"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!" ... - Samuel Adams
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.-Aristotle
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"Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other fourty nine." ----Thomas Jefferson
The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened. ... Norman Thomas, Co-Founder ACLU
C.S. Lewis ... "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 satisfied; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." ... Robert A. Heinlein
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." ... Robert A. HeinleinMy favorite Heinlein quote:
"An armed society is a polite society."
:)
another of my favorites
If you love wealth more then liberty, the tranquility of servitude better then the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. ----Samuel Adams
and
"... it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds ...."
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Very few personal problems can't be solved through creative application of high explosives.
As ever, I wonder if he penned that bit of prose before, during or after spending his seed with his *ahem* "household staff"."Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." (Thomas Jefferson)
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." (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
"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 JeffersonAs ever, I wonder if he penned that bit of prose before, during or after spending his seed with his *ahem* "household staff"."Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." (Thomas Jefferson)
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." (Thomas Jefferson)
You're only making me hate him more.
Not at all. He merely states that one reason to be polite is because people are armed. I don't see where he says there are no other reasons.
You're only making me hate him more."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 JeffersonAs ever, I wonder if he penned that bit of prose before, during or after spending his seed with his *ahem* "household staff"."Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." (Thomas Jefferson)
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." (Thomas Jefferson)
He was a bundle of contradictions.
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"I have never before in my life witnesed a man in such a dire need of a blowjow as Richard Nixon."
Hunter S. Thompson
As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police state. »» Milton Friedman
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” »» Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” 1963
Whatever really useful thing government does for men, they would do for themselves if there were no government. »» Anarchist Sticker, 1906
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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. »» Plato
"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 in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." --- Thomas Paine
"The Revolution evaporates, & leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. The chains of tormented mankind are made out of red tape."
— Franz Kafka
"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far" ~ T. Rosevent (adapted from a west african proverb)
"It is no use to preach to [children] if you do not act decently yourself."~ T. Rosevent
"Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so."~ T. Rosevent
"If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful."~ T. Rosevent
"I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds."~ T. Rosevent
"A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user."~ T. Rosevent
"Don't hit at all if you can help it; don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep."~ T. Rosevent
"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility."~ T. Rosevent
"Men in authority will always think that
criticism of their policies is dangerous.
They will always equate their policies
with patriotism, and find criticism subversive." -Henry Steele Commager
"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
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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
Hey, let's do Thomas Jefferson.
"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right."
"To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association -- the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
If the people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. - Thomas Jefferson
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. - Justice Louis D. Brandeis
"Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night.
Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people,
does not suppress medical research,
does not peek in bedroom windows.
Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation
of the prohibitionists at face value,
marijuana prohibition has done far more harm
to far more people than marijuana ever could." - William F. Buckley, Jr.
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"A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man's counting house.... The law will of necessity have inquisical features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it, men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state." -Richard E. Byrd (1888-1947) Polar explorer, Virginia House Speaker; 1910, predicting the consequences of a federal income tax
"Today the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor
who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody,
at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury." - William J. Campbell, Judge, U. S. District Court
Source:Newsweek, 22 August 1977
"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'" - Sir Winston Churchill
"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
"The Republic was not established by cowards;
and cowards will not preserve it ...
This will remain the land of the free
only so long as it is the home of the brave." - Elmer Davis
"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated
under the shield of law and in the name of justice." - Charles-Louis de Secondat
I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To suggest that the law is static is quite wrong, the whole purpose was to form a more perfect union, not something that's perfect when we started. We designed a system of government that would contemplate a change and progress.
- Justice John Paul Stevens
You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, f*** it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this.
- New York State Senator Roy McDonald
The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.
- Saint Gregory the Great
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Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. [Kill them all! God will know his own]
- Legate Arnaud Amalric, when asked how to distinguish Cathar heretics from Catholics.