is that every national government has some incentive to devalue [its currency] – to protect their own domestic economy and employment. Gold has no similar constituency for devaluation.” ~ Rick Rule

Benjamin Disraeli

"For you see, the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." ~ Benjamin Disraeli

William O. Douglas

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." ~ William O. Douglas
 

"The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life." ~ William O. Douglas

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions.  It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." ~ William O. Douglas

"The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.  Speech is often provocative and challenging.  It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea." ~ William O. Douglas

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." ~ William O. Douglas

Frederick Douglass

"I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class." ~ Frederick Douglass

"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.  That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants.  It is the right which they first of all strike down." ~ Frederick Douglass

"To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave." ~ Frederick Douglass
 

"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."  ~ Frederick Douglass

"To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave." ~ Frederick Douglass

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." ~ Frederick Douglass

Jimmy Durante

"Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?"  ~ Jimmy Durante

Edmund Spenser

"What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty." ~ Edmund Spenser

Epictetus

"He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action are not impeded, whose desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into that which he would avoid." ~ Epictetus
 

"Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish?  Nothing else." ~ Epictetus
 

"No man is free who is not a master of himself." ~ Epictetus

Victor Ferkiss

"Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine." ~ Victor Ferkiss

Andrew Fletcher

"And I cannot see, why arms should be denied to any man who is not a slave, since they are the only true badges of liberty."  ~ Andrew Fletcher

Oscar Levant

"The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too."  ~ Oscar Levant

Henry Ford

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." ~ Henry Ford

Frank Zappa

"Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts." ~ Frank Zappa

"Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts." ~ Frank Zappa

Wendell Phillips

"No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty.  But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents."
~ Wendell Phillips

"No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents." ~ Wendell Phillips

Euripides

"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."
~ Euripides

E.M. Forster

"We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance.  In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship." ~ E.M. Forster

Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have."

Howard S. Katz

"Keynesianism is not a theory of economics. It is a confidence game, and the question is not whether they can correctly predict the future. The question is, can they gain your confidence and get you to act in such a manner that they can steal your wealth?
" ~ Howard S. Katz

"Keynesianism is not a theory of economics. It is a confidence game, and the question is not whether they can correctly predict the future. The question is, can they gain your confidence and get you to act in such a manner that they can steal your wealth?" ~ Howard S. Katz

Felix Frankfurter

"It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy.  History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end." ~ Felix Frankfurter

Georg Cantor

"A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged and the less it is understood the more tenaciously it is held." ~ Georg Cantor

Mark B. Cohen

"Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate." ~ Mark B. Cohen

Kenneth W. Royce

"Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers.  Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew." ~ Kenneth W. Royce

Learned Hand

"What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it…" ~ Learned Hand

Thomas Moore

"Better to dwell in freedom's hall,
With a cold damp floor and mouldering wall,
Than bow the head and bend the knee
In the proudest palace of slaverie."
~ Thomas Moore

Vladimir Lenin

"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." ~  Vladimir Lenin

William Hazlitt

"The only vice that can not be forgiven is hypocrisy."
~ William Hazlitt

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." ~ William Hazlitt

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." ~ William Hazlitt

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." ~ William Hazlitt

Richard Armey

"Government is saying to the average citizen every January 1: 'For the next five months you’ll be working for us, for goals we shall determine. Is that clear? After May 5 you may look after your own needs and ambitions, but report back to us next January. Now move along.' ... If nearly half of what you make is spent by someone else, that means that half your work time is spent working for someone else. Call me a radical, but I think that comes dangerously close to being a form of indentured servitude." ~ Richard Armey

"[T]he tax code has been piling up, year after year, a symbol of everything gone wrong in America, of arrogant rulers and lost freedom, just waiting for us to pick the whole thing up and heave it away. It has to happen. Free people can put up with such laws only for so long." ~ Richard Armey

"[T]he tax code has been piling up, year after year, a symbol of everything gone wrong in America, of arrogant rulers and lost freedom, just waiting for us to pick the whole thing up and heave it away. It has to happen. Free people can put up with such laws only for so long." ~ Richard Armey

Thomas Edison

"I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill." ~ Thomas Edison

Mallory Factor

"Ancient Rome surely did not expect its sudden fall any more than the Soviet Union did in 1991, or than America does now.
" ~ Mallory Factor

"Ancient Rome surely did not expect its sudden fall any more than the Soviet Union did in 1991, or than America does now." ~ Mallory Factor

P.J. O'Rourke

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

"Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." ~ P.J. O'Rourke

Ron Paul

"Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!"
~ Ron Paul

"American voters should understand that Congress will always find a way to spend every last dollar sent to Washington." ~ Ron Paul

"Remember, politicians get votes by promising everything to everyone, always at the expense of some other invisible taxpayers." ~ Ron Paul

"The federal government cannot maintain a budget surplus any more than an alcoholic can leave a fresh bottle of whiskey untouched in the cupboard." ~ Ron Paul

"I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10 mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe." ~ Ron Paul

"And yet even among the friends of liberty, many people are deceived into believing that government can make them safe from all harm, provide fairly distributed economic security, and improve individual moral behavior. If the government is granted a monopoly on the use of force to achieve these goals, history shows that power is always abused. Every single time." ~ Ron Paul

"Rights mean you have a right to your life. You have a right to your liberty, and you should have a right to keep the fruits of your labor....I, in a way, don’t like to use those terms: gay rights, women’s rights, minority rights, religious rights. There’s only one type of right. It’s the right to your liberty." ~ Ron Paul

Stephen T. Byington

"No legal tender law is ever needed to make men take good money; its only use is to make them take bad money." ~ Stephen T. Byington

Tupper Saucy

"About all a Federal Reserve note can legally do is wipe out one debt and replace it with itself another debt, a note that promises nothing. If anything's been paid, the payment occurs only in the minds of the parties..."
~ Tupper Saucy

Gerry Spence

"The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?" ~ Gerry Spence

W.H. Chamberlin

"One of the most insidious consequences of the present burden of personal income tax is that it strips many middle class families of financial reserves and seems to lend support to campaigns for socialized medicine, socialized housing, socialized food, socialized everything. The personal income tax has made the individual vastly more dependent on the State and more avid for state hand-outs.  It has shifted the balance in America from an individual-centered to a State-centered economic and social system." ~ W. H. Chamberlin

Michael Badnarik

"How bad do things have to get before you do something? Do they have to take away all your property? Do they have to license every activity that you want to engage in? Do they have to start throwing you on cattle cars before you say “now wait a minute, I don’t think this is a good idea.” How long is it going to be before you finally resist and say “No, I will not comply. Period!” Ask yourself now because sooner or later you are going to come to that line, and when they cross it, you’re going to say well now cross this line; ok now cross that line; ok now cross this line. Pretty soon you’re in a corner. Sooner or later you’ve got to stand your ground whether anybody else does or not. That is what liberty is all about." ~ Michael Badnarik

Mark Twain

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

"Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense." ~ Mark Twain

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." ~ Mark Twain

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." ~ Mark Twain

"A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty." ~ Mark Twain

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." ~ Mark Twain
 

Bob Chapman

"Keynesianism is in part economic theory, but its real goal is the social-governmental manipulation of markets intended to concentrate government power in the hands of the corporate few, producing corporatist fascism as the final economic and financial power under such a system and the final implementation, which ends in the brute force and the manipulation of laws for its completion, which is totalitarian government." ~ Bob Chapman

Raymond J. Keating

"Monetary policy today is guided by little more than government fiat -- by the calculations, often mistaken economic theories, and whims of central bankers or, even worse, politicians. Under such a regime, inflation of three or four percent annually has come to be viewed as a stellar monetary performance. However, under a more sound monetary system -- i.e., a gold standard -- such increases in the general price level would be seen as wildly inflationary." ~ Raymond J. Keating

Buddha

"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." ~ Buddha

David Friedman

"The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations." ~ David Friedman

John Dryden

"O freedom, first delight of human kind!" ~ John Dryden

Aesop

"Better to starve free than be a fat slave."
~ Aesop

Sally Kempton

"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head." ~ Sally Kempton

Robert Bork

"As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would have [the] constriction of our liberties that would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago." ~ Judge Robert Bork

Milton Friedman

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." ~ Milton Friedman

Rocco Galati

"19 terrorists in 6 weeks have been able to command 300 million North Americans to do away with the entirety of their civil liberties that took 700 years to advance from the Magna Carta onward. The terrorists have already won the political and ideological war with one terrorist act. It is mindboggling that we are that weak as a society." ~ Rocco Galati

Mahatma Gandhi

"Freedom is not worth living if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that previous right." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

“Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"We must become the change we want to see in the world." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man’s ingenuity." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts – that is where the battle should be fought." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

William Lloyd Garrison

"Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril." ~ William Lloyd Garrison

Heywood Broun

"The censor believes that he can hold back the mighty traffic of life with a tin whistle and a raised right hand. For after all, it is life with which he quarrels." ~ Heywood Broun

David Lloyd George

"Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired." ~ David Lloyd George

"Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired." ~ David Lloyd George

Henry George

"It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly." ~ Henry George

Edward Gibbon

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

Josiah William Gitt

"Humanity's most valuable assets have been the non-conformists. Were it not for the non-conformists, he who refuses to be satisfied to go along with the continuance of things as they are, and insists upon attempting to find new ways of bettering things, the world would have known little progress, indeed." ~ Josiah William Gitt

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Barry Goldwater

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

"Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny." ~ Barry Goldwater

Horace Greeley

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

Lord Hailsham

"Political liberty is nothing else but the diffusion of power." ~ Lord Hailsham

Judge Learned Hand

"I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no courts to save it." ~ Judge Learned Hand

Robert Earl Hayden

"This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth." ~ Robert Earl Hayden

Leo Tolstoy

"The misapprehension springs from the fact that the learned jurists, deceiving themselves as well as others, depict in their books an ideal of government - not as it really is, an assembly of men who oppress their fellow citizens, but in accordance with the scientific postulate, as a body of men who act as the representatives of the rest of the nation. They have gone on repeating this to others so long that they have ended by believing it themselves, and they really seem to think that justice is one of the duties of governments. History, however, shows us that governments, as seen from the reign of Caesar to those of the two Napoleons and Prince Bismarck, are in their very essence a violation of justice; a man or a body of men having at command an army of trained soldiers, deluded creatures who are ready for any violence, and through whose agency they govern the State, will have no keen sense of the obligation of justice. Therefore governments will never consent to diminish the number of those well-trained and submissive servants, who constitute their power and influence." ~ Leo Tolstoy
 

Auberon Herbert

"Politics must be the battle of the principles... the principle of liberty against the principle of force." ~ Auberon Herbert

Frank Herbert

"Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit." ~ Frank Herbert

"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase...the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive." ~ Frank Herbert

Charlton Heston

"Political correctness is simply tyranny with manners." ~ Charlton Heston

William E. Hocking

"Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure." ~ William E. Hocking

Sergei Hoff

"Do we desire to be cradled, and then carried throughout life to our graves by this partisan propelled bureaucratic monstrosity? ...as individuals of sovereign dignity, are we now so terrified, bewildered, and impotent that our main purpose is to seek asylum from the potential hazards of freedom? Have we no faith in our natural strengths and abilities?" ~ Sergei Hoff

Eric Hoffer

"People unfit for freedom - who cannot do much with it - are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a 'have' type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a 'have not' type of self." ~ Eric Hoffer

"Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power." ~ Eric Hoffer

"The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations." ~ Eric Hoffer

"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail." ~ Eric Hoffer

Joshia Gilbert Holland

"The cry of the soul is for freedom. It longs for liberty, from the date of its first conscious moments." ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

Robert Higgs

"All nonstate threats to life, liberty, and property appear to be relatively petty and therefore can be dealt with. Only states can pose truly massive threats, and sooner or later the horrors with which they menace mankind invariably come to pass." ~ Robert Higgs

Joseph Sobran

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

 "The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself." ~ Joseph Sobran

"War is just one more big government program." ~ Joseph Sobran

Maria Montessori

"Establishing lasting peace is the work of education." ~ Maria Montessori

"Discipline must come through liberty... We do not consider an individual disciplined when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined." ~ Maria Montessori

Addison Wiggin

“For those who unfairly lump Social Security in with Bernie Madoff, in all fairness, you should point out the difference. No one was ever legally required to pay money to Madoff.” ~ Addison Wiggin’s 5 Min. Forecast

Josiah Gilbert Holland

"The cry of the soul is for freedom. It longs for liberty, from the date of its first conscious moments." ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

"Perfect love holds the secret of the world's perfect liberty." ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

Sidney Hook

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

J. Edgar Hoover

"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." ~ J. Edgar Hoover

Elbert Hubbard

"The man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also." ~ Elbert Hubbard

Charles Evans Hughes

"It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.'" ~ Charles Evans Hughes

David Hume

"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." ~ David Hume

Hubert H. Humprhey

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible." ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

Hubert H. Humphrey

"Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man." ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

"There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free." ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

Henry David Thoreau

"Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"The fate of the coun­try does not de­pend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not de­pend on what kind of pa­per you drop into the bal­lot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your cham­ber into the street every morning." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." ~ Henry David Thoreau
 

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

"Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?" ~ Henry David Thoreau

Aldous Huxley

"Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power." ~ Aldous Huxley

"Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty." ~ Aldous Huxley

"Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power." ~ Aldous Huxley

Henrik Ibsen

"The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom -- they are the pillars of society." ~ Henrik Ibsen

"One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, ‘I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it." ~ Henrik Ibsen

"You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty." ~ Henrik Ibsen

"One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, 'I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it." ~ Henrik Ibsen

Robert G. Ingersoll

"What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man. Without liberty, the brain is a dungeon, where the chained thoughts die with their pinions pressed against the hingeless doors." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Robert H. Jackson

"Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order." ~ Robert H. Jackson

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

Cyril James

"A free man is as jealous of his responsibilities as he is of his liberties." ~ Cyril James

William James

"The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours." ~ William James

David Stockman

"I invest in anything that Bernanke can't destroy including Gold, canned beans, bottled water and flashlight batteries...." ~ David Stockman

Gerald W. Johnson

"We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free men." ~ Gerald W. Johnson

Paul Johnson

"Throughout history, the attachment of even the humblest people to their freedom…has come as an unpleasant shock to condescending ideologues." ~ Paul Johnson

Dr. Samuel Johnson

"They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty." ~ Dr. Samuel Johnson

Florynce Kennedy

"You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble." ~ Florynce Kennedy

"Freedom is like taking a bath -- you have to keep doing it every day!" ~ Florynce Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people." ~ John F. Kennedy

unknown

"Honest Value Never Fails." ~ inscription on silver coin

Soren Kierkegaard

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Wayne LaPierre

"The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls." ~ Wayne LaPierre

D.H. Lawrence

"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves." ~ D.H. Lawrence

"I do esteem individual liberty above everything." ~ D.H. Lawrence

Richard Henry Lee

"It must never be forgotten...that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power." ~ Richard Henry Lee

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

Cullen Hightower

"We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex--but Congress can." ~ Cullen Hightower

Robert W. Lee

"It is becoming increasingly apparent that many—arguably most—of the problems that plague our nation have been aggravated rather than alleviated by federal intervention. In one area after another, massive infusions of tax dollars have been squandered on false solutions which, when they fail to achieve their stated objectives, are cited to justify even more spending on other futile schemes that result in bigger government." ~ Robert W. Lee

C.S. Lewis

"'Useful,' and 'necessity' was always 'the tyrant's plea'." ~ C.S. Lewis

Walter Lippmann

"Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark." ~ Walter Lippmann

"This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement — that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it — that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings." ~ Walter Lippmann

John Locke

"Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other." ~ John Locke

"...every Man has a Property in his own Person. This nobody has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his." ~ John Locke

"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." ~ John Locke

Henry Cabot Lodge

"Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin." ~ Henry Cabot Lodge

James Russell Lowell

True freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free.
~ James Russell Lowell

Douglas MacArthur

"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation." ~ Douglas MacArthur

"The inescapable price of liberty is an ability to preserve it from destruction." ~ Douglas MacArthur

Thomas Babington Macaulay

"And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?" ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

"Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely." ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

"Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear." ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

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

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

Richard Scarry

"Don't take things that don't belong to you." ~ Richard Scarry's Please and Thank You Book

Jose Marti y Perez

"To change masters is not to be free." ~ Jose Marti y Perez

James Madison

"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"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 death." ~ James Madison

"Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation." ~ James Madison

"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." ~ James Madison

"The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings." ~ James Madison

"Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death." ~ James Madison

"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much...to forget it." ~ James Madison

Hiram Mann

"No man survives when freedom fails
The best men rot in filthy jails
And those who cry 'appease, appease'
Are hanged by those they tried to please."
~ Hiram Mann

Alf Mapp Jr.

"No age is unique in producing privileged persons who can happily dichotomize condemnation of their society and enjoyment of its fruits." ~ Alf Mapp Jr.

Everett Dean Martin

"Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love; for a man may love his brother so much that he feels himself thereby appointed his brother’s keeper." ~ Everett Dean Martin

George Mason

"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." ~ George Mason

"All men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing the obtaining of happiness and safety." ~ George Mason

W. Somerset Maugham

"There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action." ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Eugene McCarthy

"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty." ~ Eugene McCarthy

John Stuart Mill

"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

"A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands -- even for beneficial purposes -- will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished." ~ John Stuart Mill

"The only freedom deserving 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

"Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." ~ John Stuart Mill

"That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That 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

"The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." ~ John Stuart Mill
 

"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism." ~ John Stuart Mill

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." ~ John Stuart Mill

Joel Miller

"What we have to remember is that not everything is under our control. If people are free in any meaningful sense of the word, that means they are at liberty to foul up their lives as much as make something grand of them. That's a gamble we all take. That's the risk of liberty. Nobody wants others to screw up their lives, but each must be free to do so for themselves." ~ Joel Miller

Marcus Aurelius

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." ~ Marcus Aurelius

Christopher Darlington Morley

"There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it." ~ Christopher Darlington Morley

Edward R. Murrow

"We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular." ~ Edward R. Murrow

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." ~ Edward R. Murrow

Friedrich Nietzsche

"Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Charles Eliot Norton

"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent." ~ Charles Eliot Norton

George Orwell

"If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." ~ George Orwell

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." ~ George Orwell

"Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." ~ George Orwell

"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia." ~ George Orwell

"In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." ~ George Orwell

Ouida

"Petty laws breed great crimes." ~ Ouida

John Taylor Gatto

"So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:
- Obedient soldiers to the army;
- Obedient workers to the mines;
- Well subordinated civil servants to government;
- Well subordinated clerks to industry
- Citizens who thought alike about major issues."
~ John Taylor Gatto
 

John Dos Passos

"Individuality is freedom lived." ~ John Dos Passos

Persius

"Is any man free except the one who can pass his life as he pleases?" ~ Persius

William Pitt

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

Ezra Pound

"Liberty is not a right but a duty." ~ Ezra Pound

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." ~ Ezra Pound

Pythagoras

"No one is free who is not master of himself." ~ Pythagoras

Ronald Reagan

"It´s so hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever substitute for millions of individuals working night and day to make their dreams come true." ~ Ronald Reagan

Thomas B. Reed

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." ~ Thomas B. Reed

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." ~ Thomas B. Reed

Alfredo Rocco

"For liberalism, the individual is the end, and society the means. For fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends." ~ Alfredo Rocco

Will Rogers

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." ~ Will Rogers

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." ~ Will Rogers 

Murray Rothbard

"There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. In concentrating on the ends of choice, the conservative, by neglecting the conditions of choice, loses that very morality of conduct with which he is so concerned." ~ Murray Rothbard

Mayer Amschel Rothschild

"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." ~ Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Carl Sagan

"Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along." ~ Carl Sagan

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)" ~ Carl Sagan

"History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again." ~ Carl Sagan

Antoine De Saintexupery

"True, it is evil that a single man should crush the herd, but see not there the worse form of slavery, which is when the herd crushes out the man." ~ Antoine De Saintexupery

Eric Schaub

"The truth doesn't sell. It is high in supply, but low in demand." ~ Eric Schaub

Bruce Schneier

"It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state." ~ Bruce Schneier

"Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom." ~ Bruce Schneier

Edwin M. Schur

"[When a victimless criminal] is treated as an enemy of society, he almost necessarily becomes one. Forced into criminal acts, immersed in underworld-related supply networks, and ever-conscious of the need to evade the police, his outlooks as well as behavior become more and more anti-social." ~ Edwin M. Schur

Carl Schurz

"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

Ignazio Silone

"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

"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

the Editor

"Whenever you see people standing in a line, you know that either the government or Apple is involved (though for different reasons)." ~ The Editor

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Conformity and obedience
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth
Makes slaves of men and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton."
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
 

Alan Simpson

"There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders." ~ Alan Simpson

Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

"In a free society, standards of public morality can be measured only by whether physical coercion -- violence against persons or property -- occurs. There is no right not to be offended by words, actions or symbols." ~ Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

Adam Smith

"Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men." ~ Adam Smith

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State." ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Henry St. John

"Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society." ~ Henry St. John

William Graham Sumner

"If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control." ~ William Graham Sumner

Mother Teresa

"Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity." ~ Mother Teresa

St. George Tucker

"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." ~ St. George Tucker

Freidrich von Hayek

"The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not." ~ Freidrich von Hayek

Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience.
And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ludwig von Mises

"The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality." ~ Ludwig von Mises

Johann von Schiller

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice." ~ Johann von Schiller

"The voice of the majority is no proof of justice." ~ Johann von Schiller

George Washington

"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." ~ George Washington

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master." ~ George Washington

Gore Vidal

"Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so." ~ Gore Vidal

Alan Watts

"Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment." ~ Alan Watts

John Wayne

"It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something." ~ John Wayne

Henry Grady Weaver

"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind." ~ Henry Grady Weaver

Daniel Webster

"Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety." ~ Daniel Webster

"The contest, for ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the grasp of executive power." ~ Daniel Webster

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." ~ Daniel Webster

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." ~ Daniel Webster
 

Harry Truman

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. " ~ Harry Truman

Noah Webster

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

Josiah Wedgwood

"Men must have the right of choice, even to choose wrong, if he shall ever learn to choose right." ~ Josiah Wedgwood

Robert Welch

"The real freedom of any individual can always be measured by the amount of responsibility which he must assume for his own welfare and security." ~ Robert Welch

William Allen White

"Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others." ~ William Allen White

Walt Whitman

"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws." ~ Walt Whitman

Wendell Willkie

"Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love." ~ Wendell Willkie

John Peter Zenger

"No nation, ancient or modern, ever lost the liberty of speaking freely, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves." ~ John Peter Zenger

Adlai Stevenson Jr.

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." ~ Adlai Stevenson Jr.

Lillian Hellman

"For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt." ~ Lillian Hellman

Charles Dickens

"I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to [me] what it concedes to the butterflies!" ~ Charles Dickens

Salman Rushdie

"Freedom to reject is the only freedom." ~ Salman Rushdie

"Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself." ~ Salman Rushdie

Friedrich Hayek

"The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use." ~ Friedrich Hayek

Napoleon

"A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything." ~ Napoleon

Miguel de Cervantes

"Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man." ~ Miguel de Cervantes

Denis Diderot

"No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others." ~ Denis Diderot

Wayne Dyer

"Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery." ~ Wayne Dyer

Immanuel Kant

"Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity." ~ Immanuel Kant

William Faulkner

"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it." ~ William Faulkner

Heinrich Heine

"Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people." ~ Heinrich Heine

Eleanor Holmes Norton

"The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with." ~ Eleanor Holmes Norton

Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right." ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

Sam Adams

"It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue." ~ Sam Adams

Erich Fromm

"Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason." ~ Erich Fromm

James Baldwin

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be." ~ James Baldwin

Noam Chomsky

"For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we sere as willing or unwitting instruments." ~ Noam Chomsky

"If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all." ~ Noam Chomsky
 

Peyton Conway March

"There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else." ~ Peyton Conway March
 

John P. Zenger

"No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves." ~ John P. Zenger
 

Dresden James

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

Jim Morrison

"Whoever controls the media, controls the mind." ~ Jim Morrison

Friedrich Neitzsche

"Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves." ~ Friedrich Neitzsche
 

Alice Walker

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any." ~ Alice Walker
 

Andrew Johnson

"Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigourously, more vigourously, and more severely, than by one." ~ Andrew Johnson

Charles de Gaulle

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." ~ Charles de Gaulle

Dave Barry

"Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you’re told." ~ Dave Barry

"See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs." ~ Dave Barry

Denis Fonvizin

"A fool is very dangerous when in power." ~ Denis Fonvizin

Dmitry Pisarev

"So easily do weak men put in high positions turn villains." ~ Dmitry Pisarev

Elie Wiesel

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." ~ Elie Wiesel

F.A. Hayek

"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

Friedrich Hatzel

"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

Hans Sennholz

"Wherever politics intrudes upon economic life, political success is readily attained by saying what people like to hear rather than what is demonstrably true." ~ Hans Sennholz

James Fenimore Cooper

"The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority." ~ James Fenimore Cooper

John Dewey

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

John Simon

"Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant." ~ John Simon

Josh Billings

"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand." ~ Josh Billings

Laurens van der Post

"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right." ~ Laurens van der Post

Max Frisch

"The dignity of man is in free choice." ~ Max Frisch

Moliere

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Oscar Wilde

"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people." ~ Oscar Wilde

Plato

"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." ~ Plato

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

Rudolph Rummel

"The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power." ~ Rudolph Rummel

Salvor Hardin

"Violence is the last resource of the incompetent." ~ Salvor Hardin
 

Vladimir Korolenko

"People aren’t angels woven of light, but neither are they beasts to be driven into stalls." ~ Vladimir Korolenko

Walter Bagehot

"A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness." ~ Walter Bagehot

William Anderson

"Political elections do not choose leaders of society. Rather, they are an exercise in which groups of people choose individuals who will assist them in looting other groups of individuals." ~ William Anderson
 

Robert Heinlein

"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." ~ Robert Heinlein

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so." ~ Robert Heinlein

"Love your country, but never trust its government." ~ Robert Heinlein

George Bernard Shaw

"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career." ~ George Bernard Shaw

David Ogilvy

"Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest." ~ David Ogilvy

Thomas Sowell

"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive." ~ Thomas Sowell

"Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help." ~ Thomas Sowell

Neale Donald Walsch

"Because we believe that our ethnic group, our society, our political party, our God, is better than your God, we kill each other." ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Robert Anton Wilson

"The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization." ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Dick Gregory

"Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten." ~ Dick Gregory

Joseph Brodsky

"I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside." ~ Joseph Brodsky

Bob Geldof

"You can't trust politicians. It doesn't matter who makes a political speech. It's all lies - and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well." ~ Bob Geldof

Tom Wolfe

"A cult is a religion with no political power." ~ Tom Wolfe

John Marshall

"The power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create...." ~ John Marshall

Max Stirner

"The state calls its own violence 'law', but that of the individual 'crime.'" ~ Max Stirner

George Stark

"Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils." ~ George Stark

R. Buckminster Fuller

"The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun." ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Mohandas Gandhi

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

Paul Williams

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

Benjamin Franklin Bache

"All governments are more or less combinations against the people...and as rulers have no more virtue than the ruled...the power of government can only be kept within its constituted bounds by the display of a power equal to itself, the collected sentiment of the people." ~ Benjamin Franklin Bache

Hillaire Belloc

"Never could an increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty." ~ Hillaire Belloc

Edward Abbey

"Freedom begins between the ears." ~ Edward Abbey

"Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and the hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward." ~ Edward Abbey

"As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases." ~ Edward Abbey

"Government: If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law." ~ Edward Abbey

"A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon." ~ Edward Abbey

Ayn Rand

"Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others." ~ Ayn Rand
 

Thomas Hodgskin

"Man had better be without education than be educated by their rulers." ~ Thomas Hodgskin

David Herbert Lawrence

"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children brought up easy, let it slip away again, and their grandchildren are once more slaves." ~ David Herbert Lawrence

Nelson Mandela

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” ~ Nelson Mandela

Emma Goldman

“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take." ~ Emma Goldman

"Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship." ~ Emma Goldman

Naomi Wolf

"Here's what we're not taught [about the Declaration of Independence]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see." ~ Naomi Wolf

Robert Ingersoll

"The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men." ~ Robert Ingersoll
 

"Liberty a word without which all other words are vain." ~ Robert Ingersoll

"I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

"What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Emma Lazarus

"Until we are all free, none of us are free." ~ Emma Lazarus

Wilhelm Reich

"For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say!" ~ Wilhelm Reich

Paul Joseph Watson

"The fact is that the modern implementation of the prison planet has far surpassed even Orwell's 1984 and the only difference between our society and those fictionalized by Huxley, Orwell and others, is that the advertising techniques used to package the propaganda are a little more sophisticated on the surface.  Yet just a quick glance behind the curtain reveals that the age old tactics of manipulation of fear and manufactured consensus are still being used to force humanity into accepting the terms of its own imprisonment and in turn policing others within the prison without bars."

Henry Hazlitt

"When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government." ~ Henry Hazlitt

Victor Hugo

"From a political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty." ~ Victor Hugo

Christopher Hitchens

"In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test." ~ Christopher Hitchens

Joseph Labadie

"Liberty is the solution of all social and economic questions." ~ Joseph Labadie