Liberty is lost through complacency...America was born of protest [and] revolution...  - Congressman Ron Paul, August 9, 2004

The tea stands for tyranny.  Samuel Adams   (Take this tea and shove it)

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” -- Charles de Montesquieu

“Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. -- Thomas Jefferson

"It is easy -- terribly easy -- to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work." ~~~ George Bernard Shaw

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

- Albert Einstein

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

"Where is the politician who has not promised to fight to the death for lower taxes- and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that make tax cuts impossible?"

-Barry Goldwater

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." - Ben Franklin

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else” - Benjamin Franklin

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

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

_________________

"When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny." – Thomas Paine

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."   - Charlton Heston

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."   - Walt Disney (1901-1966)

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."  - Samuel Johnson

"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."  - Frank Zappa

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."  - Jimi Hendrix

"...A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughingstock of the world" ~ Thoreau

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. --George Bernard Shaw

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

-- Ronald Reagan

  "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences."  -  Thomas Jefferson 1787.

  "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."  -  Thomas Jefferson.

  "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -   Benjamin Franklin, 1755

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

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."  -  Thomas Jefferson

"When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property."  -  Thomas Jefferson, 1807

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

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

  "There are not enough jails, not enough policemen,not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people."  -  Hubert H. Humphrey

  "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."  -  Tacitus (A.D. 55? - 130?)

  "The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens."  -  Thomas Jefferson: 1816.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."  -  Declaration of Independence as originally written by Thomas Jefferson, 1776.

"The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits."  -  Thomas Jefferson

  "The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations are removed."  -  Thomas Jefferson, 1776.

  "Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree."  -  Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

  "Our forefathers would think it's time for a revolution.  This is why they revolted in the first place... They revolted against much more mild oppression."  -  Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) when he was asked about the USA Patriot Act.

"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 be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men". Samuel Adams

Power is the great evil with which we are contending. We have divided power between three branches of government and erected checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. However, where is the check on the power of the judiciary? If we fail to check the power of the judiciary, I predict that we will eventually live under judicial tyranny.

Patrick Henry

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words! Samuel Adams

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.  Patrick Henry

“I can end your lives with the stroke of a pen.” --District Attorney Reed Walters, To a school assembly in Jena, Louisiana. (Think citizens should be worried?)

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. And then you cash in on guilt" --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

The flagrant disregard in the courtroom of elementary standards of proper conduct should not and cannot be tolerated

Judge Hugo Black

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Judge Louis D. Brandeis

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

Judge Louis D. Brandeis

To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution.

Judge Louis D. Brandeis

The principle inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment.

Judge William J. Brennan

Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.  Judge Earl Warren

“Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit." - Freda Adler

"Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes" - George F. Will

Unnecessary laws are but traps for money. -- Thomas Hobbes

You can't legislate morality; We legislate little else. -- Robert Bork

We can foresee a time when . . . the only people at liberty will be prison guards who will then have to lock up one another. -- Albert Camus

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. C.S. Lewis

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long. -- Thomas Sowell

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -- Thomas Jefferson

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

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. -- Edmund Burke

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts. -- Edmund Burke, letter, April 3, 1777, to the Sheriffs of Bristol.

It is seldom that liberty of any kinds is lost all at once. -- David Hume

"Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty". -- Samuel Adams

"In the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence, through a curious juxtaposition peculiar to our times, it is innocence that will be called upon to explain itself". -- Albert Camus

"And the so-called sovereigns, in these different governments, are simply the heads, or chiefs, of different bands of robbers and murderers". -- Lysander Spooner

The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. -- Thomas Jefferson

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority. -- William Howard Taft

"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom"--John Locke.

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...” --Thomas Jefferson

“It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for it to abolish itself from below” --Czar Alexander II

"It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an ax the desires of men” --Walter Lippman.

“I know we can't abolish prejudice through laws, but we can set up guidelines for our actions by legislation.” --Belva Lockwood.

"Wise men, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same lives”--Aristophanes.

“'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.” --The Marquis de Sade.

“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.” --Vaclav Havel

Letters

Graphics

Home

States