"During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

~ from Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address

******************************************************************************** "The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and chidlren, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hyopcrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves."

~ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia-Religion

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This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

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AYN RAND
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"Some of you will never know who is John Galt. But those of you who have known a single moment of love for existence and of pride in being its worthy lover, a moment of looking at this earth and letting your glance be its sanction, have known the state of being a man, and I -- I am only the man who knew that that state is not to be betrayed. I am the man who knew what made it possible and who chose consistently to practice and to be what you had practiced and been in that one moment.

"The choice is yours to make. That choice -- the dedication to one's highest potential -- is made by accepting the fact that the noblest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four."

"What is the nature of the guilt that your teacher call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge -- he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil -- he became a moral being. He was sentenced to experience desire -- he acquired the capacity for sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy -- all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that the myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was -- that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love -- he was not man.

"Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.

"They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man."

"My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists -- and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason -- Purpose -- Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge -- Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve -- Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of his existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride."

"Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value, and like all of man's values, it has to be earned -- that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character -- that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul -- that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice -- that the first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself."

"A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with the minds of others. Somewhere in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the crossroads of the choice between "I know" and "They say," he chose the authority of others. His surrender took the form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of understanding, that other possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever they want it to be, through some means forever denied to him."

"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not use lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of you battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.

"But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the value of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

"You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle -- and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:

"I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence....The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"I swear by my life and my love for it that I will never live for the sake of another man or ask another man to live for mine."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"So you think that money is the root of all evil? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?...Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor....Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love it's nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth-the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose...the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before...Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. "
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation--and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone's suffering."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there is service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be master."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him--by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own."
~ Ragnar Danneskjold from Ayn Rand's, Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"An individualist is a man who says: 'I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.'"
~ Ayn Rand, "Textbook of Americanism"

"Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments."
~ Ayn Rand, "Who Will Protect Us From Our Protectors"? The Objectivist Newsletter

"When "the common good" of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals."
~ Ayn Rand, "What is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

"The socialists have a certain kind of logic on their side: if the collective sacrifice of all to all is the moral ideal, then they wanted to establish this idea in practice, here and on this earth. The arguments that socialism could not and would not work, did not stop them: neither has altruism ever worked, but this has not caused men to stop and question it. Only reason can ask such questions - and reason, they were told on all sides, has nothing to do with morality, morality lies outside the realm of reason, no rational morality can ever be defined."
~ Ayn Rand, "Faith And Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," Philosophy: Who Needs It

"Do not make the mistake...of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer's permission. He does not hold it by ermission - but by contract, that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job; a slave cannot."
~ Ayn Rand, "Textbook of Americanism"

"Existence exists - and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness."
~ Ayn Rand, "Galt's Speech," Atlas Shrugged

"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice - and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man - by choice; he has to hold his life as a value - by choice; he has to learn to sustain it - by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues - by choice."
~ Ayn Rand, "Galt's Speech," Atlas Shrugged

"If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as 'the right to enslave.'"
~ Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness

"I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics."
~ Ayn Rand

"Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not the absence of pain."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Money will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"There are no evil thoughts ... except the refusal to think."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Only a man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desires is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"If you want to defeat any kind of vicious fraud~ comply with it literally, adding nothing of your own to disguise its nature."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!"
~ Hank Rearden & Ayn Rand

"The man who is proudly certain of his own value does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and this body."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Love is our response to our highest values~ and can be nothing else."
~ Francisco D'Anconia from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
~ Ayn Rand

"In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values."
~ Ayn Rand

"Man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress."
~ Ayn Rand

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
~ Ayn Rand

"Man's only duty is to respect other's rights, and man's only right over others is to enforce that duty."
~ Ayn Rand

"Practice principled acts of self-interest and ruthless logic."
~ Ayn Rand

"As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more."
~ Ayn Rand

"Compromise does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody; it does not lead to general fulfillment, butto general frustration; those who try to become all things to all men, end up by not being anything to anyone."
~ Ayn Rand

"I am the man whom you did not want either to live or to die. You did not want me to live, because you were afraid of knowing that I carried the responsibility you dropped and that your lives depended upon me; you did not want me to die, because you knew it."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"There can be no conflict of interest between rational men."
~ Ayn Rand

"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Life is the reward of virtue~ and happiness is the goal and reward of life."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"You have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringing death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer him life as his reward for accepting ours."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness~ both demand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelations, the other to their reflexes."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"There is no honest revolt against reason."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win~ and no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold hi consent."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now being spilled in the world."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but in the middle is always evil."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil it is only evil that can profit."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"A man who has no right to his life, has no right to values and will not keep them."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"No man can survive the moment of pronouncing himself irredeemably evil; should he do it, his next moment isinsanity or suicide."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys you capacity to distinguish truth from error."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that is his distinction in the univers, that is his nature, his morality, his glory."
~ John Galt from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 1957

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THOMAS JEFFERSON
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"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity."
~ 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, 1801 First Inaugural Address

"I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, 1800

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

"If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread."
~ Thomas Jefferson

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

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

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

"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills."
~ Thomas Jefferson

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."
~ Thomas Jefferson

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose. "
~ Thomas Jefferson

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

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

"If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed... "
~ George Washington's farewell address 1796

"It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny."
~ James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat, 1838

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
~ Abraham Lincoln, In the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, 1854

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
~ Malcolm X, 1965

"The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government."
~ Henry Ward Beecher Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1867

"Governments do not give people rights. The People give government power in order to protect their preexisting rights."
~ Colorado Attorney General's Office, 1993

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."
~ Gerald R. Ford, 1976

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
~ George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
~ George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1906

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."
~ Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays, 1959

"Every law is an infraction of liberty."
~ Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. "
~ Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Creighton, 1887

"A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you."
~ Ramsey Clark, New York Times, 1977

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom."
~ Clarence S. Darrow, 1920

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~ Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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JOHN STUART MILL
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"Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant - society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it - its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism."
~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

"But though this proposition is not likely to be contested in general terms, the practical question, where to place the limit - how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control - is a subject on which nearly everything remains to be done. All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law. What these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs; but if we except a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages, and scarcely any two countries, have decided it alike; and the decision of one age or country is a wonder to another. Yet the people of any given age and country no more suspect any difficulty in it, than if it were a subject on which mankind had always been agreed. The rules which obtain among themselves appear to them self-evident and selfjustifying. This all but universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical influence of custom, which is not only, as the proverb says a second nature, but is continually mistaken for the first. The effect of custom, in preventing any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind impose on one another, is all the more complete because the subJect is one on which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be given, either by one person to others, or by each to himself. People are accustomed to believe and have been encouraged in the belief by some who aspire to the character of philosophers, that their feelings, on subjects of this nature, are better than reasons, and render reasons unnecessary. The practical principle which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person's mind that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes, would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but an opinion on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons, can only count as one person's preference; and if the reasons, when given, are a mere appeal to a similar preference felt by other people, it is still only many people's liking instead of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own preference, thus supported, is not only a perfectly satisfactory reason, but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of morality, taste, or propriety, which are not expressly written in his religious creed; and his chief guide in the interpretation even of that. Men's opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, are affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in regard to the conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those which determine their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their reason - at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their social affections, not seldom their anti-social ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or fears for themselves - their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority. The morality between Spartans and Helots, between planters and negroes, between princes and subjects, between nobles and roturiers, between men and women, has been for the most part the creation of these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments thus generated, react in turn upon the moral feelings of the members of the ascendant class, in their relations among themselves. Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendency, or where its ascendency is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority. Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in act and forbearance which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics. Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious interests of society have of course had a share, and a large one, in the direction of the moral sentiments: less, however, as a matter of reason, and on their own account, than as a consequence of the sympathies and antipathies which grew out of them: and sympathies and antipathies which had little or nothing to do with the interests of society, have made themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with quite as great force."
~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

"The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people."
~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

"I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized."
~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

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

"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of any of their number is self-protection."
~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

"A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body."
~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

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"Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society."
~ Herbert Spencer

"Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it."
~ Woodrow Wilson, Address at the New York Press Club, 1912

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
~ Thomas Paine

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
~ John Adams, Oct.11, 1798, Address to the military

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
~ James Madison

"We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts ~ not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they have resisted with wither words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress."
~ Frederick Douglas

"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

"Money is the sign of liberty. To curse money is to curse liberty is to curse life..."
~ De Gourmont

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P.J. O'ROURKE
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"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
~ P. J. O'Rourke, Address at the Cato Institute, 1993

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

"We won't dispassionately investigate or rationally debate which drugs do what damage and whether or how much of that damage is the result of criminalization. We'd rather work ourselves into a screaming fit of puritanism and then go home and take a pill." ~ P.J. O'Rourke

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." ~ P.J. O'Rourke

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"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt."
~ Cicero, 63 BC

"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."
~ Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
~ George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

"A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul"
~ George Bernard Shaw

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."
~ George Bernard Shaw

"It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school."
~ Joycelyn Elders
"Maybe that's because guns are sold at a profit, while schools are provided by the government."
~ David Boaz

"I would rather live in a society which treated children as adults than one which treated adults as children."
~ Lizard

"We hate our politicians so much that even if they tell us they lied, we don't believe them."
~ Peter Newman

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
"There is no underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
~ H.L. Mencken

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
~ Plato

"An election is nothing more than an advance auction of stolen goods."
~ Ambrose Bierce

"Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention."
~ Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

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

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

"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. And then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."
~ Rev. Martin Niemoeller, a Protestant minister in Nazi Germany,

"When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun.
Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all."
~ Tim Freeman tsf@cs.cmu.edu

"I guess you will have to go to jail. If that is the result of not understanding the Income Tax Law, I will meet you there. We shall have a merry, merry time, for all our friends will be there. It will be an intellectual center, for no one understands the Income Tax Law except persons who have not sufficient intelligence to understand the questions that arise under it."
~ Senator Elihu Root of NY, 1913

"A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a confederacy against him."
~ Frank Lloyd Wright

"I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control."
~ George L. Roman

"The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless."
~ James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both."
~ James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
~ Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

"Virtually all reasonable laws are obeyed, not because they are the law, but because reasonable people would do that anyway. If you obey a law simply because it is the law, that's a pretty likely sign that it shouldn't be a law."
~ Unknown

"If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we put Clinton there?"
~ Unknown

"It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
~ Unknown

"If CON is the the opposite of PRO, does that mean that CONgress is the opposite of PROgress?"
~ Gallagher

"Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?"
~ C. D. Tavares

"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
~ John Quincy Adams

"I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people."
~ John Anderson, Independent presidential candidate, 1980

"When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."
~ Fredric Bastiat, early French economist

"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."
~ Fredric Bastiat, early French economist

"Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire."
~Ludwig Mises,"Socialism"

"For every new mouth to feed, there are two hands to produce."
~ Peter T. Bauer

"They [The makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men."
~ Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
~ Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

"Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies."
~ Alan Burris, A Liberty Primer

"Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers."
~ Frank Chodorov

"We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money."
~ David Crockett, Congressman 1827-35

"The legacy of Democrats and Republicans approaches: Libertarianism by bankruptcy."
~ Nick Nuessle, 1992

"The condition 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 and the punishment of his guilt."
~ John Philpot Curran, 1790

"Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent overeducation from happening. The average American (should be) content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role."
~ U.S. Commissioner of Education, William T. Harris, 1889

"Truth and news are not the same thing."
~ Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer."
~ Henry Kissinger

"I'm a politician, and as a politician I have the perogotive to lie whenever I want."
~ Charles Peacock, ex-director of Madison Guaranty, the Arkansas S&L at center of Whitewatergate.

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. "
~ Stephen Schneider, environmental activist, in Discover, Oct. '89

"The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone would be interdependent." ~ John Dewey, educational philosopher, proponent of modern public schools.

"Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations."
~ John Dewey, educational philosopher, proponent of modern public schools.

"Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas."
~ William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice, 1953

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
~ Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921

"I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS."
~ Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism

"Let the people decide through the marketplace mechanism what they wish to see and hear. Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this box of transistors and tubes when we don't do the same for Time magazine?"
~ Mark Fowler, FCC Chairman

"The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it."
~ James A. Donald

"Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence."
~ Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

"The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books."
~ Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

"Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence"
~ U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark - Mapp vs. Ohio

"A policy of subsidizing failures will end in an economy strewn with capital-guzzling industries long past their time of profitability - old companies that cannot create jobs themselves, but can stand in the way of job creation."
~ George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."
~ Patrick Henry

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"
~ Patrick Henry

"No man has ever ruled other men for their own good."
~ George D. Herron

"Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation."
~ Fletcher Knebel, historian

"...You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer..."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his."
~ John Locke, 1690

"The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery."
~ Albert Jay Nock

"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities."
~ Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher

"Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does."
~ US District Judge James C. Paine, addressing the Federal Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991

"Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was."
~ US District Judge James C. Paine, addressing the Federal Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991

"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people."
~ Congressman Ron Paul, 1987

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
~ William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783

"Pragmatism is the convenient conclusion reached by those who lack the patience or intelligence to formulate a consistant ideology."
~ Mark G. Hanley

"Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. A fly-by-night securities operator can quickly meet all the S.E.C. requirements, gain the inference of respectability, and proceed to fleece the public. In an unregulated economy, the operator would have had to spend a number of years in reputable dealings before he could earn a position of trust sufficient to induce a number of investors to place funds with him. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory."
~ Alan Greenspan

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others: The Constitution of this Republic should make a special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom."
~ Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence

"When I was a kid I was told anyone could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it."
~ Will Rogers, 1920's

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
~ Will Rogers, 1920's

"Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him."
~ Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty

"It's no longer an issue of contention that privatization is a solution. You can always rely on government to make the right decision, but only after it has exhausted every other conceivable alternative."
~ E. S. Savas, a management professor at Baruch College

"Decriminalization would take the profit out of drugs and greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the drug-related violence that is currently plaguing our streets."
~ Kurt L. Schmoke, Baltimore Mayor

"They have gun control in Cuba. They have universal health care in Cuba. So why do they want to come here?"
~ Paul Harvey

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas."
~ Joseph Stalin

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MARK TWAIN
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"Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state."
~ Mark Twain

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
~ Mark Twain

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
~ Mark Twain

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that the only distinctly native American criminal class is Congress."
~ Mark Twain

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"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship."
~ Alexander Fraser Tyler, "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic"

"A protective tariff is a typical conspiracy in restraint of trade."
~ Thorstein Veblen, economist

"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be."
~ Voltaire

"It's illegal to say to a voter 'Here's $100, vote for me.' So what do the politicians do? They offer the $100 in the form of Health Care, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, tobacco subsidies, grain payments, NEA payments, and jobs programs."
~ Don Farrar - average guy, age 51

"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. "
~ Galileo Galilei

"But where the senses fail us, reason must step in. "
~ Galileo Galilei

"Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather. "
~ al'Lan Mandragoran & Robert Jordan

"Creation is an act of sheer will. "
~ Michael Crichton

"Salvation, whatever that may be, will not be found amidst the external; it awaits within. "
~ Thanos

"Man's rights do not depend on his ability to feel pain; they depend on his ability to think. "
~ Edwin A. Locke

"The highest compliment one can be paid by another human being is to be told: 'Because of what you are, you are essential to my happiness.' "
~ Nathaniel Branden

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. "
~ John le Carre

"Consumers are unpredictable, varied, fickle, stupid, shortsighted, stubborn, and generally bothersome. "
~ Theodore Levitt

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. "
~ Abraham Lincoln

"We propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders. People are the great resource, and so long as we keep our economy free, more people means more growth, the more the merrier. Study after study shows that even the most recent immigrants give more than they take."
~ Wall Street Journal

"If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence ... and the courts must abide by that decision."
~ US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006

"Love your country but fear its government."
~ N.E. folk wisdom

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
~ George Washington

"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible."
~ George Washington

"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?"
~ Daniel Webster

"Reduced employment opportunities is one effect of minimum wage legislation. The minimum wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the disadvantaged members of our society. The only moral thing to do is to repeal it."
~ Walter Williams, economist and syndicated columnist

"There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form a legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, 'Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you.'"
~ Walter Williams, economist and syndicated columnist

"To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell."

"People may come along and argue philosophically that they like one better than another; but we have learned from much experience that all philosophical intuitions about what nature is going to do fail."
~ Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)

"If you thought before that science was certain-- well, that is just an error on your part."
~ Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)

"It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations."
~ Richard Feynman ("What Do You Care What Other People Think?")

"All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win the world is for enough good men to do nothing."
~ Edmund Burke

"If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools."
~William Penn

"National Health Insurance means combining the efficiency of the Postal Service with the compassion of the I.R.S. .... and the cost accounting of the Pentagon."
~ Louis Sullivan/Connie Horner quoted by Novak in Forbes

"Every dollar spent to punish a drug user or seller is a dollar that cannot be spent collecting restitution from a robber. Every hour spent investigating a drug user or seller is an hour that could have been used to find a missing child. Every trial held to prosecute a drug user or seller is court time that could be used to prosecute a rapist in a case that might otherwise have been plea bargained."
~Randy E. Barnett, Curing the Drug-Law Addiction

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

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

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DAVE BARRY
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"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

"Most of the presidential candidates' economic packages involve 'tax breaks,' which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money."
~ Dave Barry

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