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Famous Quotes
 

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The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

A classic since 1953 with over 20,000 quotes from over 3,000 authors.


Famous Last Words

Apt Observations, Pleas, Curses, Benedictions, Sour Notes, Bons Mots, and Insights from People on the Brink of Departure


Stretch Your Wings

Famous Black Quotations for the Young


American Quotations

An exhaustive collection of profound quotes from the founding fathers, presidents, statesmen, scientists, constitutions, court decisions


The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations


Last Words of Saints and Sinners

700 Final Quotes from the Famous, the Infamous, and the Inspiring Figures of History


America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations

Contains over 2,100 profound quotations from founding fathers, presidents, constitutions, court decisions and more


The Law

This 1850 classic is an absolute must read for anyone interested in law, justice, truth, or liberty. A most compelling and revolutionary look at The Law.


Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature (17th Edition)


The Stupidest Things Ever Said by Politicians

Rise up, America -- and laugh out loud at the greatest gaffes that no spin doctor could possibly fix!


The 776 Even Stupider Things Ever Said

Another great collection of stupidity


Quotable Quotes

Wit and Wisdom for All Occasions from America's Most Popular Magazine


The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time

You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less.


2,715 One-Line Quotations for Speakers, Writers & Raconteurs

Invaluable sampler of witticisms, epigrams, sayings, bon mots, platitudes and insights chosen for their brevity and pithiness.


Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts Funny Sayings

A stupendous collection of quotes, quips, epigrams, witticisms, and humorous comments for personal enjoyment and ready reference.


Quick Quips and Quotes; 532 Things I Wish I Had Said

Quick Quips and Quotes is the Ultimate Collection of one liners.


Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

The ultimate anthology of anecdotes, now revised with over 700 new entries.


Quotations for Public Speakers

A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology


Liberty - The American Revolution

This compelling series traces the events leading up to the war and America's fight for freedom.


Founding Fathers

The story of how these disparate characters fomented rebellion in the colonies, formed the Continental Congress, fought the Revolutionary War, and wrote the Constitution


Libertarianism: A Primer

David Boaz, director of the Cato Institute, has written a simple introduction to Libertarianism inteneded to appeal to disgruntled Democrats and Republicans everywhere.


The Libertarian Reader

Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman


Thomas Paine: Collected Writings

All the classics: Common Sense / The Crisis / Rights of Man / The Age of Reason / Pamphlets, Articles, and Letters

 
Patrick HenryIf we would be free, if we mean to hold inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have so long contended, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble cause for which we have so long endured, and to which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest should be obtained, then we must fight! I repeat Sir, we must fight! A call to arms and an appeal to the God of hosts is all that we have left. 
Patrick HenryI have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. 
Patrick HenryWe are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth... For my part, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it. 
Patrick HenryIs life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! 
Patrick HenryIt is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! 
Patrick HenryThe great object is, that every man be armed. 
Patrick HenryNo free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. 
Nat HentoffThose who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices – taking advantage of our freedom of speech – who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do. 
HeraclitusWhosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season. 
HeraclitusNothing endures but change. 
HeraclitusThe people must fight for their laws as for their walls. 
HeraclitusMan's character is his fate. 
Auberon HerbertSocialism is but Catholicism addressing itself not to the soul but to the sense of men... [Both implore you to] accept authority, accept the force which it employs, resign yourself to all-powerful managers, give up the free choice and the free act... They both seek to sacrifice man. 
Auberon HerbertIf government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves. 
Auberon HerbertThe career of a politician mainly consists in making one part of the nation do what it does not want to do, in order to please and satisfy the other part of the nation. It is the prolonged sacrifice of the rights of some persons at the bidding and for the satisfaction of other persons. The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them. 
Auberon HerbertIt is not laissez-faire that has failed. That would be an ill day for men. What has failed is the courage to see what is true and speak it to the people, to point to the true remedies. 
Auberon HerbertPolitics must be the battle of the principles... the principle of liberty against the principle of force. 
Auberon Herbert... every tax or rate, forcibly taken from an unwilling person, is immoral and oppressive. 
Auberon HerbertTrue liberty cannot exist apart from the full rights of property, for property is the only crystallized form of free faculties...The whole meaning of socialism is a systematic glorification of force... No literary phrases about social organisms are potent enough to evaporate the individual, who is the prime, indispensable, irreducible element. 
Auberon HerbertIf we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishments, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings -- as in one country they propose to do -- in our House of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes, request them, as at Vienna, and I think now at Paris also, to be good enough to leave their greatcoats in the vestibules ... I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time. 
Auberon Herbert[Socialism] is a creed even more denigrating than Catholicism, but it offers more tangible bribes for its acceptance. 
Auberon HerbertHow should it happen that the individual should be without rights, but the combination of individuals should possess unlimited rights? 
Auberon HerbertAnd what sort of philosophical doctrine is this -- that numbers confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others. ... How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed. ... It is not possible to suppose, without absurdity, that a man should have no rights over his own body and mind, and yet have a 1/10,000,000th share in unlimited rights over all other bodies and minds? 
Auberon HerbertWe hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do. 
Auberon HerbertForce and reason -- which last is the essence of the moral act -- are at the two opposite poles. The one who compels his neighbor... treats him, not as a being with reason, but as an animal in whom reason is not. 
Frank HerbertLaws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions of history have based their job security. 
Frank HerbertIf you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.  
Frank HerbertThe convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. 
Frank HerbertRadicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer. 
George HerbertDare to be true. Nothing can need a lie: A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. 
George HerbertOne sword keeps another in the sheath. 
Albert S. Herlong, Jr.[Communist Goals for America:]\\ - Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”\\ - Control schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda.\\ - Soften curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put party line in textbooks. Control student newspapers.\\ - Infiltrate churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion (i.e. “social justice,” “liberation theology”).\\ - Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”\\ - Discredit American culture.\\ - Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and divorce.\\ - Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.\\ 
Edward HermanThere is a system of terroristic states—the real terror network—that has spread throughout Latin America and elsewhere over the past several decades, and which is deeply rooted in the corporate interest and sustaining political-military-financial propaganda mechanisms of the United States and its allies in the Free World. 
L. M. HerouxMake sure what you risk is yours to lose. 
George D. HerronNo man has ever ruled other men for their own good. 
George D. HerronThe possession of power over others is inherently destructive both to the possessor of the power and to those over whom it is exercised. 
Alexander Ivanovich HerzenThe liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop. 
Karl HessBig business in America today and for some years has been openly at war with competition and, thus, at war with laissez-faire capitalism. ... The left's attack on corporate capitalism is, when examined, an attack on economic forms possible only in collusion between authoritarian government and bureaucratized, nonentrepreneurial business. It is unfortunate that many New Leftists are so uncritical as to accept this premise as indicating that all forms of capitalism are bad ... 
Herman HesseAny attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism. 
Herman HesseWisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. 
Charlton HestonAs I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated. 
Charlton HestonHere's my credo. There are no good guns, There are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good man is no threat to anyone, except bad people. 
Charlton HestonPolitical correctness is simply tyranny with manners. 
Granville HicksA censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to. 
Granville HicksThe sooner we all learn to make a decision between disapproval and censorship, the better off society will be... Censorship cannot get at the real evil, and it is an evil in itself. 
Toyotomi HideyoshiThe people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. Therefore, the heads of provinces, official agents, and deputies are ordered to collect all the weapons mentioned above and turn them over to the government. 
Robert HiggsDemocrats and Republicans alike support the "War on Drugs." Federal, state, and local police make more than a million drug arrests yearly. Drug cases clog the courts. More than 60% of federal prison cells and about 30% of state prison cells hold drug offenders. No-knock drug raiders nullify the Fourth Amendment every day. Yet illicit drugs continue to pour onto the market, and they are readily available throughout the land. Looks like another failed policy. But politicians say more money will win the war. For fiscal 1996, President Clinton has requested a record $14.6 billion for this exercise in futility. State and local government will also spend huge sums. Who benefits? Posturing politicians and puritanical zealots, of course, but also the Drug Enforcement Administration, Customs Service, Coast Guard, FBI, and the rest of the drug warriors. Police love the drug war, because the forfeiture laws it inspired allow them to seize and keep private property with impunity. Corrupt cops get fabulous bribes, and corruption therefore runs rampant. 
Robert HiggsIt would take little more than $50 billion to raise every poor person above the official poverty line, yet the percentage of the population classified as poor hardly budges, while annual welfare spending amounts to four times that much. Where's the money going? 
Robert HiggsBut politicians who talk about failed policies are just blowing smoke. Government policies succeed in doing exactly what they are supposed to do: channeling resources bilked from the general public to politically organized and influential interests groups. 
Cullen HightowerThe mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them. 
Cullen HightowerTalk is cheap -- except when Congress does it. 
Anthony J. HilderCommunism is not a creation of the masses to overthrow the Banking establishment, but rather a creation of the Banking establishment to overthrow and enslave the people. 
Benjamin H. HillI have said I do not dread industrial corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them; but there is a corporation we may all dread. That corporation is the federal government. From the aggressions of this corporation, there can be no safety, if it is allowed to go beyond the well defined limits of its powers. I dread nothing so much as the exercise of ungranted and doubtful powers by the government. It is, in my opinion, the danger of dangers to the future of this country. Let us be sure to keep it always within its limits. If this great, ambitious, ever growing corporation becomes oppressive, who shall check it? If it becomes too wayward who shall control it? If it becomes unjust, who shall trust it? As sentinels of the country’s watchtower, Senators, I beseech you to watch and guard with sleepless dread, that corporation which can make all property and rights, all states and people, all liberty and hope its plaything in an hour, and its victims forever. 
W. G. HillThe threat of people acting in their own enlightened and rational self-interest strikes bureaucrats, politicians and social workers as ominous and dangerous. 
George Stillman HillardIf liberty with law is fire on the hearth, liberty without law is fire on the floor. 
HillelWhat is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Law: all the rest is interpretation. 
Gordon B. HinckleyThere is no substitute under the heavens for productive labor. It is the process by which dreams become realities. It is the process by which idle visions become dynamic achievements. 
Hindu SayingPitiful is the one who, fearing failure, makes no beginning. 
HippocratesIdleness and lack of occupation tend -- nay are dragged -- towards evil. 
HippocratesMen ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit... 
Christopher HitchensThe crucial distinction between systems...was no longer ideological.  The main political difference was between those who did, and those who did not, believe that the citizen could -- or should -- be the property of the state. 
Christopher HitchensThere is a utilitarian case for free expression. It recognizes that the freedom to speak must also be insisted on for the person who thinks differently, because it is pointless to support only free speech for people who agree with you. It is not only unprincipled to want that, but also self-defeating. For your own sake, you need to know how other people think. 
Adolf Hitler (False)We are Socialists, we are enemies of the capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions. 
Adolf HitlerWithout law and order our nation cannot survive. 
Adolf Hitler (False)We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions. 
Adolf HitlerIn relation to the political decontamination of our public life, the government will embark upon a systematic campaign to restore the nation’s moral and material health. The whole educational system, theater, film, literature, the press and broadcasting – all these will be used as a means to this end. 
Adolf HitlerBasically National Socialism and Marxism are the same. 
Adolf HitlerSociety's needs come before the individual's needs. 
Adolf Hitler[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.  
Adolf HitlerA decision of the Fuhrer in the express form of a law or decree may not be scrutinized by a judge. In addition, the judge is bound by any other decision of the Fuhrer, provided that they are clearly intended to declare law. 
Adolf HitlerTerrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death. 
Adolf HitlerThe demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and if systematically executed represents the most humane act of mankind. 
Adolf HitlerWhy nationalize industry when you can nationalize the people? 
Adolf HitlerBeing daily better informed about their knowledge than my adversaries themselves, I argued till finally one day they applied the one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force. 
Adolf Hitler... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men. 


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