Quotations

"The only limit to the oppression of government is the power with which the people show
themselves capable of opposing it." -- Enrico Malatesta

"Place me not with those who are weak of mind and willingly give up the rights of others, for these
poor ignorant souls know not that the rights they give up are their own!" -- Warren Friton

"DO NOT KEEP SILENT when your own ideas and values are being attacked. ...If a dictatorship
ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough
to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell." -- Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot
do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And
what I should do, by thegrace of God, I will do." -- Edward Everett Hale

"My greatest fear is that too many members of the public will embrace the government's call to give
up some freedom in return for greater safety, only to find that they have lost freedom without
gaining safety." -- ACLU President Nadine Strossen, in the December, 2001 issue of Reason.

"The point to remember is that what the government gives, it must first take away." -- John S.
Coleman

"Liberty and Justice go hand in hand. You can't have one with out the other. The more restrictions
that you place on Liberty, the more injustice you will receive." --Matthew Hays

"I don't believe in predestined fate. The future is what we choose to create." -- Jim Davidson

"And when at last this rebellion compelled the British Government to use the only power that any
Government has -- force, used with general consent -- and British troops moved into Boston to
restore order, Americans did not consent. They stood up and fought the British Regulars. "One man
began that war. And who knows his name? "He was a farmer, asleep in his bed, when someone
pounded on his door and shouted in the night, 'The troops are coming!' "What could he do against
the King's troops? One man. If he had been the King, that would have been different; then he could
have done great things. Then he could have set everything to rights, he could have made everyone
good and prosperous and happy, he could have changed the course of history. But he was not a
King, not a Royal Governor, not a rich man, not even prosperous, not important at all, not even
known outside the neighborhood. What could he do? What was the use of his trying to do
anything? One man, even a few men, can not stand against the King's troops. He had a wife and
children to think of; what would become of them, if he acted like a fool? "Most men had better
sense; most men knew they could do nothing and they stayed in bed, that night in Lexington. But
one man got up. He put on his clothes and took his gun and went out to meet the King's troops. He
was one man who did not consent to a control which he knew did not exist. "The fight on the road
to Lexington did not defeat the British troops What that man did was to fire a shot heard around the
world, and still heard... "That shot was the first sound of a common man's voice that the Old World
ever heard. For the first time in all history, an individual spoke, an ordinary man, unknown,
unimportant, disregarded, without rank, without power, without influence. "Not acting under
orders, not led, but standing on his own feet, acting from his own will, responsible, self-controlling,
he fired on the King's troops. He defied a world-empire. "The sound of that shot said: Government
has no power but force; it can not control any man. "No one knows who began the American
Revolution. Only his neighbors ever knew him, and no one now remembers any of them. He was an
unknown man, an individual, the only force that can ever defend freedom." : Rose Wilder Lane:
from THE DISCOVERY OF FREEDOM: Man's Struggle Against Authority

"Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in
essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial
animals and to rule them by physical force?" -- Ayn Rand- (1905-1982) Author

"Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without
justice is an impossibility." -- Bishop Desmond Tutu - (1931- ) Nobel Prize for Peace 1984

"The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of
our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional
rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free
political discussion." -- Justice Charles Evans Hughes - (1862-1948) Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court Source: DeJonge v. Oregon, 1937

It is reasonable that every one who asks justice should do justice: Thomas Jefferson

Everything, everything in war is barbaric . . . But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men
collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being:
Ellen Key, 1916

The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy: Martin Luther King

Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving
for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be
confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms: J. Krishnamurti

The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not
hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal: Mark Twain

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of
fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all
it wants, is the liberty of appearing: Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791 ~

When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food,
they call you a communist: Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist

Peace we want because there is another war to fight against poverty, disease and ignorance: Indira
Gandhi, 1966

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them
toward the patient labors of peace: Andre Gide

No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do: Dorothy Day

Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most
part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at
the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they though of it as an act of
divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have
ever committed: Gil Bailie

The problems of this world are so gigantic that some are paralysed by their own uncertainty.
Courage and wisdom are needed to reach out above this sense of helplessness. Desire for vengeance
against deeds of hatred offers no solution. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. If we wish to
choose the other path, we will have to search for ways to break the spiral of animosity. To fight evil
one must also recognize one's own responsibility. The values for which we stand must be expressed
in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans: - From the Christmas Message
2001 of HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of
nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about
killing that we know about living: General Omar Bradley

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis: Edmund
Burke

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters: African Proverb

We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the
narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in
dealing with others... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice
and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the
other nations of the world. The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our
borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies
of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this
good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours: Lord Baden-Powell

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? : St. Augustine

I hate it when they say, 'He gave his life for his country.' Nobody gives their life for anything. We
steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of
their country. We kill them." - Admiral Gene LaRocque.

In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will
understand only what we are taught: Baba Dioum

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear."
(George Orwell)

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, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to
seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics:
-Robert A. Heinlein

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix
reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with
boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage
of reason than that of blindfolded fear: -Thomas Jefferson

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to
be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it
cannot be a bad one. -Thomas Jefferson

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if
not always, that the good of the people was the object: Abraham Lincoln

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

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil." : Socrates

"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool." : Stephen King