Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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As a Christian I take it for granted that human history will some day end; and I am offering Omniscience no advice as to the best date for that consummation.
-- C. S. Lewis		 
A little lie is like a little pregnancy: it doesn't take long before everyone knows.
-- C. S. Lewis		 
A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.
-- C. S. Lewis		 
It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects -- military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden -- that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.
-- C. S. Lewis		 
I do not like the pretensions of Government -- the grounds on which it demands my obedience -- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique. I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously. On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They 'cash in'. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants' 'science'-- they didn't think much of Hitler's racial theories or Stalin's biology. But they can be muzzled.
-- C. S. Lewis		 
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God you learn.
-- C. S. Lewis		 
[C]lassical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good -- anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.'
-- C. S. Lewis		 
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
-- C. S. Lewis		 
The burning of an author’s books, imprisonment for opinion’s sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.
-- Joseph Lewis		 
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
-- Sinclair Lewis		 
Fascism will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible.
-- Sinclair Lewis		 
Collective judgment of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free to back their own judgment despite collective disapproval.
-- Sir William Arthur Lewis		 
Democracy, which began by liberating man politically, has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion.
-- Ludwig Lewisohn		 
Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.
-- Liberty Bell		 
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything -- and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg		 
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg		 
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg		 
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man; a debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-- G. Gordon Liddy		 
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-- G. Gordon Liddy		 
People everywhere confuse, What they read in newspapers with news.
-- A. J. Liebling		 
Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
-- A. J. Liebling		 
Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.
-- Joshua Liebman		 
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
-- John Lilly		 
There’s no longer any left or right. There’s the system and the enemies of the system.
-- Eduard Limonov		 
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
I have been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a Dome on it.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
[I]f the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln (False)		 
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.
-- Abraham Lincoln (Questionable)		 
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Let it [the Constitution] be taught in schools, seminaries and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, enforced in courts of justice. In short, let it become the political religion of the nation.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
The Shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shephard as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as a destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Nearly all men can withstand adversity; if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. By adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Military glory -- the attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war
-- Abraham Lincoln (Questionable)		 
Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step over the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a Thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
The people are the masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who would pervert it!
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity. The financing of all public enterprise, and the conduct of the treasury will become matters of practical administration. Money will cease to be master and will then become servant of humanity.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be; and where liberty is, there slavery cannot be.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
... the privilege of creating and issuing money... is the government's greatest creative opportunity... [saving] the taxpayers immense sums of money...
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong - throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time...
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from ... the Declaration of Independence ... that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence ... I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.
-- Abraham Lincoln		 
What chance of survival does a culture have when its own elites actively seek its destruction?
-- William S. Lind		 
The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh		 
Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh		 
This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this bill, the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately, but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed. The trusts will soon realize that they have gone too far even for their own good. The people must make a declaration of independence to relieve themselves from the Monetary Power. This they will be able to do by taking control of Congress. Wall Streeters could not cheat us if you Senators and Representatives did not make a humbug of Congress... The greatest crime of Congress is its currency system. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill. The caucus and the party bosses have again operated and prevented the people from getting the benefit of their own government.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.		 
When the President signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913], the invisible government by the money power -- proven to exist by the Monetary Trust Investigation -- will be legalized. The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.		 
A radical is one who speaks the truth.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.		 
This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.		 
The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation...they can unload the stocks on the people at high prices during the excitement and then bring on a panic and buy them back at low prices...the day of reckoning is only a few years removed.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.		 
Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.
-- Robert Lindner		 
There are men – now in power in this country – who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit.
-- John V. Lindsay		 
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.
-- John V. Lindsay		 
Paradoxical as it may seem, men and women who are free to pursue individualism and material wealth turn out to be the most compassionate of all.
-- Lawrence Lindsey		 
Contemporary liberals increasingly think and talk like a class of self-satisfied commissars enforcing a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. The idea that someone, somewhere might devote her life to an alternative vision of the good -- one that clashes in some respects with liberalism's moral creed -- is increasingly intolerable. That is a betrayal of what's best in the liberal tradition.
-- Damon Linker		 
Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’
-- Judge Kermit Victor Lipez		 
The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.
-- Judge Kermit Victor Lipez		 
It is perfectly true that the government is best which governs least. It is equally true that the government is best which provides most.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes that right important.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
It is the very essence of despotism that it can never afford to fail. This is what distinguishes it most vitally from democracy. In a despotism there is no organized opposition which can take over the power when the Administration in office has failed. All the eggs are in one basket. Everything is staked on one coterie of men. When the going is good, they move more quickly and efficiently than democracies, where the opposition has to be persuaded and conciliated. But when they lose, there are no reserves. There are no substitutes on the bench ready to go out on the field and carry the ball. That is why democracies with the habit of party government have outlived all other forms of government in the modern world. They have, as it were, at least two governments always at hand, and when one fails they have the other. They have diversified the risks of mortality, corruption, and stupidity which pervade all human affairs. They have remembered that the most beautifully impressive machine cannot run for very long unless there is available a complete supply of spare parts.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesmen, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
A regime, an established order, is rarely overthrown by a revolutionary movement; usually a regime collapses of its own weakness and corruption and then a revolutionary movement enters among the ruins and takes over the powers that have become vacant.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
The American’s conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man’s way of life.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes the right important.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
-- Walter Lippmann		 
When you get into politics, you find that all your worst nightmares about it turn out to be true, and the people who are attracted to large concentrations of power are precisely the ones who should be kept as far away from it as possible.
-- Ken Livingstone		 
Prosperity or egalitarianism – you have to choose. I favor freedom – you never achieve real equality anyway, you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.
-- Marios Vargas Llosa		 
Public educators, like Soviet farmers, lack any incentive to produce results, innovate, to be efficient, to make the kinds of difficult changes that private firms operating in a competitive market must make to survive.
-- Carolyn Lochhead		 
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
-- John Locke		 
[W]henever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty.
-- John Locke		 
Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.
-- John Locke		 
The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.
-- John Locke		 
[Individuals] have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them.
-- John Locke		 
Government has no other end than the preservation of property.
-- John Locke		 
If the innocent honest Man must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors.
-- John Locke		 
Where there is no law there is no freedom.
-- John Locke		 
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
-- John Locke		 
All wealth is the product of labor.
-- John Locke		 
The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.
-- John Locke		 
Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other.
-- John Locke		 
I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else.
-- John Locke		 
Whosoever uses force without Right ... puts himself into a state of War with those, against whom he uses it, and in that state all former Ties are canceled, all other Rights cease, and every one has a Right to defend himself, and to resist the Aggressor.
-- John Locke		 
The Care therefore of every man's Soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself. But what if he neglect the Care of his Soul? I answer, What if he neglects the Care of his Health, or of his Estate, which things are nearlier related to the Government of the Magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express Law, That such an one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the Goods and Health of Subjects be not injured by the Fraud and Violence of others; they do not guard them from the Negligence or Ill-husbandry of the Possessors themselves.
-- John Locke		 
The body of People may with Respect resist intolerable Tyranny.
-- John Locke		 
The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.
-- John Locke (False)		 
Virtue is harder to be got than a knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.
-- John Locke		 
[H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.
-- John Locke		 
Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.
-- John Locke		 
... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. ... [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society.
-- John Locke		 
[I]t being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a Wolf or a lion....
-- John Locke		 
Men being by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent which is done by agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living in a secure enjoyment of their properties.
-- John Locke		 
[F]or nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver 100 pounds to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy him, who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100 pounds that way.
-- John Locke		 
[E]very Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.
-- John Locke		 
And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage, and thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community, contrary to the end of society and government: therefore in wellordered commonwealths, where the good of the whole is so considered, as it ought, the legislative power is put into the hands of divers persons, who duly assembled, have by themselves, or jointly with others, a power to make laws, which when they have done, being separated again, they are themselves subject to the laws they have made; which is a new and near tie upon them, to take care, that they make them for the public good.
-- John Locke		 
The Natural Liberty of Man is to be free from any Superior Power on Earth, and not to be under the Will or Legislative Authority of Man, but to have only the Law of Nature for his Rule.
-- John Locke		 
All men by nature are equal in that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man; being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
-- John Locke		 
It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man, or many in combination. Whereas by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute arbitrary power and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him, to make a prey of them when he pleases; he being in a much worse condition, who is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man, who has the command of 100,000, than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of 100,000 single men; no body being secure, that his will, who has such a command, is better than that of other men, though his force be 100,000 times stronger.
-- John Locke		 
Self-defence is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself...
-- John Locke		 
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
-- John Locke		 
Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool?
-- John Locke		 
[W]henever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty ...
-- John Locke		 
Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.
-- Henry Cabot Lodge		 
If you look like a rabbit, and act like a rabbit, you will be treated like a rabbit -- prey for all predators.
-- Stony Loft		 
Fatigue makes cowards of us all.
-- Vince Lombardi		 
The IRS has become morally corrupted by the enormous power which we in Congress have unwisely entrusted to it. Too often it acts like a Gestapo preying upon defenseless citizens.
-- Senator Edward V. Long		 
Democracy is like a raft. It won't sink, but you'll always have your feet wet.
-- Russell Long		 
All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow		 
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow		 
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow		 
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow		 
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself?  There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions.  You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
-- Barry Lopez		 
Because law enforcement resources have been concentrated on the street drug trade in minority communities, drug arrests of minorities increased at 10 times the rate of increase for whites.
-- Los Angeles Times		 
If the rest of the country had adopted right-to-carry concealed-handgun provisions in 1992, about 1,500 murders and 4,000 rapes would have been avoided.
-- John R. Lott, Jr.		 
The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
-- H. P. Lovecraft		 
The most merciless thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
-- H. P. Lovecraft		 
Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of opinion.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
And I honor the man \\ who is willing to sink \\ Half his present repute \\ for the freedom to think \\ And, when he has thought, \\ be his cause strong or weak \\ Will risk t’ other half \\ for the freedom to speak.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
The ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
True freedom is to share \\ All the chains our brothers wear \\ And, with heart and hand, to be \\ Earnest to make others free.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
But it was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
And I honor the man who is willing to sink\\ half his present repute for the freedom to think,\\ and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,\\ Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
-- James Russell Lowell		 
Participation is an instrument of conquest because it encourages people to give their consent to being governed. ... Deeply embedded in people's sense of fair play is the principle that those who play the game must accept the outcome. Those who participate in politics are similarly committed, even if they are consistently on the losing side. Why do politicians plead with everyone to get out and vote? Because voting is the simplest and easiest form of participation by masses of people. Even though it is minimal participation, it is sufficient to commit all voters to being governed, regardless of who wins.
-- Theodore Lowi		 
Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.
-- Harold Lowman		 
If we are ever in doubt about what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.
-- John Lubbock		 
All go free when multitudes offend. [Lat., Quicquid multis peccatur inultum est.]
-- Lucanus		 
And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man from slavery.
-- Lucanus		 
The remaining liberty of the world was to be destroyed in the place where it stood. [Lat., Libertas ultima mundi Quo steterit ferienda loco.]
-- Lucanus		 
The liberty of the people, he says, whom power restrains unduly, perishes through liberty. [Lat., Libertas, inquit, populi quem regna coercent, Libertate perit.]
-- Lucanus		 
The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do.
-- E. V. Lucas		 
Within seven centuries, [the ancient Greeks] invented for itself, epic, elegy, lyric, tragedy, novel, democratic government, political and economic science, history, geography, philosophy, physics and biology; and made revolutionary advances in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, oratory, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, anatomy, engineering, law and war... a stupendous feat for whose most brilliant state Attica was the size of Hertfordshire, with a free population (including children) of perhaps 160,000.
-- F. J. Lucas		 
There are no hopeless situations; There are only men who have grown hopeless about them.
-- Clare Boothe Luce		 
[T]he police do not and cannot protect law-abiding citizens from criminal violence. ... This thought may not occur to wealthy people who can shelter themselves in low-crime enclaves and who care not at all about their less fortunate neighbors. But no one knows it better than the police, who scrupulously preserve their own right to carry firearms on and off duty (and often after they retire as well) even while some of them advocate disarming those whom the police cannot protect.
-- Nelson Lund		 
You don't have to scratch liberalism very deeply to find socialism underneath, nor socialism to find authoritarianism underneath.
-- Don Luskin		 
Never — and I mean never — blindly trust the statistics you read [or hear] about the economy.
-- Don Luskin		 
Whenever the media covers anything I know about in intimate detail ... they always get it wrong. True on the left, and true on the right. Sigh. Double sigh.
-- Don Luskin		 
I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.
-- Martin Luther		 
Peace if possible, but truth at any rate.
-- Martin Luther		 
The man who has the will to undergo all labor may win to any good.
-- Martin Luther		 
Freedom for supporters of the government only, for members of one party only -- no matter how big its membership may be -- is no freedom at all. Freedom is always freedom for the man who thinks differently.
-- Rosa Luxemburg		 
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
-- Rosa Luxemburg		 
Without general elections, without unrestrained freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution…in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.
-- Rosa Luxemburg		 
I've always said, the key organ here isn't the brain, it's the stomach. When things start to decline - there are bad headlines in the papers and on television - will you have the stomach for the market volatility and the broad-based pessimism that tends to come with it?
-- Peter Lynch		 
Civil libertarians must often remind government officials (and others) that if the First Amendment only protected the expression of popular and agreeable ideas, it would be totally unnecessary since those ideas would never be threatened by our democratic form of government. Our society's commitment to free speech is tested when we encounter the expression of ideas that are disagreeable -- or even offensive.
-- Timothy Lynch		 
We welcome almost any break in the monotony of things, a man has only to murder a series of wives in a new way to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer.
-- Robert Wilson Lynd		 
There is nothing in the universe that I fear, but that I shall not know all my duty, or shall fail to do it.
-- Mary Lyon		 
To argue against any breach of liberty from the ill use that may be made of it, is to argue against liberty itself, since all is capable of being abused.
-- Lord George Lyttleton		 
Tell the American people never to lose their guns. As long as they keep their guns in their hands, whatever happened here [China] will never happen there.
-- Donald S. MacAlvaney		 
No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
The inescapable price of liberty is an ability to preserve it from destruction.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
Last, but by no means least, courage -- moral courage, the courage of one’s convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle -- the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
Wars are caused by undefended wealth.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
In war there is no substitute for victory.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -­ kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour -­ with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.
-- General Douglas MacArthur		 
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
Institutions purely democratic must, sooner, or later, destroy liberty or civilization or both.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
Many politicians... are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool... who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay		 
There is no way; we make the road by walking it.
-- Antonio Machado		 
If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality.
-- Tibor Machan		 
This right to life, this right to liberty, and this right to pursue one’s happiness is unabashedly individualistic, without in the slightest denying at the same time our thoroughly social nature.   It’s only that our social relations, while vital to us all, must be chosen -­ that is what makes the crucial difference.
-- Tibor R. Machan		 
Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.
-- J. Gresham Machen		 
Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised....
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing, they are easily cured.  But when, for want of such knowledge, they are allowed to grow so that everyone can recognize them, there is no longer any remedy to be found.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
[T]here is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.  For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
Where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no consideration of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or of shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question should be: What course will save the life and liberty of the country?
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli		 
The legal code can never be identified with the code of morals. It is no more the function of government to impose a moral code than to impose a religious code. And for the same reason.
-- Robert M. MacIver		 
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
-- Charles Mackay		 
It is not because we have been free, but because we have a right to be free, that we ought to demand freedom. Justice and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age.
-- Sir James MacKintosh		 
Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.
-- Archibald Macleish		 
The dissenter is every human being at those times of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
-- Archibald Macleish		 
There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American Dream.
-- Archibald MacLeish		 
Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.
-- Archibald MacLeish		 
Freedom is the right to one's dignity as a man.
-- Archibald MacLeish		 
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.
-- James Madison		 
Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
-- James Madison		 
Whilst we assert a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to choose minds who have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.
-- James Madison		 
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
-- James Madison		 
I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.
-- James Madison		 
I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments.
-- James Madison		 
We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that religion, or the duty we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.
-- James Madison		 
But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
-- James Madison		 
There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong…. In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right….
-- James Madison		 
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.
-- James Madison		 
As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
-- James Madison		 
How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?
-- James Madison		 
Landholders ought to have a share in the government to support these invaluable interests and check the other many. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.
-- James Madison		 
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.
-- James Madison		 
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
-- James Madison		 
Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
-- James Madison		 
The highest number to which a standing army can be carried in any country does not exceed one hundredth part of the souls, or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms.  This portion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. ... Besides the advantage of being armed, ... the existence of subordinate governments ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. ... [The governments of Europe] are afraid to trust the people with arms. ... Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors.
-- James Madison		 
It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.
-- James Madison		 
It is very certain that [the commerce clause] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government.
-- James Madison		 
Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
-- James Madison		 
America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.
-- James Madison		 
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
-- James Madison		 
A pure democracy ... can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction.  A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party...  Hence it is that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in thier deaths.
-- James Madison		 
History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.
-- James Madison (False)		 
We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future ...upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God.
-- James Madison (False)		 
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.
-- James Madison		 
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. ... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.
-- James Madison		 
It becomes all therefore who are friends of a Government based on free principles to reflect, that by denying the possibility of a system partly federal and partly consolidated, and who would convert ours into one either wholly federal or wholly consolidated, in neither of which forms have individual rights, public order, and external safety, been all duly maintained, they aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth.
-- James Madison		 
The internal effects of a mutable policy are [...] calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.
-- James Madison		 
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an ailment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
-- James Madison		 
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
-- James Madison		 
Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.
-- James Madison		 
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.
-- James Madison		 
May it not be asked of every intelligent friend to the liberties of his country, whether the power exercised in such an act as this ought not to produce great and universal alarm? Whether a rigid execution of such an act, in time past, would not have repressed that information and communication among the people which is indispensable to the just exercise of their electoral rights? And whether such an act, if made perpetual, and enforced with rigor, would not, in time to come, either destroy our free system of government, or prepare a convulsion that might prove equally fatal to it?
-- James Madison		 
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
-- James Madison		 
The powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments. It is equally evident, that none of them ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others, in the administration of their respective powers. It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.
-- James Madison		 
With regard to Banks, they have taken too deep and too wide a root in social transactions, to be got rid of altogether, if that were desirable. They have a hold on public opinion, which alone would make it expedient to aim rather at the improvement, than the suppression of them. As now generally constituted, their advantages whatever they be, are outweighed by the excesses of their paper emissions, and the partialities and corruption with which they are administered.
-- James Madison		 
During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
-- James Madison		 
[A]ll power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty and the right of acquiring property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purpose of its institution.
-- James Madison		 
On the distinctive principles of the Government ... of the U. States, the best guides are to be found in ... The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental Act of Union of these States.
-- James Madison		 
Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.
-- James Madison		 
[A]s the Courts are generally the last in making the decision, it results to them by refusing or not refusing to execute a law to stamp it with its final character. This makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended, and can never be proper.
-- James Madison		 
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.
-- James Madison		 
Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.
-- James Madison		 
The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
-- James Madison		 
Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
-- James Madison		 
A government that does not trust it's law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is itself unworthy of trust.
-- James Madison (False)		 
But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.
-- James Madison		 
One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.
-- James Madison		 
We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.
-- James Madison		 
Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society.
-- James Madison		 
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
-- James Madison		 
Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.
-- James Madison		 
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.
-- James Madison		 
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
-- James Madison		 
... large and permanent military establishments ... are forbidden by the principles of free government, and against the necessity of which the militia were meant to be a constitutional bulwark.
-- James Madison		 
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
-- James Madison		 
Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
-- James Madison		 
In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature.
-- James Madison		 
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.
-- James Madison		 
The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: they are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself.
-- James Madison		 
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
-- James Madison		 
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.
-- James Madison		 
I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic -- it is also a truth, that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.
-- James Madison		 
What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, 1st destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedemonians; or 2nd it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or 3rd it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or 4th it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable.
-- James Madison		 
Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society.
-- James Madison		 
No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
-- James Madison		 
[T]he power to declare war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.
-- James Madison		 
The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.
-- James Madison		 
It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute.
-- James Madison		 
War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.
-- James Madison		 
If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty.
-- James Madison		 
All men having power ought to be mistrusted.
-- James Madison		 
Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution
-- James Madison		 
In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
-- James Madison		 
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. ... This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.
-- James Madison		 
An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government.
-- James Madison		 
If it be asked what is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part of the Constitution, and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer, the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them; as if the general power had been reduced to particulars, and any one of these were to be violated; the same, in short, as if the State legislatures should violate their respective constitutional authorities. In the first instance, the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers.
-- James Madison		 
The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
-- James Madison		 
Because finally, 'the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience' is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider the 'Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of government,' it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis.
-- James Madison		 
As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.
-- James Madison		 
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
-- James Madison		 
A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.
-- James Madison		 
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.
-- James Madison		 
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
-- James Madison		 
By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.
-- James Madison		 
From this view of the subject, it may be concluded, that a pure Democracy, by which I mean a society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will in almost every case, be felt by the majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
-- James Madison		 
With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
-- James Madison		 
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
-- James Madison		 
[T]he powers granted by the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and may be resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people.
-- James Madison		 
The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others.
-- James Madison		 
[In the case of] dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.
-- James Madison		 
Freedom arises from a multiplicity of sects, which pervades America, and is the best and only security for religious liberty in America.
-- James Madison		 
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
-- James Madison		 
In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.
-- James Madison		 
A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.
-- James Madison		 
The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon … has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.
-- James Madison		 
The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it.
-- James Madison		 
The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.
-- James Madison		 
The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of government most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.
-- James Madison		 
Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
-- James Madison		 
A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.
-- James Madison		 
The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding.
-- James Madison		 
Equal laws protecting equal rights -- the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country.
-- James Madison		 
Complaints are every where heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable; that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
-- James Madison		 
There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence.
-- James Madison		 
[T]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
-- James Madison		 
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents.
-- James Madison		 
The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
-- James Madison		 
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
-- James Madison		 
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.
-- James Madison		 
Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on public liberty.
-- James Madison		 
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
-- James Madison		 
What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?
-- James Madison		 
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.
-- James Madison		 
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
-- James Madison		 
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce.
-- James Madison		 
It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.
-- James Madison		 
A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.
-- James Madison		 
[Y]ou will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government.
-- James Madison		 
Conscience is the most sacred of all property.
-- James Madison		 
The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.
-- James Madison		 
[T]he delegation of the government, in [a republic], to a small number of citizens elected by the rest . . . [is] to refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.
-- James Madison		 
What can be more reasonable than that when crowds of them [immigrants] come here, they should be forced to renounce everything contrary to the spirit of the Constitution[?]
-- James Madison		 
When we are considering the advantages that may result from an easy mode of naturalization, we ought also to consider the cautions necessary to guard against abuses. It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours. But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of … I should be exceedingly sorry, sir, that our rule of naturalization excluded a single person of good fame that really meant to incorporate himself into our society; on the other hand, I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege, but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States.
-- James Madison		 
It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.
-- James Madison		 
It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.
-- James Madison		 
The mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.
-- James Madison		 
In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason.
-- James Madison		 
Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.
-- Maurice Maeterlinck		 
We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.
-- Bill Maher		 
Only a debt-backed system of paper money could finance the great wars, the social improvements and the fevered dreams of the 20th century.
-- Brian Maher		 
Fascist intellectuals, such as Ugo Spirito, made the round of conferences preaching the virtues of postcapitalism fascism and in fact tried to nudge the structure in a 'leftist' direction by calling for more collective control and even corporative ownership of the economy. Mussolini looked abroad to find that Franklin Roosevelt was merely seeking to emulate Italy's innovations.
-- Charles S. Maier		 
The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
-- Norman Mailer		 
Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.
-- Norman Mailer		 
Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.
-- Maimonides		 
If no information or return is filed, [the] Internal Revenue Service cannot assess you.
-- Gary Makovski		 
The right of ordinary citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his government.
-- Joyce Lee Malcolm		 
It was during the eighteenth century -- a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances within the English constitution -- that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate check on tyranny.
-- Joyce Lee Malcolm		 
It is the freedom to blaspheme, to transgress, to move beyond the pale, that is at the heart of all intellectual, artistic and political endeavor. Far from censoring offensive speech, a vibrant and diverse society should encourage it. In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogeneous, there are bound to be clashes of viewpoints.
-- Kenan Malik		 
Freedom demands that we struggle for an extension of both equality and free expression, not regard one as inimical to the other.
-- Kenan Malik		 
Try walking the halls of Congress. It's Abercrombie & Fitch meets the Hair Club for Men. Lots of  really photogenic young people kissing up to lots of insufferable blowhards. Separated by one or two generations, most of these players have only one real thing in common: They have never been weaned from the public teat. The closest they've ever come to meeting a payroll is when they come together to spend everyone else's payroll taxes.
-- Michelle Malkin		 
What our country deserves from everyone who enjoys its fruits and freedoms is a little more gratitude -- and a lot less greed.
-- Michelle Malkin		 
The fact that we became a nation and immediately separated church and state -- it has saved us from all the misery that has beset mankind with inquisitions, internecine and civil wars, and other assorted ills.
-- Dumas Malone		 
I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election... It adds up to a preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States!
-- George W. Malone		 
We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.’
-- David Mamet		 
People may or may not say what they mean...but they always say something designed to get what they want.
-- David Mamet		 
Always put off until tomorrow what you shouldn't do at all.
-- Morris Mandel		 
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other...The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.
-- Nelson Mandela		 

-- Nelson Mandela		 
Once a person is determined to help themselves, there is nothing that can stop them.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than the opposite.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
-- Nelson Mandela		 
The Declaration of Independence is the all-time masterpiece of ideological simplification. There in a single sentence of self-evident truth, the founding Fathers put into clear, easily understandable focus, the broad basis of man's relationship to God, to government, and to his fellow man.
-- Clarence Manion		 
A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word 'BUT' which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a liberal from a conservative - before they tell you. Thus: 'I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to none, but...(a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut).
-- Frank Mankiewicz		 
Banking laws backfire, too. The savings and loan crises developed because in the early 1980s Washington increased deposit insurance to $100,000 at no cost to individual savers. This encouraged them to put their money wherever it would earn the highest interest, regardless of how unsound a bank’s lending policies might be. The result, of course, was the debacle whose costs soared into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Such costs should have been borne by those who chose to take the risks. Instead they were imposed on innocent taxpayers who never put any money in an S&L.
-- Marisa Manley		 
In ancient Babylon, Sumeria, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome, for instance, price controls promoted not fairness but famine. During the twentieth century, central banks were supposed to help safeguard economies, but they brought on the worst inflations and depressions. Alcohol and drug prohibition, intended to enforce moral behavior, contributed to escalating violence.
-- Marisa Manley		 
Consider compulsory school-attendance laws, for instance. They fill government schools with children who don't want to be there. Some students are violent, attacking -- and even killing -- teachers and other students. Teachers must lock their classrooms to keep hoodlums at bay in the hallways. Thus, compulsory attendance laws, alleged to promote education, can make it almost impossible.
-- Marisa Manley		 
Since time immemorial, governments have claimed moral superiority. Yet they use laws to loot the productive wealth of working people and build palaces, pyramids, religious monuments, military forces, and other symbols of their power.
-- Marisa Manley		 
No man escapes\\ When freedom fails,\\ The best men rot in filthy jails;\\ And they who cried: “Appease, Appease!”\\ Are hanged by men they tried to please.
-- Hiram Mann		 
We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.
-- Horace Mann		 
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
-- Thomas Mann		 
Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
-- Thomas Mann		 
It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.
-- Thomas Mann		 
Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact – it is silence which isolates.
-- Thomas Mann		 
True liberty can exist only when justice is equally administered to all.
-- Katherine Mansfield		 
We will offer the Christian world unheard of peace overtures, and these nations, stupid and decadent, will leap at the chance to be our friends; they will willingly cooperate in their own destruction. Then, when their guard is down, and they have gone to sleep, we will smash them with our clenched fist.
-- Dmitri Manuilsky		 
Justice, being violated, destroys; justice, being preserved, preserves: therefore, justice must not be violated, lest violated justice destroy us.
-- Manusmriti		 
No age is unique in producing privileged persons who can happily dichotomize condemnation of their society and enjoyment of its fruits. The eighteenth century had its landau liberals as the nineteenth would have its carriage Communists.
-- Alf Mapp, Jr.		 
All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.
-- Marbury vs. Madison		 
There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.
-- Peyton Conway March		 
When they are contending for victory, they avow their intention of enjoying the fruits of it. ... They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belongs the spoils.
-- William Marcy		 
To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success.
-- Orison Swett Marden		 
A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
-- Jacques Maritain		 
Where both deliberate, the love is slight: Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?
-- Christopher Marlowe		 
Goodness is beauty in the best estate.
-- Christopher Marlowe		 
The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez		 
It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each. So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty. If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.
-- John Marshall		 
The province of the Court is solely to decide on the rights of individuals... . Questions, in their nature political or which are, by the Constitution and laws, submitted to the Executive, can never be made in this court.
-- John Marshall		 
A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected.... The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme ... they are designed to be permanent.... The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. ... Inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c., are component parts of this mass. No direct general power over these objects is granted to Congress, and, consequently, they remain subject to State legislation.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional. ... [S]hould Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers, pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not entrusted to the government, such [acts are] not the law of the land.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
[T]he framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers.
-- Justice John Marshall		 
It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. ... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, ... is fundamental to our free society.
-- Justice Thurgood Marshall		 
If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
-- Justice Thurgood Marshall		 
Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.
-- Jose Marti y Perez		 
To change masters is not to be free.
-- Jose Marti y Perez		 
Service cannot be expected from a friend in service; let him be a freeman who wishes to be my master. [Lat., Non bene, crede mihi, servo servitur amico; Sit liber, dominus qui volet esse meus.]
-- Martial		 
Morality cannot exist one minute without freedom... Only a free man can possibly be moral. Unless a good deed is voluntary, it has no moral significance.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love; for a man may love his brother so much that he feels himself thereby appointed his brother’s keeper.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
One of the serious results of propaganda is that it has caused the public to think that education and propaganda are the same thing, and thus to make an ignorant multitude believe it is being educated when it is only being manipulated. Education aims at independence of judgement. Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
It is the trivial, the irrelevant, the sensational, the appeal to obsolete bigotry which naturally give it greatest publicity. In such publicity it becomes a mere vulgar caricature of itself.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
The educator aims at a slow process of development; the propagandist, at quick results. The educator tries to tell people how to think; the propagandist, what to think. The educator strives to develop individual responsibility; the propagandist, mass effects. The educator wants thinking; the propagandist, action. The educator fails unless he achieves an open mind; the propagandist, unless he achieves a closed mind.
-- Everett Dean Martin		 
Forgiving releases you from the punishment of a self-made prison where you are both the inmate and the jailer.
-- Howard Martin		 
By the power to lay and collect imposts Congress may impose duties on any or every article of commerce imported into these states to what amount they please. By the power to lay excises, a power very odious in its nature, since it authorizes officers to examine into your private concerns, the Congress may impose duties on every article of use or consumption: On the food that we eat, on the liquors we drink, on the clothes that we wear, the glass which enlighten our houses, or the hearths necessary for our warmth and comfort. By the power to lay and collect taxes, they may proceed to direct taxation on every individual either by a capitation tax on their heads or an assessment on their property. By this part of the section, therefore, the government has a power to tax to what amount they choose and thus to sluice the people at every vein as long as they have a drop of blood left.
-- Luther Martin		 
However, is it not prudent, since no one has gone into the future, to pay attention to our elders?
-- Thomas Martin		 
There is no such thing as the last word in history. There is always scope for debate in the reading of history which is never static.
-- Tony Martin		 
Thanks to the war on drugs, nearly 700,000 people were arrested in the United States for possession of marijuana in 1997, while 400,000 currently sit in prison for drug crimes -- more than the entire prison population of Britain, Germany and Belgium -- for what is a consensual act. Nearly $35 billion a year is spent on arresting, prosecuting and jailing drug criminals in the US -- $400 million in Canada -- to hammer at a crime which essentially harms no one but the drug user.
-- Steven Martinovich		 
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx		 
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.
-- Groucho Marx		 
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
-- Groucho Marx		 
There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says, "Yes," you know he is a crook.
-- Groucho Marx		 
Although gold and silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and silver.
-- Karl Marx		 
The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.
-- Karl Marx		 
There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.
-- Karl Marx		 
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
-- Karl Marx		 
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to Socialism.
-- Karl Marx		 
Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.
-- Karl Marx		 
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
-- Karl Marx		 
The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.
-- Karl Marx		 
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.
-- Karl Marx		 
Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.
-- Karl Marx (Questionable)		 
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
-- Karl Marx		 
My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.
-- Karl Marx		 
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
-- Karl Marx		 
The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.
-- George Mason		 
To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.
-- George Mason		 
The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
-- George Mason		 
All men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing the obtaining of happiness and safety.
-- George Mason		 
Now all acts of legislature apparently contrary to natural right and justice, are, in our laws, and must be in the nature of things, considered as void. The laws of nature are the laws of God: A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to him from whose punishments they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey. Such have been the adjudications of our courts of justice.
-- George Mason		 
When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.
-- George Mason		 
Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit and security of the people, nation or community; whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public Weal.
-- George Mason		 
No 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 frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
-- George Mason		 
Who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia?  They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers.
-- George Mason		 
That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State...
-- George Mason		 
Considering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people.
-- George Mason		 
[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.
-- George Mason		 
A frequent recurrence to the fundamental principles of the constitution, and a constant adherence to those of piety, justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty, and to maintain a free government.
-- Massachusetts Bill of Rights		 
The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state; it ought not, therefore, to be restricted in this commonwealth.
-- Massachusetts Declaration of Rights		 
Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty)
-- Massachusetts State Motto		 
One of the things that really bothers me is that Americans don't have any sense of history. The majority of Americans don't have any idea of where we've come from, so they naturally succumb to the kind of cliche version that Ronald Reagan represented.
-- Robert K. Massie		 
Somebody recently figured out that we have 35 million laws to enforce the ten commandments.
-- Bert Masterson		 
Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money?
-- Matthew 20:15		 
The issue of this campaign -- it IS that word socialism. Some people like it. Younger people like it. Those of us like me, who grew up in a cold war and saw some aspects of it while visiting places like Vietnam, like I have, and seeing countries like Cuba, being there. I’m seeing what socialism’s like. I don’t like it. OK? It’s not only not free. It doesn’t freakin’ work!
-- Chris Matthews		 
Power corrupts. But it does more than that. Power attracts the corrupt, then corrupts them further.
-- Don Matthews		 
In 1950, the average family of four paid 2% of its earnings to federal taxes. Today it pays 24%.
-- William R. Mattox, Jr.		 
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
-- W. Somerset Maugham		 
There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action.
-- W. Somerset Maugham		 
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham		 
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham		 
The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling.
-- Francois Mauriac		 
In literature as in love, we are astonished by what is chosen by others.
-- Andre Maurois		 
Human freedom involves the capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.
-- Rollo May		 
No taxation without representation.
-- Jonathan Mayhew		 
To say that subjects in general are not proper judges (of the law) when their governors oppress them and play the tyrant, and when they defend their rights ...is as great a treason as ever a man uttered... (more)
-- Jonathan Mayhew		 
We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose this battle.
-- Benjamin E. Mays		 
Liberty, understood by materialists as the right to do or not to do anything not directly injurious to others, we understand as the faculty of choosing, among the various modes of fulfilling duty, those most in harmony with our own tendencies.
-- Giuseppe Mazzini		 
It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument.
-- William Gibbs McAdoo		 
The fact is that there is a serious danger of this country becoming a pluto-democracy; that is, a sham republic with the real government in the hands of a small clique of enormously wealthy men, who speak through their money, and whose influence, even today, radiates to every corner of the United States.
-- William Gibbs McAdoo		 
In every declining civilization there is a small "remnant" of people who adhere to the right against the wrong; who recognize the difference between good and evil and who will take an active stand for the former and against the latter; who can still think and discern and who will courageously take a stand against the political, social, moral, and spiritual rot or decay of their day.
-- Donald S. McAlvaney		 
Switzerland, on the other hand, insists that every male of military age must keep a powerful, fully automatic assault rifle in his home. Every home must be armed -- by law -- and some even keep mortars. Yet Switzerland has one of the most law-abiding citizenry, the lowest crime rate, and least violence of any country in the free world. And it has remained free for over a thousand years. Compare it to New York and Washington where handguns are completely banned. In fact, in Washington, Chief of Police Maurice Turner recently said that the District of Columbia gun ban law had completely failed, and he has called for armed citizen's police auxiliary to help restore order.
-- Donald S. McAlvaney		 
Thus perhaps the most dangerous of all socialist attacks on America in the 1990s is the onslaught to register and confiscate America's firearms. America cannot be subjugated to communism or a socialist dictatorship until Americans are first disarmed. Poland has strict gun control; so does Cambodia, Russia, and Red China. Over 100 million people were brutally slaughtered in those countries, but first they were disarmed. The danger to people when they can't own guns is far greater than any danger gun ownership can ever create.
-- Donald S. McAlvaney		 
The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.
-- Barry McCaffrey		 
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.
-- Eugene McCarthy		 
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.
-- Eugene McCarthy		 
There is danger in the concentration of control in the television and radio networks, especially in the large television and radio stations; danger in the concentration of ownership in the press…and danger in the increasing concentration of selection by book publishers and reviewers and by the producers of radio and television programs.
-- Eugene McCarthy		 
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
-- Eugene McCarthy		 
Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
-- Mary McCarthy		 
The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers … is absurd.
-- Robert McChesney		 
Former ABC News reporter/anchor Sam Donaldson is ready to say the last rites for network news because it will soon lose its dominant position as Americans' primary source of news. 'I think it's dead. Sorry,' he said during a breakfast panel Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters' convention in Las Vegas.
-- Bill McConnell		 
If, as it appears, the experiment that was called 'America' is at an end ... then perhaps a fitting epitaph would be ... 'here lies America the greatest nation that might have been had it not been for the Edomite bankers who first stole their money, used their stolen money to buy their politicians and press and lastly deprived them of their constitutional freedom by the most evil device yet created --- The Federal Reserve Banking System.'
-- G. D. McDaniel		 
The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. … Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.
-- Larry P. McDonald		 
The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and communism under the same tent, all under their control... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.
-- Larry P. McDonald		 
Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish.
-- Neil A. McDonald		 
Freedom is not a fixed and possessed thing. It is a quality of life. And like action itself, it is something experienced only by individuals.
-- Neil A. McDonald		 
Now the truth of the matter is, there is nothing wrong with this country. Please. The message I want to leave with you is that there's nothing wrong with this country that the proper leadership won't cure. We've been here before. In 1787, the economy of our nation was in absolute chaos and as a consequence, they met in Philadelphia to form a new country, and when they did, they did the right things, and in the second State of the Union address, which was written at that time by George Washington, he said the foundations, the economic foundations of our nation are on such sound footing that it would have been a madman would have suspected 3 years ago. The fact is that the chaos that they're creating doesn't mean that America can or has to be in decline. It means that we need to remove them as rapidly as possible and get people that know what to do and America will continue to climb.
-- Bob McEwen		 
In the 1950’s [America was] the richest nation, the richest city on earth was Detroit. They voted for change and so now it is the poorest city in America. At the same time, the nation of South Korea, of all the nations on earth, was third from the bottom. Virtually the poorest nation on earth. It is now tenth from the top. If you understand the principle, the greater freedom, the greater the wealth, you can then put any nation [on this chart]. Now you can go to Tagusagopos, you can go to Buenos Aires, you can go to Cairo, you can go to Philadelphia and all you need to know is what percentage of the Gross Domestic Product is controlled by government, and the greater the government, the greater the poverty, and that’s all politics is about. Every day politicians say, “I can make a better decision for you than you can for yourself, and let me take your money away from you and make it on your behalf” and thus make the nation poorer.
-- Bob McEwen		 
Now the last time the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the Presidency for four years, was under Jimmy Carter, and so what happened? Exactly the same. That is, we’re all going to run out of this or that or the other thing. We’re all going to run out, we had gas lines, we’re all going to freeze to death. He had his little sweater on and said you had to wear your sweater to ride your bicycle and turn your thermostat down because America’s coming to an end next Tuesday, a week, and there isn’t anything anybody can do about it. Those folks don’t know how to run anything. So therefore, and the night before the election in which Ronald Reagan went on television and said, “There’s nothing wrong with America that the proper leadership won’t cure.” Now the first thing that they did was to take all of those crazy regulations from the oil industry and throw them in the Potomac, and in 24 hours, in 24 hours gas stations that had been closed night after night, for year after year, when I drove back and forth from Ohio to Washington, I knew I had to have a full tank of gas by 4:00 in the afternoon because there wasn’t a single filling station between Washington and Ohio that was open. When we, when my wife and I drove home in March 1981, she was asleep on the seat and we drove up into Hillsborough, Ohio, and there the lights were on at the filling station where they’d been closed for nearly 3 years, and I woke her up, I said, “See sweetheart? Had we not won the election, this never would have happened.”
-- Bob McEwen		 
We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the FED. They are not government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers.
-- Louis McFadden		 
It was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence...The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.
-- Louis McFadden		 
Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are US government institutions. They are not... they are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the US for the benefit of themselves and their foreign and domestic swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. The sack of the United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will.
-- Louis McFadden		 
Mr. Chairman, I see no reason why citizens of the United States should be terrorized into surrendering their property to the International Bankers who own and control the Federal Reserve.
-- Louis McFadden		 
The men who rule the Democratic Party then promised the people that if they were returned to power there would be no central bank established here while they held the reigns of government. Thirteen months later that promise was broken, and the Wilson administration, under the tutelage of those sinister Wall Street figures who stood behind Colonel House, established here in our free Country the worm-eaten monarchical institution of the "King's Bank" to control us from the top downward, and from the cradle to the grave.
-- Louis McFadden		 
It was not accidental [the 1929 stock-market “crash”]. It was a carefully contrived occurrence. ... The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.
-- Louis McFadden		 
The Federal Reserve (Banks) are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this Nation is run by the International Bankers.
-- Louis McFadden		 
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements.... The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking system of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States.... The United States under present conditions will be transformed from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and importing nation with a balance of trade against it.
-- Louis McFadden		 
Open the books … and you will be staggered to see how much American money has been taken from the United States Treasury for the benefit of Russia. Find out what business has been transacted for the State Bank of Soviet Russia, by its correspondent, the Chase Bank of New York [owned by the Rockefellers].
-- Louis McFadden		 
What is needed here is a return to the Constitution of the United States. We need to have a complete divorce of Bank and State. The old struggle that was fought out here in Jackson's day must be fought over again... The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed and the Federal Reserve Banks, having violated their charters, should be liquidated immediately. Faithless Government officers who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial. Unless this is done by us, I predict that the American people, outraged, robbed, pillaged, insulted, and betrayed as they are in their own land, will rise in their wrath and send a President here who will sweep the money changers out of the temple.
-- Louis McFadden		 
(The Great Depression resulting from the Stock Market crash) was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence....The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all.
-- Louis McFadden		 
When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists...acting together to enslave the world...Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is--the Fed has usurped the government.
-- Louis McFadden		 
I’m going to introduce a resolution to have the postmaster general stop reading dirty books and deliver the mail.
-- Gail W. McGee		 
Those wearing Tolerance for a label, Call other views intolerable.
-- Phyllis McGinley		 
I am not a number, I am a free man!
-- Patrick McGoohan		 
The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher standard.
-- George McGovern		 
I would support a Presidential candidate who pledged to take the following steps: ... At the end of the war in the Persian Gulf, press for ... a 'new world order' based not upon Pax Americana but on peace through law with a stronger U.N. and World Court.
-- George McGovern		 
In May 1998, [Los Angeles Times publisher Mark] Willis told the Wall Street Journal that he wanted to make the Times more appealing to women and minorities by producing stories that were “more emotional, more personal and less analytic.”
-- William McGowan		 
Journalism is a profession that prides itself on its maverick outspokenness and allergic reaction to preconceived notions. Yet, in today’s media some notions are considered beyond scrutiny – including the merits of the diversity agenda.
-- William McGowan		 
Rules are written for those who lack the ability to truly reason. But for those who can, rules become nothing more than guidelines, and live their lives governed not by rules but by reason.
-- James McGuigan		 
I think the world is run by 'C' students.
-- Al McGuire		 
Those who create and issue money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.
-- Reginald McKenna		 
I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.
-- Reginald McKenna		 
If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.
-- Terence McKenna		 
We could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was ... there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.
-- William McKinley		 
In my profession, it is not enough to know your history, speak a language and be widely traveled. Equally important is how to weigh and organize evidence. How to listen. How to see a situation from the other person's point of view. How to deal with complexity and realize that few issues in the world come with just one side. How to learn, not what to think.
-- John E. McLaughlin		 
Most of our diversions do not so much delay death as accustom us to it.
-- Mignon McLaughlin		 
It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time.
-- Mignon McLaughlin		 
Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.
-- Mignon McLaughlin		 
That distinct sovereignties could exist under one government, emanating from the same people, was a phenomenon in the political world, which the wisest statesmen in Europe could not comprehend; and of its practicability many in our own country entertained the most serious doubts. Thus far the friends of liberty have had great cause of triumph in the success of the principles upon which our government rests. But all must admit that the purity and permanency of this system depend on its faithful administration. The states and the federal government have their respective orbits, within which each must revolve. If either cross the sphere of the other, the harmony of the system is destroyed, and its strength is impaired. It would be as gross usurpation on the part of the federal government, to interfere with state rights, by an exercise of powers not delegated; as it would be for a state to interpose its authority against a law of the union.
-- Justice John McLean		 
All questions of power, arising under the constitution of the United States, whether they relate to the federal or a state government, must be considered of great importance. The federal government being formed for certain purposes, is limited in its powers, and can in no case exercise authority where the power has not been delegated. The states are sovereign; with the exception of certain powers, which have been invested in the general government, and inhibited to the states. No state can coin money, emit bills of credit, pass ex post facto laws, or laws impairing the obligation of contracts, &c. If any state violate a provision of the constitution, or be charged with such violation to the injury of private rights, the question is made before this tribunal; to whom all such questions, under the constitution, of right belong. In such a case, this court is to the state, what its own supreme court would be, where the constitutionality of a law was questioned under the constitution of the state. And within the delegation of power, the decision of this court is as final and conclusive on the state, as would be the decision of its own court in the case stated.
-- Justice John McLean		 
Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.
-- Marshall McLuhan		 
Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.
-- Marshall McLuhan		 
American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's-license age than at voting age.
-- Marshall McLuhan		 
Left has come to represent increasing government control. The extreme leftist typically seeks total government. Working their way toward total government power are the Communists, socialists, fascists, and modern liberals who advocate government solutions for every real or imagined problem.
-- John F. McManus		 
Search the Constitution and you will find no power granted to the legislative branch to make laws governing agriculture, housing, medicine, energy, private ownership or weapons, and a great deal more.
-- John F. McManus		 
Whatever the individual motives of the censors may be, censorship is a form of social control. It is a means of holding a society together, of arresting the flux which censors fear. And since the fear cannot be appeased, the demands for censorship mount in volume and intensity. And one form of censorship can easily lead to other forms.
-- Carey McWilliams		 
Censors are infused with the sentiment of moral indignation – a dangerous and misleading sentiment because, by blinding those who voice it to the real reasons for their indignation, it makes them puppets whose fears can be manipulated for ends and purposes they do not foresee or intend.
-- Carey McWilliams		 
I am opposed to censorship in all forms, without any exceptions. As a matter of social philosophy, I do not like the idea of some people trying to protect the minds and morals of other people. In practice, this means that a majority seeks to impose its standards on a minority; hence, an element of coercion is inherent in the idea of censorship.
-- Carey McWilliams		 
That the religious right completely took over the word Christian is a given. At one time, phrases such as Christian charity and Christian tolerance were used to denote kindness and compassion. To perform a "Christian" act meant an act of giving, of acceptance, of toleration. Now, Christian is invariably linked to right-wing conservative political thought -- Christian nation, Christian morality, Christian values, Christian family.
-- Peter McWilliams		 
The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people.
-- Peter McWilliams		 
At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect. Any attempt to level and discard all religion would have been viewed with universal indignation.
-- James Meacham		 
The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society.
-- Margaret Mead		 
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
-- Margaret Mead		 
My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.
-- Margaret Mead		 
It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.
-- George Meany		 
Freedom is always wise.
-- Alexander Meiklejohn		 
Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.
-- Alexander Meiklejohn		 
I used to be employed as a field engineer servicing [a major broadcast network's] distribution equipment, specifically their affiliates' satellite dishes. I've had many talks with TV newsmen. The most telling was one who confessed that he didn't think he could continue his job and live with himself because he daily saw 'the difference between what I am forced to report and what's really happening.' He told me that, at the first meeting with 'corporate's' news director [from the corporate holding company that owned the station, not the network], the ND told them that 'our job as reporters was to shape public opinion.' When someone protested that their job was to discover and report the truth, the ND responded, 'Whatever the public's perception is is the truth and it's your job to make sure that they have the proper perceptions.' That man's statement is always in the back of my mind whenever I see or read anything in the 'news,' that the job of reporters today is not to report hard, verifiable facts but rather to shape public opinion using selected facts presented in carefully arranged fashion.
-- Chris Meissen		 
In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas \\ Unity in things Necessary, Liberty in things Unnecessary, and Charity in all.
-- Rupertus Meldenius		 
It may be your intent to be our masters; how can it be ours to be your slaves?
-- Melians		 
It may be your intent to be our masters; how can it be ours to be your slaves?
-- Melians		 
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
-- Herman Melville		 
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
-- Herman Melville		 
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
-- Menander		 
It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.
-- Menander		 
Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within. Rust destroys iron, moths destroy clothes, the worm eats away the wood; but greatest of all evils is envy, impious habitant of corrupt souls, which ever was, is, and shall be a consuming disease.
-- Menander		 
To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads -- such is the behavior of the multitude.
-- Mencius		 
Let men decide firmly what they will not do, and they will be free to do vigorously what they ought to do.
-- Mencius		 
The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart.
-- Mencius		 
The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute -- he simply speaks and does what is right.
-- Mencius		 
Once [William Jennings Bryan] had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
No article of faith is proof against the disintegrating effects of increasing information; one might almost describe the acquirement of knowledge as a process of disillusion.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when the fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Democracy is a form of religion, it is the worship of jackals by jack asses.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars: the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Debate, it seems to me, is one of the most useful of human inventions. It is the mother and father of all free inquiry and honest thought. It tests ideas, detects errors and promotes clear thinking. A man cannot stand up before it without exposing his whole intellectual stock of goods.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth -- that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
To die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air -- that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. 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 most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to prevailing superstition or taboo.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else...Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change...[T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the improbable.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Judge: a law student who marks his own papers.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
-- H. L. Mencken		 
The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.
-- Dr. Joseph Mengele		 
We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to.
-- Karl A. Menninger		 
We can't constantly explain to our voters that taxpayers have to be on the hook for certain risks, rather than those who make a lot of money taking those risks.
-- Angela Merkel		 
Psychologically, it is important to understand that the simple fact of being interviewed and investigated has a coercive influence. As soon as a man is under cross-examination, he may become paralyzed by the procedure and find himself confessing to deeds he never did. In a country where the urge to investigate spreads, suspicion and insecurity grow.
-- Joost A. Merloo		 
Pretty soon, there will not be any debate in this city about overcrowded prisons. AIDS will take care of that.
-- Mario Merola		 
May God prevent us from becoming 'right-thinking men' -- that is to say, men who agree perfectly with their own police.
-- Thomas Merton		 
I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself. If modern people were a little less sane, a little more doubtful, a little more aware of their absurdities and contradictions, perhaps there might be the possibility of their survival.
-- Thomas Merton		 
The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no sins because all the sinners have been wiped out.
-- Thomas Merton		 
What good does it do to ban some guns. All guns should be banned.
-- Howard Metzenbaum		 
The ideal type of the Communist is a man in whom all individual, emotional, and unconscious elements have been reduced to a minimum and subjected to the control of an iron will, informed by a supple intellect. That intellect is totally at the service of a single and compelling idea, made incarnate in the Communist Party: the concept of History as an inexorable god whose ways are revealed ‘scientifically’ through the doctrine and method of Marxism-Leninism.
-- Frank Straus Meyer		 
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
-- Michelangelo		 
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
-- Michelangelo		 
The historian’s first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth.
-- Jules Michelet		 
While the legislature has power, in the most comprehensive manner, to regulate the carrying and use of firearms, it has no power to constitute it a crime for a person, alien or citizen, to possess a revolver for the legitimate defense of himself and his property, said right being expressly granted by section 5, art. 2, of the State Constitution, to every person.
-- Michigan Supreme Court		 
[Legislation] cannot constitutionally result in the prohibition of the possession of those arms which, by the common opinion and usage of law-abiding people, are proper and legitimate to be kept upon private premises for the protection of person and property.
-- Michigan Supreme Court		 
Religious liberty is primarily a man’s liberty to profess a faith different from that of the dominant religion, and to unite in public worship with those who share his faith.
-- Giovanni Miegge		 
I did not come here to guide lambs. I came here to awaken lions.
-- Javier Milei		 
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
-- James D. Miles		 
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. ... Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
If any opinion be compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
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 that person that he, if he had the power, would be in silencing mankind… If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
There is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions... The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man 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		 
The individual is not accountable to society for his actions, insofar as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands -- even for beneficial purposes -- will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
-- John Stuart Mill		 
Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry. Let us renew our faith and pledge to Man, his right to be Himself, and free.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay		 
The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom. The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims.
-- Arthur Miller		 
Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men. This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order... A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment - the ruling class - is not supposed to be discussed.
-- Arthur S. Miller		 
Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men (plus a few women). This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order. ... A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment -- the ruling class -- is not supposed to be discussed.
-- Arthur S. Miller		 
This truth is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of Capital to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance. Thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.
-- Sir Denison Miller		 
The biggest conspiracy has always been the fact that there is no conspiracy. Nobody's out to get you. Nobody gives a shit whether you live or die. There, you feel better now?
-- Dennis Miller		 
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore our belief in our own guidance.
-- Henry Miller		 
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
-- Henry Miller		 
The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.
-- Henry Miller		 
Laws do not curb the lawless. After all, that's why we call them 'lawless.'
-- Joel Miller		 
What we have to remember is that not everything is under our control. If people are free in any meaningful sense of the word, that means they are at liberty to foul up their lives as much as make something grand of them. That's a gamble we all take. That's the risk of liberty. Nobody wants others to screw up their lives, but each must be free to do so for themselves.
-- Joel Miller		 
Far from a simple attempt to rid the nation of crime and drugs, our policy against narcotics -- like any public policy -- comes with strings attached. And increasingly these strings are constricting around the necks of Americans' lives and liberties.
-- Joel Miller		 
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
-- Olin Miller		 
And let us remind readers regularly, in editorials, in our promotional advertising, in speeches to civic groups and others, that advertising helps people to live better and saves them money. This fact needs constant selling.
-- Paul Miller		 
The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime.
-- Miller v. U.S.		 
Welcome to the U.S. Capitol: Watch for falling expectations.
-- Wiley Miller		 
You won't find average Americans on the left or on the right. You'll find them at Kmart.
-- Zell Miller		 
The government of the world was [Cecil] Rhodes' simple desire.
-- Sarah Gertrude Millin		 
Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.
-- C. Wright Mills		 
Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.
-- C. Wright Mills		 
If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you will do will surely obscure them. If you do not alarm anyone morally, you will yourself remain morally asleep. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift to the coming human hell.
-- C. Wright Mills		 
As a rule, panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.
-- John Mills		 
Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil - only evil - and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs.
-- Roger Quarles Mills		 
The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
-- A. A. Milne		 
None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants.
-- John Milton		 
The conquer'd, also, and enslaved by war, Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose.
-- John Milton		 
License they mean when they cry, Liberty! For who loves that, must first be wise and good.
-- John Milton		 
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
-- John Milton		 
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
-- John Milton		 
No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.
-- John Milton		 
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.
-- John Milton		 
There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.
-- John Milton		 
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
-- John Milton		 
The whole freedom of man consists either in spiritual or civil liberty.
-- John Milton		 
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them; they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
-- John Milton		 
When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained that wise men look for.
-- John Milton		 
For what can war but endless war still breed?
-- John Milton		 
Nations grow corrupt, love bondage more than liberty; bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
-- John Milton		 
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
-- Charles Mingus		 
You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.
-- Octave Mirbeau		 
Say not, when I have leisure I will study; you may not have leisure.
-- The Mishnah		 
The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms for the defense of his home, person, or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but the legislature may regulate or forbid carrying concealed weapons.
-- Mississippi Constitution		 
That the right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or when lawfully summoned in aid of the civil power, shall not be questioned; but this shall not justify the wearing of concealed weapons.
-- Missouri Constitution		 
Jim Creechan, a University of Alberta sociologist, said some of the love of guns may have its roots in Alberta's pervasive free-enterprise model of behaviour. 'It's the whole idea that the individual is more important than the collective.'
-- Alanna Mitchell		 
Compare this [U.S. taxation] to the plight of medieval serfs. They only had to give the lord of the manor a third of their output and they were considered slaves. So what does that make us.
-- Daniel Mitchell		 
Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.
-- Margaret Mitchell		 
There is only one remedy for ignorance and thoughtlessness, and that is literacy. Millions and millions of children would today stand in no need of sex education or consumer education or anti-racism education or any of those fake educations, if they had had in the first place 'an' education.
-- Richard Mitchell		 
The feelings, sentiments, values and responses of our children, or of any citizen, are none of the government's damned business. That we must support a government agency that gives itself to the emotional and ideological manipulation of citizens is infamous.
-- Richard Mitchell		 
We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love.
-- Richard Mitchell		 
Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.
-- Richard Mitchell		 
Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude.
-- Richard Mitchell		 
Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.
-- Richard Mitchell		 
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
-- Jessica Mitford		 
I want gay married people to be able to protect their marijuana plants with guns.
-- Tim Moen		 
Governments lie; bankers lie; even auditors sometimes lie: gold tells the truth.
-- Lord Rees Mogg		 
There is a First Amendment right to speak in an encrypted way… The right to speak P.G.P. is like the right to speak Navajo. The Government has no particular right to prevent you from speaking in a technical manner even if it is inconvenient for them to understand.
-- Eben Moglen		 
The ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.
-- Mohammed		 
A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.
-- Edgar J. Mohn		 
It is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world.
-- Molière		 
If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.
-- Molière		 
Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.
-- Molière		 
If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.
-- Molière		 
Utopians...consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of mankind’s totalization may flounder.
-- Thomas Molnar		 
Uniformity, therefore, is an essential built-in element of utopian existence, and it is no less important that this uniformity remain permanent.
-- Thomas Molnar		 
[In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places.
-- James Monroe		 
Let us by wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.
-- James Monroe		 
It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.
-- James Monroe		 
How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.
-- James Monroe		 
Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.
-- James Monroe		 
How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.
-- James Monroe		 
Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect.
-- Thomas S. Monson		 
It is work, work that one delights in, that is the surest guarantor of happiness. But even here it is a work that has to be earned by labor in one's earlier years. One should labor so hard in youth that everything one does subsequently is easy by comparison.
-- Ashley Montagu		 
I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.
-- Mary Wortley Montagu		 
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
-- Ashley Montague		 
Trust is a two way street. If your government does not trust you, how can you trust your government?
-- Bruce Montague		 
A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.
-- Charles Edward Montague		 
Discipline must come through liberty... We do not consider an individual disciplined when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.
-- Maria Montessori		 
No one can be free unless he is independent... In reality, he who is served is limited in his independence...
-- Maria Montessori		 
We fought the Revolutionary War for no taxation without representation, it seems to me that we are much worse off today, because we are heavily taxed, and only the king's corporations control this Country, together with mob rule, of the special interests.
-- James Montgomery		 
I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met.
-- Dwight Lyman Moody		 
If the political-correctness fascists get their way, we can safely assume it will be correct-thinking, “political cleansing” squads deciding what we can or cannot say on the Intenet. These people fear public debate and demand homogenization of “acceptable” attitudes compatible with their emotional, utopian idealism.
-- Charles W. Moore		 
Sitting here, we are not at liberty to add one jot of power to the national government beyond what the people have granted by the constitution; and, on the other hand, we are bound to support that constitution as it stands, and to give a fair and rational scope to all the powers which it clearly contains.
-- Houston v. Moore		 
[T]he income tax is incompatible with a free society. The IRS routinely intrudes on our basic civil liberties and privacy rights -- and its intrusions are getting worse all the time. I want an America where it is no longer the government's business how much money you make and what you do with it.
-- Stephen Moore		 
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
-- Thomas Moore		 
Better to dwell in freedom's hall, With a cold damp floor and mouldering wall, Than bow the head and bend the knee In the proudest palace of slaverie.
-- Thomas Moore		 
We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability, dignity and love.
-- Whitney Moore, Jr.		 
The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. Therefore, when I consider and weigh in my mind these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, I perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men in procuring their own commodities under the name and authority of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible.
-- Thomas More		 
I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of record keeping procedure [gun registration] is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another.
-- Charles Morgan		 
One cannot shut ones eyes to things not seen with eyes.
-- Charles Langbridge Morgan		 
A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face... one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.
-- Charles Langbridge Morgan		 
A man always has two reasons for what he does -- a good one, and the real one.
-- J. P. Morgan		 
Capital must protect itself in every way... Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.
-- J. P. Morgan (Questionable)		 
Populism is rising because liberals have become unbearable, Okay? And I speak as a liberal… Liberals have become utterly, pathetically illiberal and it’s a massive problem. What’s the point of calling yourself a liberal if you don’t allow anyone else to have a different view? You know, this snowflake culture we operate in, this victimhood culture that everyone, has to think in a certain way, behave a certain way. Everyone has to have a bleeding heart… You say a joke 10 years ago that offended somebody you can never host the Oscars… So what’s happening around the world? Populism is rising because people are fed up with the PC culture. They’re fed up with the snowflake culture. They’re fed up with everyone being offended by everything… They just want to tell people, not just how to lead their life but if you don’t lead it the way I tell you to, It’s a kind of version of fascism.
-- Piers Morgan		 
We can hardly expect the nation-state to make itself superfluous, at least not overnight. Rather what we must aim for is really nothing more than caretakers of a bankrupt international machine which will have to be transformed slowly into a new one. The transition will not be dramatic, but a gradual one. People will still cling to national symbols.
-- Henry Morgenthau, Jr.		 
We've been asleep for about 50 years. Ever since the end of World War II we just steadily handed our future and our bank accounts and now our children, handed them all over to the federal government...
-- Michael Moriarty		 
National Health? Socialized pension funds? State-controlled television? Search and seizure laws? Forfeiture laws? If we're not living in the Soviet Union of the United States we certainly have returned to 1776 and 'taxation without representation.'
-- Michael Moriarty		 
If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.... The beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward to an infinite future, having lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do.... These words are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world.
-- Samuel Eliot Morison		 
If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.
-- Samuel Eliot Morison		 
There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.
-- Christopher Darlington Morley		 
Since people, in a competitive or any other society, are by no means always just to each other, some regulation by the state in its capacity of umpire is unavoidable, What must be kept in mind is that the greatest injustice of all is done when the umpire forgets that he too is bound by the rules, and begins to make them as between contestants in behalf of his own prejudices.
-- Felix Morley		 
[L]iberty, or the absence of coercion, or the leaving people to think, speak, and act as they please, is in itself a good thing. It is the object of a favourable presumption. The burden of proving it inexpedient always lies, and wholly lies, on those who wish to abridge it by coercion, whether direct or indirect.
-- John Morley		 
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
The political spirit is the great force in throwing the love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
The means prepare the end, and the end is what the means have made of it.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
When it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
-- John Viscount Morley		 
I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ...no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun.
-- Prof. Dean Morris		 
Each state enjoys sovereign power.
-- Gouverneur Morris		 
The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres.
-- Gouverneur Morris		 
Corruption and some other offenses ought to be impeachable, but the cases ought to be enumerated and defined.
-- Gouverneur Morris		 
The prime function of the criminal law is to protect our persons and our property; these purposes are now engulfed in a mass of other distracting, inefficiently performed, legislative duties. When the criminal law invades the spheres of private morality and social welfare, it exceeds its proper limits at the cost of neglecting its primary tasks. This unwarranted extension is expensive, ineffective, and criminogenic.
-- Norval Morris		 
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.
-- Jim Morrison		 
Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this.
-- Toni Morrison		 
Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare.
-- Lance Morrow		 
The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance -- a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms -- A Nation of Finger Pointers.
-- Lance Morrow		 
Zealotry of either kind -- the puritan's need to regiment others or the victim's passion for blaming everyone except himself -- tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candlesnuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment.
-- Lance Morrow		 
The liberal insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make the State his servant.
-- Wayne Morse		 
We owe to democracy, at least in part, the regime of discussion with which we live; we owe it to the principal modern liberties: those of thought, press and association. And the regime of free discussion is the only one which permits the ruling class to renew itself… which eliminates that class quasi-automatically when it no longer corresponds to the interests of the country.
-- Gaetano Mosca		 
If we can just pass a few more laws, we could all be criminals!
-- Vinnie Moscaritolo		 
Once a matter has become, in one way or another, the subject of regulation by the United Nations, be it by resolution or the General Assembly or by convention between member States [Nations] at the insistence of the United Nations, that subject ceases to be a matter being 'essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the member States...'
-- Moses Moskowitz		 
The freedom of any society varies proportionately with the volume of its laughter.
-- Zero Mostel		 
If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press... They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds.
-- Bill Moyers		 
The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan		 
When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan		 
Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge		 
The courts are not bound by mere forms, nor are they to be misled by mere pretences. They are at liberty — indeed, are under a solemn duty — to look at the substance of things, whenever they enter upon the inquiry whether the legislature has transcended the limits of its authority. If therefore, a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is a palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of the courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution.
-- Mugler v. Kansas		 
All truth is safe, and nothing else is safe; and he who keeps back the truth or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward, or a criminal, or both.
-- Max Muller		 
The increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve Banks from 143 Million dollars in 1913 to 45 Billion dollars in 1949 went directly to the private stockholders of the [Federal Reserve] banks.
-- Eustace Mullins		 
Federal Reserve Notes Are Not Dollars.
-- Russell Munk		 
It is important therefore that in these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated, and habits of subordination and obedience formed. One of the greatest blessings which the State can confer upon her children is to instill into their minds at an early period moral and religious truths. ... Thousands of unfortunate children are growing up in perfect ignorance of their moral and religious duties. Their parents equally unfortunate know not how to instruct them, and have not the opportunity or ability of placing them under the care of those who could give them instruction. The State, in the warmth of her affection and solicitude for their welfare, must take charge of those children and place them in schools where their minds can be enlightened and their hearts can be trained to virtue.
-- Archibald D. Murphey		 
Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion all have a double aspect – freedom of thought and freedom of action.
-- Frank Murphy		 
The civil liberties of people of all ideologies are threatened by a government determined to appear tough on terrorism. The government is going to be given broad new powers to investigate people for political activities -- activities on both sides of the political spectrum.
-- Laura Murphy		 
The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.
-- Maureen Murphy		 
Conscience is that still, small voice that is sometimes too loud for comfort.
-- Bert Murray		 
We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government.
-- Charles Alan Murray		 
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast industry's planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
If none of us ever read a book that was “dangerous,” had a friend who was “different,” or joined an organization that advocated “change,” we would all be the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular.
-- Edward R. Murrow		 
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The Government has been compelled to levy taxes which unavoidably hit large sections of the population. The Italian people are disciplined, silent and calm, they work and know that there is a Government which governs, and know, above all, that if this Government hits cruelly certain sections of the Italian people, it does not so out of caprice, but from the supreme necessity of national order.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. [...] They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Yet if anyone cares to read over the now crumbling minutes giving an account of the meetings at which the Italian Fasci di Combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers… It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter!... I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission, and welds them into unity.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death...
-- Benito Mussolini		 
The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State -- a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values -- interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which diverent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, Liberalism, and Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains; and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was the century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State. It is a perfectly logical deduction that a new doctrine can utilize all the still vital elements of previous doctrines.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Democracy is talking itself to death. The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them. There is too much foolishness, too much lost motion. I have stopped the talk and the nonsense. I am a man of action. Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power.
-- Benito Mussolini (Questionable)		 
You want to know what fascism is like? It is like your New Deal!
-- Benito Mussolini		 
People are tired of liberty. They have had a surfeit of it. Liberty is no longer a chaste and austere virgin…. Today’s youth are moved by other slogans…Order, Hierarchy, Discipline.
-- Benito Mussolini		 
Against individualism, the fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man...
-- Benito Mussolini		 
There is no way to peace; peace is the way.
-- A. J. Muste		 
The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.
-- A. J. Muste		 
Under the surface, the Rothschilds long had a powerful influence in dictating American financial laws. The law records show that they were powers in the old Bank of the United States [abolished by Andrew Jackson].
-- Gustavus Myers		 
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet.
-- Lyle Myhr		 
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet.
-- Lyle Myhr		 
In the most civilized and progressive countries freedom of discussion is recognized as a fundamental principle.
-- C. E. M. Joad		 
There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
-- Ralph Nader		 
What we have now is democracy without citizens. No one is on the public's side. All the buyers are on the corporation's side. And the bureaucrats in the administration don't think the government belongs to the people.
-- Ralph Nader		 
Is there a number or mark planned for the hand or forehead in a new cashless society? YES, and I have seen the machines that are now ready to put it into operation.
-- Ralph Nader		 
Competition, free enterprise, and an open market were never meant to be symbolic fig leaves for corporate socialism and monopolistic capitalism.
-- Ralph Nader		 
No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
-- W. A. Nance		 
There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,\\ And that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.
-- Ogden Nash		 
Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.
-- Ogden Nash		 
The artist and the censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.
-- George Jean Nathan		 
The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.
-- George Jean Nathan		 
The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience.
-- National Education Association Resolution		 
The goal of legalizing drugs is to bring them under effective legal control. If it were legal to produce and distribute drugs, legitimate businessmen would enter the business. There would be less need for violence and corruption since the industry would have access to the courts. And, instead of absorbing tax dollars as targets of expensive enforcement efforts, the drug sellers might begin to pay taxes. So, legalization might well solve the organized crime aspects of the drug trafficking problem. On average, drug use under legalization might not be as destructive to users and to society as under the current prohibition, because drugs would be less expensive, purer, and more conveniently available.
-- National Institute of Justice		 
We feel that an American citizen of voting age and good character should have the right to purchase without restriction a handgun, pistol, revolver, rifle, shotgun, or like item without interference by a government body.
-- National Police Officers' Association of America		 
In Defense Of Freedom ... (more)
-- National Press Club		 
There's no valid evidence whatsoever to indicate that depriving law-abiding American citizens of the right to own firearms would in any way lessen crime or criminal activity. ... The National Sheriffs Association unequivocally opposes any legislation that has as its intent the confiscation of firearms ... or the taking away from law-abiding American citizens their right to purchase, own, and keep arms.
-- National Sheriffs Association		 
We ask that government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within the confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power of financial interest. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand ... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education.... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents.... The government must undertake the improvement of public health -- by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor -- by the greatest possible support for all groups concerned with the physical education of youth. [W]e combat the ... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good.
-- National Socialist Party of Germany (NAZI)		 
A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt about a tragedy. He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.” The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?” The grandfather answered, “The one I feed.”
-- Native American Story		 
The German woman does not smoke!
-- Nazi slogan		 
All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the right to keep and bear arms for security or defense of self, family, home and others, and for lawful common defense, hunting, recreational use, and all other lawful purposes, and such rights shall not be denied or infringed by the state or any subdivision thereof.
-- Nebraska Constitution		 
Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them.
-- Suzanne Necker		 
People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.
-- Richard J. Needham		 
Of those who say nothing, few are silent.
-- Thomas Neill		 
Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself.
-- Harriet Nelson		 
Gold is still the ultimate store of wealth. It's the world's only true money. And there isn't much of it to go around. All of it ever mined would fit into a small building - a 56 foot cube. The annual world production would fit into a 14 foot cube, roughly the size of an ordinary living room. If each Chinese citizen were to buy just one ounce, it would take up the annual supply for the next 200 years.
-- Mark Nestmann		 
No law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state.
-- New Mexico Constitution		 
It is our opinion that an ordinance may not deny the people the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms, and to that extent the ordinance under consideration is void.
-- New Mexico Court of Appeals		 
If the New World Order agenda is not realized by the terrorist attacks on America and if Americans don’t agree to give up their weapons and relinquish their sovereignty to the New World Order, the next attack will be the use of chemical, biological and/or atomic warfare against the American people. The architects of the New World Order will not hesitate to use as a last resort an atomic or hydrogen bomb in a major American city.
-- New York Times		 
[The Income Tax is] a vicious, inequitable, unpopular, impolitic and socialist act.
-- New York Times		 
Crime does not pay...as well as politics.
-- Alfred E. Newman		 
I have a great deal of sympathy for people who run the printing presses. They are screwed.
-- Craig Newmark		 
... absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.
-- Gavin Newsom		 
We were trying to increase the conflict that was already happening... we felt that we would take the conflict to so high a level that some change had to come.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
Before 1776 America was a British colony. The British Government had certain laws and rules that the colonized Americans rejected as not being in their best interests. In spite of the British conviction that Americans had no right to establish their own laws to promote the general welfare of the people living here in America, the colonized immigrant felt he had no choice but to raise the gun to defend his welfare. Simultaneously he made certain laws to ensure his protection from external and internal aggressions, from other governments, and his own agencies. One such form of protection was the Declaration of Independence, which states: '... whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.' Now these same colonized White people, these bondsmen, paupers, and thieves deny the colonized Black man not only the right to abolish this oppressive system, but to even speak of abolishing it.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
There's no reason for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively -- I am one with the people.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
If you stop struggling, then you stop life.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community. So we used the pig as the rather low-lifed animal in order to identify the police. And it worked.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
Off the Pigs!
-- Huey P. Newton		 
The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
There will be no prison which can hold our movement down... The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to, a basis for further mobilization of the community.
-- Huey P. Newton		 
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
-- Sir Isaac Newton		 
I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.
-- Issac Newton		 

-- Parse Next		 
As a first-time drug law offender, I was sentenced to 27 non-parolable years in prison. The amount of time was based on liquid waste found in the garage and unprocessed chemicals. There were no drugs.
-- David A. Nichols		 
Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr		 
Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr		 
Ask the first man you meet what he means by defending freedom, and he'll tell you privately he means defending the standard of living.
-- Reverend Martin Niemoeller		 
In Germany, the Nazis first came 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, but I didn't speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.
-- Reverend Martin Niemoeller		 
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
-- Reverend Martin Niemoeller		 
Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Then what is freedom? It is the will to be responsible to ourselves.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
If you have a strong enough why you can bear almost any how.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
People demand freedom only when they have no power.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual … who … can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual ... who ... can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Even today a crude sort of persecution is all that is required to create an honorable name for any sect, no matter how indifferent in itself.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the state, am the people.'... Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
Socialism itself can hope to exist only for brief periods here and there, and then only through the exercise of the extremest terrorism. For this reason it is secretly preparing itself for rule through fear and is driving the word “justice” into the heads of the half-educated masses like a nail so as to rob them of their reason... and to create in them a good conscience for the evil game they are to play.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche		 
God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.
-- Chester W. Nimitz		 
Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned.
-- Swami Nirmalananda		 
There are…certain freedoms that are like circuses. Their very existence, so long as they are individual and enjoyed chiefly individually as by spectators, diverts men’s mind from the loss of other, more fundamental, social and economic and political rights.
-- Robert Nisbet		 
What gives the new despotism its peculiar effectiveness is indeed its liaison with humanitarianism, but beyond this fact its capacity for entering into the smallest details of human life.
-- Robert Nisbet		 
Very commonly in ages when civil rights of one kind are in evidence – those pertaining to freedom of speech and thought in, say, theater, press, and forum, with obscenity and libel laws correspondingly loosened – very real constrictions of individual liberty take place in other, more vital areas: political organization, voluntary association, property, and the right to hold jobs, for example.
-- Robert Nisbet		 
The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature. [If a president is successful in bypassing the Congress] it is evident that the people are cheated out of the best ingredients in the government, the safeguards of peace which is the greatest of their blessings.
-- Richard M. Nixon		 
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.
-- Richard M. Nixon		 
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?
-- Richard M. Nixon		 
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.
-- Richard M. Nixon		 
The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
Many now believe that with the rise of the totalitarian State the world has entered upon a new era of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like circumstances, and it will do precisely the same kind of thing. The State will unfailingly aggrandize itself, if only it has the power, first at the expense of its own citizens, and then at the expense of anyone else in sight. It has always done so, and always will.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
[T]he State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation -- that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class -- that is, for a criminal purpose. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. ... it does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
It can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.
-- Albert Jay Nock		 
One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain't.
-- Lyn Nofziger		 
These things I believe: That government should butt out. \\ That government should butt out.\\ That freedom is our most precious commodity and\\ if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away.\\ That individual freedom demands individual responsibility.\\ That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.\\ That the executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid.\\ That political parties have become close to meaningless.\\ That government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.\\ That government should provide for the national defense\\ and work to insure domestic tranquillity.\\ That foreign trade should be fair rather than free.\\ That America should be wary of foreign entanglements.\\ That the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time\\ with the blood of patriots and tyrants.\\ That guns do more than protect us from criminals;\\ more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government.\\ That states are the bulwark of our freedom.\\ That states should have the right to secede from the Union.\\ That once a year we should hang someone in government\\ as an example to his fellows."\\
-- Lyn Nofziger		 
The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country. A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn't see so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly old men.
-- Lyn Nofziger		 
As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom.
-- Lyn Nofziger		 
Another defining feature of therapeutic ethos, then, is the growing tendency to define a range of human behaviors as diseases or pathologies.
-- James L. Nolan		 
...the mainstream media's monopoly on information is over.
-- Peggy Noonan		 
The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat.
-- Grover Norquist		 
Home schoolers do not wish to force other parents to home school. Gun owners do not insist that others buy guns, or that hunting be promoted as an alternative lifestyle. It is not the National Rifle Association out lobbying to have government schools read books entitled 'Heather Has Two Hunters' to preschoolers. It is, in fact, the Left that now strives to use state power to impose its morality by forcing all taxpayers to pay for abortions and public "art" that mocks people of faith. It is the Left that forces parents to pay for government schools where they do not wish to send their children.
-- Grover G. Norquist		 
The Democratic Party might be called the Takings Coalition, made up of groups that want the government to take from American citizens -- usually cash -- and keep it for itself.
-- Grover G. Norquist		 
People have a right to the Truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
-- Frank Norris		 
In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary.
-- Kathleen Norris		 
Where the meaning of the Constitution is clear and unambiguous, there can be no resort to construction to attribute to the founders a purpose or intent not manifest in its letter.
-- Norris v. Baltimore		 
I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
-- Col. Oliver North		 
Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.
-- Northwest Ordinance, Article III, 1787		 
There never was a good war," said Franklin. There have indeed been many wars in which a good man must take part, and take part with grave gladness to die if need be, a willing sacrifice, thankful to give life for what is dearer than life, and happy that even by death in war he is serving the cause of peace. But if a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.
-- Charles Eliot Norton		 
The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.
-- Charles Eliot Norton		 
The essence of a free life is being able to choose the style of living you prefer free from exclusion and without the compulsion of conformity or law.
-- Eleanor Holmes Norton		 
The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with.
-- Eleanor Holmes Norton		 
An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.
-- Norton vs. Shelby County		 
We are human and our lot is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.
-- Novalis		 
The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.
-- Robert Nozick		 
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.
-- Robert Nozick		 
To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.
-- Ted Nugent		 


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