Piney Woods' Place - Quotes - Freedom & Liberty

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin

"Be who you are and say what you feel because people who mind don't matter, and people who matter don't mind."
-- Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka "Dr. Seuss")

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
-- John Stuart Mill

"Live Free or Die"
-- New Hampshire State Motto

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke

"To have really lived, you must have almost died. To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know."
-- Scrawled on a bunker outside Khe Sahn, RVN

"For those who fought for it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know."
-- Willie "Bo" Nelson, Mancelona, MI

"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes, and the other is the Bill of Rights."
-- Major General Smedley Butler, US Marine Corps, 1930

"The two pillars of 'political correctness' are, a) willful ignorance, and b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth."
-- George MacDonald Fraser

"There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure."
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."
-- Adlai Stevenson, Jr., speech to the American Legion Convention, 1952

"Love work, hate domination, and do not let your name come to the attention of the ruling powers."
-- The Talmud, "Sayings of the Fathers"

"When the federal government is more concerned with militias than street gangs, then you know for certain that someone real high up there is scared of something."
-- Right on the Web

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!"
-- Senator Barry Goldwater

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

"25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy. However, four out of five US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who's crazy?"
-- Andrew Ford

"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless ONE of the duties of a good citizen, but it is not THE HIGHEST. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John B. Colvin, 20 Sep 1810

"Guns are not always the answer, but obtaining a firearm has saved the lives of many... While I favor keeping guns out of the hands of felons, youths and the mentally impaired, I oppose adding more bureaucratic obstacles that attempt to fight crime by disarming its victims."
-- Peter Kasler, NY Times, 13 Jul 91

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny."
-- Edmund Burke

"Without either the first or second amendment, we would have no liberty; the first allows us to find out what's happening, the second allows us to do something about it! The second will be taken away first, followed by the first and then the rest of our freedoms."
-- Andrew Ford

"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military. The hired servants of our rulers. Only the government - and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."
-- Edward Abbey, The Right to Arms, Abbey's Road, 1979

"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
-- Thomas Jefferson.

"By calling attention to 'a well regulated militia', the 'security' of the nation, and the right of each citizen 'to keep and bear arms', our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important."
-- Senator John F. Kennedy, 1960

"In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the "collective" right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms... The phrase "the people" meant the same thing in the Second Amendment as it did in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments-- that is, each and every free person. A select militia defined as only the privileged class entitled to keep and bear arms was considered an anathema to a free society, in the same way that Americans denounced select spokesmen approved by the government as the only class entitled to the freedom of the press." If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the 18th century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis."
-- Stephen P. Holbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right

"It is my belief that there are `absolutes' in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant, and meant their prohibitions to be `absolutes'."
-- Justice Hugo Black, The Bill of Rights, 35 NYU L.R. 865, 1970

"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 A. Beard, American Historian, (1874-1948)

"They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin

"The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime."
-- Miller v US, 230 F 2d 486, 489

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

"I heartily accept the motto `The government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, - `That government is best which governs not at all'."
-- Henry David Thoreau

"In America, freedom and justice have always come from the ballot box, the jury box, and when that fails, the cartridge box."
-- Steve Symms, US Senator from Idaho, 1990

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
-- Dolores Ibarruri `La Pasionaria'

"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."
-- Robert H. Jackson, US Judge (1892-1954)

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

"The Second Amendment's language and historical and philosophical background demonstrated that it was designed to guarantee individuals the possession of certain kinds of arms for three purposes: (1) crime prevention or what we would today describe as self-defense; (2) national defense; and (3) preservation of individual liberty..."
-- Don Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 1983

"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is the least to be cheap and is never free of cost."
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

"The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner."
-- Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session, Feb 1982

"If you are able to vote, then do so. There may be no candidates or issues you want to vote for... but there will certainly be someone or something to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong."
-- Lazarus Long

"Governments derive... 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 to abolish it, and to institute new Government. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, (absolute power or influence of any kind) it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
-- US Declaration of Independence

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion."
-- James Burgh, Political Disquisitions: Or, an Inquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses, 1774-1775

"A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness."
-- Lao-Tzu

   

 

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