If the Government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take
away everything you have.
Gerald Ford
Democracy is the form of government where everyone gets what the majority deserves.
Federal aid is just like a man getting a blood transfusion by taking the blood out of his
right arm, putting it in his left arm, and spilling about half of it on the way over.
Sydney Herlong Jr.
"The test of tolerance comes when we are in a majority; the test of courage comes
when we are in a minority."
--Ralph W. Stockman
"The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity."
Harlan Ellison
"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws."
Cornelius Tacitus
"The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to everybody and
still nobody likes him."
Jim Samuels
"Laws don't work, unless they merely codify generally accepted behavior, in which
case they are probably unnecessary."
tom@genie.slhs.udel.edu
"Justice is incidental to law and order."
J. Edgar Hoover
"It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full
responsibility for me."
Ashleigh Brilliant
"I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them."
Alfred Hitchcock
"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new
bureaucracy."
Franz Kafka
To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask
why?
W. H. Auden (1907-1973),
Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. . .
. the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind
of existence is possible for those who do survive.
Frank Herbert, Dune
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill
"His hair was perfect."
Warren Zevon
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
Adolf Hitler
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time
defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed,
and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken
In Germany 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 wasn't a trade
unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a
Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor
All we have of freedom -- all we use or know -- This our fathers bought for us, long and
long ago.
Kipling
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
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 evilminded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Justice Louis D. Brandeis,
dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)
With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought
forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.
Picard, ST:TNG,
quoting a fictional judge, The Drumhead
"Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land
than passing laws which cannot be enforced."
Albert Einstein
"Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm."
John F. Kennedy
"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much
in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
H.L. Mencken
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable."
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."
Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas
"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule
themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others."
Edward Abbey
"America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we
could all be anything we damn well please."
P.J. O'Rourke
Everybody is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.
Sir Anthony Eden (1st Earl of Avon)
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
Adolf Hitler
It is characteristic of all movements and crusades that the psychopathic element rises to
the top.
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people
with their own money.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
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 great struggle for independence.
Attributed to Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the
injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
Frederick Douglass
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are
us."
- P. J. O'Rourke
Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully
for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."
George Orwell, 1984
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it
good and hard.
H L Mencken
And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have
said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to
be sent into any foreign wars.
Franklin D. Roosevelt , Speech in Boston
30 Oct. 1940, in Public Papers (1941) vol. 9, p. 517
This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could
produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.
Anuran Bevan 1897-1960 Speech at Blackpool 24 May 1945
Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible reform, which dares not
yet name itself, advances.
R.W. Emerson
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of
government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is
a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Woodrow Wilson
Speech to New York Press Club in New York, 9 Sept. 1912
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear
any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival
and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy
Inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1961
The majority never has right on its side. Never I say! That is one of the social lies that
a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any given
country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a
terrible overwhelming majority, all the wide world over.
Henrik Ibsen En Folkefiende
(An Enemy of the People, 1882) act 4
There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not
supported by the people.
Hubert Humphrey 1911-1978
Speech at Williamsburg, 1 May 1965
A long line of cases shows that it is not merely of some importance, but is of fundamental
importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be
seen to be done.
Gordon Hewart (Viscount Hewart) 1870-1943
Rex v Sussex Justices, 9 Nov. 1923
We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong We thought, because we had
power, we had wisdom.
Stephen Vincent Benet 1898-1943
'Litany for Dictatorships' (1935)
Monsieur Colbert assembled several deputies of commerce at his house to ask what could be
done for commerce; the most rational and the least flattering among them answered him in
one word: 'Laissez-nous-faire' [literally 'Allow us to do [it]']. In 'Journal Oeconomique'
Paris, April 1751.