Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
Click on the name to open the full quote and the details about the quote's origin. Quotes are also grouped by Category and Author.  
 
The much occupied man has no time for wantonness, and it is an obvious commonplace that the evils of leisure can be shaken off by hard work.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
If one doesn't know his mistakes, he won't want to correct them.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
What then? Shall I not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one that makes a shorter cut and is smoother to travel, I shall open the new road. Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides. Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily?
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
For no man is free who is a slave to his body.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
But how much more highly do I think of these men! They can do these things, but decline to do them. To whom that ever tried have these tasks proved false? To what man did they not seem easier in the doing? Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty. The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
And yet life, Lucilius, is really a battle.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Although," said he [Cato], "all the world has fallen under one man's sway, although Caesar's legions guard the land, his fleets the sea, and Caesar's troops beset the city gates, yet Cato has a way of escape; with one single hand he will open a wide path to freedom. This sword, unstained and blameless even in civil war, shall at last do good and noble service: the freedom which it could not give to his country it shall give to Cato!
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Our minds must have relaxation: rested, they will rise up better and keener. Just as we must not force fertile fields (for uninterrupted production will quickly exhaust them), so continual labor will break the power of our minds. They will recover their strength, however, after they have had a little freedom and relaxation.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Fire tries gold, misfortune tries brave men.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
We are all chained to fortune: the chain of one is made of gold, and wide, while that of another is short and rusty. But what difference does it make? The same prison surrounds all of us, and even those who have bound others are bound themselves; unless perchance you think that a chain on the left side is lighter. Honors bind one man, wealth another; nobility oppresses some, humility others; some are held in subjection by an external power, while others obey the tyrant within; banishments keep some in one place, the priesthood others. All life is slavery. Therefore each one must accustom himself to his own condition and complain about it as little as possible, and lay hold of whatever good is to be found near him. Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it. Small tablets, because of the writer's skill, have often served for many purposes, and a clever arrangement has often made a very narrow piece of land habitable. Apply reason to difficulties; harsh circumstances can be softened, narrow limits can be widened, and burdensome things can be made to press less severely on those who bear them cleverly.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
No one is able to rule unless he is also able to be ruled.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
The cause of anger is the belief that we are injured; this belief, therefore, should not be lightly entertained. We ought not to fly into a rage even when the injury appears to be open and distinct: for some false things bear the semblance of truth. We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Virtue runs no risk of becoming contemptible by being exposed to view, and it is better to be despised for simplicity than to be tormented by continual hypocrisy.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
That man lives badly who does not know how to die well.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Why does God afflict the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles? Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march, or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places. No one of these men says as he begins his march, "The general has dealt hardly with me," but "He has judged well of me."
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
A good judge condemns wrongful acts, but does not hate them.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Should I be surprised that dangers which have always surrounded me should at last attack me? A great part of mankind, when about to sail, do not think of a storm. I shall never be ashamed of a reporter of bad news in a good cause.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Whether we believe the Greek poet, "it is sometimes even pleasant to be mad", or Plato, "he who is master of himself has knocked in vain at the doors of poetry"; or Aristotle, "no great genius was without a mixture of insanity"; the mind cannot express anything lofty and above the ordinary unless inspired.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
All savageness is a sign of weakness.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Toward good men God has the mind of a father, he cherishes for them a manly love, and he says, "Let them be harassed by toil, by suffering, by losses, in order that they may gather true strength." Bodies grown fat through sloth are weak, and not only labour, but even movement and their very weight cause them to break down. Unimpaired prosperity cannot withstand a single blow; but he who has struggled constantly with his ills becomes hardened through suffering; and yields to no misfortune; nay, even if he falls, he still fights upon his knees.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first installment of it.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
This is the worst trait of minds rendered arrogant by prosperity, they hate those whom they have injured.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Valor withers without adversity.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
No man expects such exact fidelity as a traitor.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
If any one is angry with you, meet his anger by returning benefits for it: a quarrel which is only taken up on one side falls to the ground: it takes two men to fight.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
I do not trust my eyes to tell me what a man is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what is true from what is false: let the mind find out what is good for the mind.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca		 
Tocqueville saw the brute repression of deviants as a necessity if men were to keep convincing themselves of their collective dignity through their collective sameness. The “poets of society,” the men who challenged the norms, would have to be silenced so that sameness could be maintained.
-- Richard Sennett		 
Sound money and free banking are not impossible; they are merely illegal. Freedom of money and freedom of banking...are the principles that must guide our steps.
-- Hans F. Sennholz		 
Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
-- Dr. Seuss		 
The bigger the information media, the less courage and information they allow. Bigness means weakness.
-- Eric Sevareid		 
The merit of our Constitution was, not that it promotes democracy, but checks it.
-- Horatio Seymour		 
The idea of creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy, and not expect them to lead to wars, genocides, and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence we can no longer afford to indulge.
-- Butler D. Shaffer		 
The State…has had a vested interest in promoting attitudes that would tend to make us skeptical of our own abilities, fearful of the motives of others, and emotionally dependent upon external authorities for purpose and direction in our lives.
-- Butler D. Shaffer		 
It is collectivism that is the unrealistic expression of utopian belief systems.  In its worst form -- the state -- collectivism is the institutionalized exertion of violence to compel living beings to behave contrary to their natural self-interest inclinations.  So strong are the motivations for individual preferences that the state must resort to attacks upon the very nature of life to satisfy the ambitions of those who see others as nothing more than resources to be exploited for such ends.
-- Butler D. Shaffer		 
Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us.
-- Butler D. Shaffer		 
Our lack of constant awareness has also permitted us to accept definitions of freedom that are not necessarily consistent with the actuality of being free. Because we have learned to confuse the word with the reality the word seeks to describe, our vocabulary has become riddled with distorted and contradictory meanings smuggled into the language.
-- Butler D. Shaffer		 
Republics are formed only after revolution. The change to the empire is slow and gradual. One of the saddest lessons of history is that whenever these schools of politics have met in the republics of old, the imperial school, with its dazzling influence of wealth and power, has always won.
-- John F. Shafroth		 
Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.
-- Ben Shahn		 
The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation.
-- William Shakespeare		 
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
-- William Shakespeare		 
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
-- William Shakespeare		 
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
-- William Shakespeare		 
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.
-- William Shakespeare		 
The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.
-- William Shakespeare		 
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
-- William Shakespeare		 
If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul.
-- William Shakespeare		 
To willful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.
-- William Shakespeare		 
With devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself.
-- William Shakespeare		 
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
-- William Shakespeare		 
When the mind's free, The body's delicate.
-- William Shakespeare		 
So every bondman in his own hand bear\\ The power to cancel his captivity.
-- William Shakespeare		 
True nobility is exempt from fear.
-- William Shakespeare		 
Freedom? you asking me about freedom? you asking me about freedom? I’ll be honest with you, I know a whole lot more, about what freedom isn’t than what it is ...
-- Assata Shakur		 
Liberty's view of the government could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it works, work with it. If it doesn't, work against it. If it works you over, abolish it.
-- Angel Shamaya		 
Loud speech, profusion of words, and possessing skillfulness in expounding scriptures are merely for the enjoyment of the learned. They do not lead to liberation.
-- Adi Shankaracharya		 
When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.
-- Albert Shanker		 
It is time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy. It's a bureaucratic system where everybody's role is spelled out in advance, and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's not a surprise when a school system doesn't improve. It more resembles a Communist economy than our own market economy.
-- Albert Shanker		 
The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable. Our current ideas about evolution have to incorporate this basic fact of life.
-- James Shapiro		 
Cells constantly adjust their metabolism to available nutrients, control their progress through their cell cycle to make sure that all progeny are complete at the time of division, repair damage as it occurs, and interact appropriately with other cells. In a multicellular context, they even undergo programmed cell death when suicide is beneficial to the entire population or to the multicellular organism as a whole.
-- James Shapiro		 
Can you imagine working at the following Company? It has a little over 500 employees with the following statistics: 29 have been accused of spousal abuse. 7 have been arrested for fraud. 19 have been accused of writing bad checks. 117 have bankrupted at least two businesses. 3 have been arrested for assault. 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit. 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges. 8 have been arrested for shoplifting. 21 are current defendants in law suits. 84 were stopped for drunk driving in 1998 alone. Can you guess which organization this is? Give up? It's the 535 members of your United States Congress. The same group that perpetually cranks out hundreds upon hundreds of new laws designed to keep the rest of us in line.
-- Jack Sharp		 
GDP is an important metric for determining how much the United States could afford to spend on defense, but it provides no insight into how much the United States should spend. Defense planning is a matter of matching limited resources to achieve carefully scrutinized and prioritized objectives. When there are more threats, a nation spends more. When there are fewer threats, it spends less. As threats evolve, funding should evolve along with them. ... Unfortunately, setting defense spending at four percent of GDP would shield the Pentagon from careful scrutiny and curtail a much-needed transparent national debate.
-- Travis Sharp		 
In the twentieth century the number of people killed by their own governments under authoritarian regimes is four times the number killed in all this century’s wars combined.
-- John Shattuck		 
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
You have to choose [as a voter] between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
If you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may as well not say it at all because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Martyrdom is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The right to know is like the right to live. It is fundamental and unconditional in its assumption that knowledge, like life, is a desirable thing.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Marx’s Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
If the governments devalue the currency in order to betray all creditors, you politely call this procedure 'inflation'.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for it's own sake. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 

-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure time for freedom than unconventionality does.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Socialism means equality of income or nothing... under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
All great truths began as blasphemies.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essense of inhumanity.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
I also made it quite clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Whether you think Jesus was God or not, you must admit he was a first-rate political economist.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- George Bernard Shaw		 
Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity.
-- Henry Wheeler Shaw		 
There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.
-- Hartley Shawcross		 
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
-- Harry Shearer		 
[A]nd obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men and of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley		 
There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley		 
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley		 
Power, like a desolating pestilence,\\ Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,\\ Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,\\ Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame,\\ A mechanized automaton.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley		 
There is as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a humming-bird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.
-- Morris Sheppard		 
Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of Commons, give they a tyrannical Prince, give them a truckling court, and let me have but an unfettered press. I will defy them to encroach a hair’s breadth upon the liberties of England.
-- Richard Brinsley Sheridan		 
A committee is a group of individuals who all put in a perfectly good color, and it comes out gray.
-- Alan Sherman		 
The few who could understand the system will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of the people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.
-- John Sherman		 
The Government made by a number of Sovereign States.
-- Roger Sherman		 
If the president alone was vested with the power of appointing all officers, and was left to select a council for himself, he would be liable to be deceived by flatterers and pretenders to patriotism.
-- Roger Sherman		 
The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war.
-- Roger Sherman		 
The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war.
-- Roger Sherman		 
I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.
-- William Tecumseh Sherman		 
War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.
-- William Tecumseh Sherman		 
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
-- William Tecumseh Sherman		 
There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them.
-- William Tecumseh Sherman		 
I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.
-- William Tecumseh Sherman		 
Heretics were often most bitterly persecuted for their least deviation from accepted belief. It was precisely their obstinacy about trifles that irritated the righteous to madness. Why can they not yield on so trifling a matter?
-- Leo Shestov		 
Our ultimate goal -- total control of handguns in the United States -- is going to take time... The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced... The second problem is to get handguns registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of handguns and all handgun ammunition -- except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors -- totally illegal.
-- Nelson Shields		 
I'm convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily -- given the political realities -- going to be very modest. Of course, it's true that politicians will then go home and say, 'This is a great law. The problem is solved.' And it's also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time. So then we'll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal -- total control of handguns in the United States -- is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition -- except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors -- totally illegal.
-- Nelson Shields		 
The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. And the final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition ... totally illegal.
-- Nelson Turner Shields, III		 
The obsessive fear of secrets culminates in the denial of the right of private difference, which is the denial of the right of others to possess a sphere of privacy.
-- Edward A. Shils		 
The peculiar idea of moral infection in the consequence of association with individuals of indelible wickedness leads to the notion of “guilt by association.”
-- Edward A. Shils		 
A free society can exist only when public spirit is balanced by an equal inclination of men to mind their own business.
-- Edward A. Shils		 
To combat socialism Bismarck put through between 1883 and 1889 a program for social security far beyond anything known in other countries. It included compulsory insurance for workers against old age, sickness, accident and incapacity, and though organized by the State it was financed by employers and employees. It cannot be said that it stopped the rise of the Social Democrats or the trade unions, but it did have a profound influence on the working class in that it gradually made them value security over political freedom and caused them to see in the State, however conservative, a benefactor and a protector. Hitler, as we shall see, took full advantage of this state of mind. In this, as in other matters, he learned much from Bismarck. “I studied Bismarck’s socialist legislation,” Hitler remarks in Mein Kampf (p. 155), “in its intention, struggle and success.”
-- William L. Shirer		 
Truth never tranquilizes. The defining property of truth is its ability to disturb. Jesus only told half the story. The truth 'will' set you free. But, first it's going to piss you off.
-- Solomon Short		 
The cold, hard facts of magazine publishing mean that those who advertise get editorial coverage.
-- Richard Shortway		 
I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own -- and if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans.
-- General David M. Shoup		 
The planning of UN can be traced to the “secret steering committee” established by Secretary [of State Cordell] Hull in January 1943. All of the members of this secret committee, with the exception of Hull, a Tennessee politician, were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. They saw Hull regularly to plan, select, and guide the labors of the [State] Department’s Advisory Committee. It was, in effect, the coordinating agency for all the State Department’s postwar planning.
-- Laurence H. Shoup		 
Council [Council on Foreign Relations] leaders believed that blueprints for a new world order were necessary and, furthermore, that this was exactly the kind of activity the Council had been created to undertake.
-- Laurence H. Shoup		 
The minute you start talking about what you're going to do if you lose, you have lost.
-- George Shultz		 
The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience rendered to them, are the obtaining of justice and protection; and they who cannot provide for both give the people a right of taking such ways as best please themselves, in order to their own safety.
-- Algernon Sidney		 
Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them be dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right, when the ways prescribed by publick authority cannot be taken.
-- Algernon Sidney		 
[T]here is a difference between lions and asses; and he is a fool who knows not that swords were given to men, that none might be slaves, but such as know not how to use them.
-- Algernon Sidney		 
If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.
-- Algernon Sidney		 
When truth is divided, errors multiply.
-- Eli Siegel		 
If we were all to be judged by our thoughts, the hills would be swarming with outlaws.
-- Johann Sigurjonsson		 
The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward.
-- Igor Sikorsky		 
The reduction of political discourse to sound bites is one of the worst things that’s happened in American political life.
-- John Silber		 
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying “No” to any authority -- literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
-- Ignazio Silone		 
We find it intolerable that one constitutional right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another.
-- Simmons v. U.S.		 
The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man.
-- William Gilmore Simms		 
He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.
-- William Gilmore Simms		 
All of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply because life is far too short for us to think through even a small fraction of the topics that we come across.
-- Julian Simon		 
The world's problem is not too many people, but lack of political and economic freedom.
-- Julian Simon		 
Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth.
-- Julian Simon		 
We do not need any more preaching about right or wrong. The old 'thou shall nots' simply are not relevant... Values clarification is a method for teachers to change the values of children without getting caught.
-- Dr. Sidney Simon (False)		 
... good people doing good things. But let me tell you, you'll never find it if you just follow the Washington media. You'll never know the good. All you get is controversy, crap and confusion.
-- Alan Simpson		 
There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.
-- Alan K. Simpson		 
It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.
-- Homer Simpson		 
In a free society, standards of public morality can be measured only by whether physical coercion -- violence against persons or property -- occurs. There is no right not to be offended by words, actions or symbols.
-- Richard E. Sincere, Jr.		 
Our whole monetary system is dishonest, as it is debt-based... We did not vote for it. It grew upon us gradually but markedly since 1971 when the commodity-based system was abandoned.
-- Malcolm Sinclair		 
It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.
-- Upton Sinclair		 
You must believe in free will; there is no choice.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer		 
We know what a person thinks, not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer		 
The New York Times, CBS and the BBC all had to fire lead personnel over the fact that they just damn well made stuff up out of whole cloth in service to an obviously partisan political agenda.
-- New Sisyphus		 
I am not eccentric. It’s just that I’m more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.
-- Dame Edith Sitwell		 
Society attacks early when the individual is helpless.
-- B. F. Skinner		 
Whether or not legislation is truly moral is often a question of who has the power to define morality.
-- Jerome H. Skolnick		 
Today’s political leaders demonstrate their low opinion of the public with every social law they pass. They believe that, if given the right to chose, the citizenry will probably make the wrong choice. Legislators do not think any more in terms of persuading people; they feel the need to force their agenda on the public at the point of a bayonet and the barrel of a gun, in the name of the IRS, the SEC, the FDA, the DEA, the EPA, or a multitude of other ABCs of government authority.
-- Mark Skousen		 
No one spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
-- Mark Skousen		 
In a free society, individuals have the right to do right or wrong, as long as they don’t threaten or infringe upon the rights or property of others.
-- Mark Skousen		 
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure.
-- Mark Skousen		 
Here in America, government began as a tool to assure freedom. It gradually turned into a hideously expensive political toy designed to redistribute your wealth and control most aspects of your business and private life.
-- Mark Skousen		 
Of course, members of the dynastic banking families had been financing the Russian-oriented revolutionists for many years. Trotsky, in his biography, refers to some of these loans from British financiers going back as far as 1907. By 1917 the major subsidies for the revolution were being arranged by Sir George Buchanan and Lord Alfred Milner (of the Morgan-Rothschild-Rhodes confederacy). Milner, it will be recalled, was the founder of England’s secret “Round Table” group which started the Royal Institute for International Affairs in England and the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States. One American source gave Trotsky, Lenin and the other Communist leaders around twenty million dollars for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia. This was Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and Company.
-- W. Cleon Skousen		 
Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.
-- Slovenian Proverb		 
As Hitler showed us, a press suppressed does not make a recovery. As Lenin indicated, a press controlled does not revert to a critic’s role. As history reminds us, free speech surrendered is rarely recovered.
-- William J. Small		 
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
-- Lewis Smedes		 
Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth,--the result of free individual action, energy, and independence.
-- Samuel Smiles		 
In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character...
-- Adam Smith		 
Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
-- Adam Smith		 
Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
-- Adam Smith		 
Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
-- Adam Smith		 
The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
-- Adam Smith		 
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
-- Adam Smith		 
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. ... They are themselves always, and without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs.
-- Adam Smith		 
The man of system…is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it… He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.
-- Adam Smith		 
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
-- Adam Smith		 
It is not the benevolence of the butcher, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
-- Adam Smith		 
Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men.
-- Adam Smith		 
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be enforceable, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary.
-- Adam Smith		 
The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition . . . is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.
-- Adam Smith		 
Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.
-- Adam Smith		 
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expence, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.
-- Adam Smith		 
A true party-man hates and despises candour.
-- Adam Smith		 
By pursuing his own interest [every individual] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
-- Adam Smith		 
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would ... assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
-- Adam Smith		 
Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.
-- Adam Smith		 
The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.
-- Adam Smith		 
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
-- Adam Smith		 
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
-- Adam Smith		 
The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.
-- Adam Smith		 
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.
-- Adam Smith		 
It is the right of our people to organize to oppose any law and any part of the constitution with which they are not in sympathy.
-- Alfred E. Smith		 
The entire American political system is a con, a sleazy mix of legalized bribes, auctioning off of favors, revolving doors between government agencies and the corporations they enrich and the blatant hypocrisy of snake-oil salespeople who know the marks (voters) face a false choice between two parties that are the same poison sold under different labels.
-- Charles Hugh Smith		 
Protection of political speech advanced two important democratic goals:\\1) an informed citizenry that would be capable of making educated decisions on matters of public concern, and \\2) a free and open marketplace of ideas wherein the truth would ultimately prevail… Only through a vigorous and spirited public debate could citizens be educated about the actions of their government and react responsibly.
-- Craig R. Smith		 
The idea that political speech had to be protected at any cost dates to Colonial days, during which the press and the public were not allowed to express themselves freely on matters of public concern. The King and his government often used restrictive measures, such as licensing of printing presses and the doctrine of seditious libel, to silence unfavorable public comment.
-- Craig R. Smith		 
The physical capacity to coerce others can never generate a moral obligation to obey the dictates of [government] power.
-- George H. Smith		 
I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
-- Gerrit Smith		 
This is precisely the purpose of censorship – not only to block unwanted views, but to keep people who are unhappy from knowing how many millions of others share their unhappiness; to keep the dormant opposition from awakening to its own developing strength.
-- Hedrick Smith		 
It is a general maxim that all governments find a use for as much money as they can raise. Indeed, they have commonly demands for more...I take this as a settled truth, that they will all spend as much as their revenue; that is, will live up to their income.
-- James Smith		 
I have sat on many a promotion panel where the first question of panel members was 'How many seizures have you made?'
-- Joseph R. Smith		 
Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.
-- Lillian Smith		 
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
-- Logan Pearsall Smith		 
Politicians need human misery. ... Government’s a disease masquerading as its own cure.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
One thing about a police state, you can always find the police.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Nine tenths of everything is tax. Everything you buy has a complicated history of robbery: land, raw materials, energy, tools, buildings, transport, storage, sales, profits. Don’t forget the share you contribute toward the personal income tax of every worker who has anything to do with the process. Inflation by taxation: there are a hundred taxes on a loaf of bread. What kind of living standard would we enjoy if everything cost a tenth of what it does? What kind of world? Think of your home, your car, your TV, your shoes, your supper—all at a 90% discount! Government can’t fight poverty—poverty is its proudest achievement!
-- L. Neil Smith		 
People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Few things are more laughably pitiable than authority once it has been successfully defied.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Guns cause crime like flies cause garbage.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Each day, it seemed, another law was passed to impoverish and diminish them, punishing them for whatever success they achieved and rewarding their less competent and industrious neighbors.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
[N]o one’s ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It’s just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred.
-- L. Neil Smith		 
Congress will ever exercise their powers to levy as much money as the people can pay. They will not be restrained from direct taxes by the consideration that necessity does not require them.
-- Melancton Smith		 
It is necessary that the powers vested in government should be precisely defined, that the people may be able to know whether it moves in the circle of the Constitution. Article I, Section 8 is intolerably vague. The Federal government will push its taxing power to the limit. It is a general maxim that all governments find a use for as much money as they can raise. Indeed, they have commonly demands for more. Hence it is that all as far as we are acquainted are in debt. I take this to be a settled truth that they will all spend as much as their revenue. That is, will live at least up to their income. Congress will ever exercise their powers to levy as much money as the people can pay. They will not be restrained from direct taxes by the consideration that necessity does not require them.
-- Melancton Smith		 
My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died! Land of the Pilgrims' pride! From ev'ry mountainside, Let freedom ring!
-- Rev. Samuel Francis Smith		 
Freedom of thought, conscience, and expression are numinous values, linked to the defining characteristics of man. The time has come for societies around the world to embrace the idea of an open culture as an aspiration of transcendent importance.
-- Rodney A. Smola		 
A nation committed to an open culture will defend human expression and conscience in all its wonderful variety, protecting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of peaceful mass protest.
-- Rodney A. Smola		 
The ultimate aim of the Council on Foreign Relations … is … to create a one-world socialist system and make the United States an official part of it.
-- Dan Smoot		 
Unable to maintain their government-granted monopoly, the powerful railroad interests turned to government to do the regulating and price-fixing which they were unable to do themselves. In fact, the pressure that induced Congress to enact the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 did not come from reformers bemoaning abuses by the powerful railroad interests; it came from the railroad interests themselves, asking Congress to shield them against the harsh winds of competition.
-- Dan Smoot		 
The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.
-- Tommy Smothers		 
Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings.
-- Jan C. Smuts		 
I think I have served the purpose that I came here for, which was to provide a credible election product for our members.
-- Brenda Snipes		 
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ... And if he does know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to decide a single human fate.
-- C. P. Snow		 
The last person to achieve unambiguous victory in an air war was Zeus.
-- Tony Snow		 
The ['Hillary Care'] plan prescribed some eye popping maximum fines:$5,000 for refusing to join the government mandated health plan; $5,000 for failing to pay premiums on time; 15 years in prison for doctors who received ‘anything of value’ in exchange for helping patients short circuit bureaucracy; $10,000 a day for faulty physician paperwork; and $50,000 for unauthorized patient treatment. When told the plan could bankrupt small businesses, Mrs. Clinton said, 'I can’t be responsible for every under-capitalized small business in America.'
-- Tony Snow		 
Saying it’s okay for the government to spy on you because you’re innocent and you have “nothing to hide”... Is like saying it’s okay for the government to censor free speech because you have “nothing to say.”
-- Edward Snowden		 
It also occurred to me that you might have had Ideas to that Purport when you disapproved of the Meetings of the Democratic-Societies, which appeared to me to be a Branch of that Order, though many Members may be entirely ignorant of the Plan. Those Men who are so much attached to French Principles, have all the Marks of Jacobinism. They first cast off all religious Restraints, and then became fit for perpetrating every Act of Inhumanity. And, it is remarkable, that most of them are actually Scoffers at all religious Principles.
-- George Washington Snyder		 
But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow. ... For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? ... How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself?
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
[O]ne who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous bodily injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety....
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone -- the handgun. Small and light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly is the 'great equalizer.' Requiring only hand-eye coordination and a modicum of ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used effectively by the old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the one against the many.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant of the people... The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state’s totalitarian reach.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people.
-- Jeffrey R. Snyder		 
If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Liberals have a new wish every time their latest wish is granted. Conservatives should make them spell out their principles and ideals. Instead of doing this, conservatives allow liberals to pursue incremental goals without revealing their ultimate destination. So, thanks to the negligence of their opponents, liberals control the terms of every debate by always demanding 'more' while never defining 'enough.' The predictable result is that they always get more, and it's never enough.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
At the end of a century that has seen the evils of communism, Nazism and other modern tyrannies, the impulse to centralize power remains amazingly persistent.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money—only for wanting to keep your own money.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that the pickpocket doesn't get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to himself.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Tyranny seldom announces itself. ...In fact, a tyranny may exist without an individual tyrant. A whole government, even a democratically elected one, may be tyrannical.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We’ll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
By a very conservative estimate, a hundred million people have died at the hands of their own governments in this century. Given that record, how bad could anarchy be?
-- Joseph Sobran		 
All in all, the framers would probably agree that it's better to impeach too often than too seldom. If presidents can't be virtuous, they should at least be nervous.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
Not surprisingly, the federal judiciary nearly always rules in favor of the federal government. Judicial review, contrary to the assurances of its advocates, has hardly restrained Congress at all. Instead it has progressively stripped the states of their traditional powers, while allowing federal power to grow unchecked.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
In the current political vocabulary, ‘need’ means wanting to get someone else’s money. ‘Greed,’ which used to mean what “need” now means, has come to mean wanting to keep your own. ‘Compassion’ means the politician’s willingness to arrange the transfer.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.
-- Joseph Sobran		 
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
-- Socrates		 
Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?
-- Socrates		 
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
-- Socrates		 
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world.
-- Socrates		 
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways: I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only knows.
-- Socrates		 
The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into their debt irredeemably, by a trick. This money comes into existence every time the banks 'lend' and disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so 'dangerous' as it destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump. There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An honest money system is the only alternative.
-- Frederick Soddy		 
The most sinister and anti-social feature about bank-deposit money is that it has no existence. The banks owe the public for a total amount of money which does not exist. In buying and selling, implemented by cheque transactions, there is a mere change in the party to whom the money is owed by the banks. As the one depositor's account is debited, the other is credited and the banks can go on owing for it all the time. The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into their debt irredeemably, by a trick. This money comes into existence every time the banks 'lend' and disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so 'dangerous' as it destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump. There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An honest money system is the only alternative.
-- Frederick Soddy		 
These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.
-- King Solomon		 
For often evil men are rich, and good men poor; But we will not exchange with them Our virtue for their wealth since one abides always, While riches change their owners every day.
-- Solon		 
If through your vices you afflicted are, Lay not the blame of your distress on God; You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards, So now you groan 'neath slavery's heavy rod.
-- Solon		 
A half truth is the worst of all lies, because it can be defended in partiality.
-- Solon		 
We can have justice whenever those who have not been injured by injustice are as outraged by it as those who have been.
-- Solon		 
You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power - he's FREE again.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
There also exists another alliance -- at first glance a strange one, a surprising one -- but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. ... We observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust ... and prevent those ... because of short-sightedness and still others out of self-interest, from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road. Because they are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat. ... I call upon you: ordinary working men of America ... do not let yourselves become weak.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
At what exact point, then should one resist the communists? ... How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: what would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if during periods of mass arrests people had simply not sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. ... The Organs [police] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers ... and notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print", it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn		 
Wisdom outweighs any wealth.
-- Sophocles		 
Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
-- Sophocles		 
Without labor nothing prospers.
-- Sophocles		 
Although I have made a fortune in the financial markets, I now fear that the untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.
-- George Soros		 
He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
-- South African Saying		 
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
-- Southern California Oracle		 
Easier were it To hurl the rooted mountain from its base, Than force the yoke of slavery upon men Determin'd to be free.
-- Robert Southey		 
Just as any moron can destroy a priceless Ming vase, so the shallow and ill-educated people who run our schools can undermine and destroy from within a great civilization that took centuries of dedicated effort to create and maintain.
-- Dr. Thomas Sowell		 
The economic disasters of socialism and communism come from assuming a blanket superiority of those who want to run a whole economy.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
It doesn't matter what rights you have under the Constitution of the United States, if the government can punish you for exercising those rights. And it doesn't matter what limits the Constitution puts on government officials' power, if they can exceed those limits without any adverse consequences. In other words, the Constitution cannot protect you, if you don't protect the Constitution with your votes against anyone who violates it. Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped. As long as millions of Americans vote on the basis of who gives them free stuff, look for their freedom -- and all our freedom -- to be eroded away, bit by bit. Our children and grandchildren may yet come to see the Constitution as just some quaint words from the past that people once took seriously.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim -- or arrogation -- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians -- risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has -- is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
The talkers and writers resent being left on the sidelines by the doers.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices -- paid by others.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Freedom... refer[s] to a social relationship among people -- namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Neither your life nor my life, nor the future of this country, will be affected in the slightest by whether Linda Tripp is naughty or nice. But if any president is able to commit crimes with impunity by using the vast powers and perquisites of his office to cover up, then we will have a danger of corruption and abuse of power that can only grow with the passing years and generations.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
'What freedom does a starving man have?' The answer is that starvation is a tragic human condition- perhaps more tragic than loss of freedom. That does not prevent these from being two different things.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
To include freedom in the very definition of democracy is to define a process not by its actual characteristics as a process but by its hoped for results. This is not only intellectually invalid, it is, in practical terms, blinding oneself in advance to some of the unwanted consequences of the process.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
'For every $1.00 major corporations gave to conservative and free-market groups, they gave $4.61 to organizations seeking more government,' according to a study by the Capital Research Center, a Washington think tank.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
To those who feel that their values are THE values, the less controlled systems necessarily present a spectacle of "chaos," simply because such systems respond to a diversity of values. The more successfully such systems respond to diversity, the more "chaos" there will be, by definition, according to the standards of ANY specific set of values- other than diversity or freedom as values. Looked at another way, the more self-righteous observers there are, the more chaos (and "waste") will be seen.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
The death of media influence has been greatly exaggerated.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
The next time somebody in the media denies that there is media bias, ask how they explain the fact that there are at least a hundred stories about the shrinking arctic ice cap for every one about the expanding antarctic ice cap, which has now grown to record size.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other 90 percent of the people?
-- Thomas Sowell		 
We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
With all the pious talk about "tolerance" in the media and in academia, there is virtually none for those who challenge the dogmas of political correctness in most of our colleges and universities.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
Journalists cannot serve two masters. To the extent that they take on the task of suppressing information or biting their tongue for the sake of some political agenda, they are betraying the trust of the public and corrupting their own profession.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
One of the most pathetic — and dangerous — signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
One of the painfully sobering realizations that come from reading history is the utter incompetence that is possible among leaders of whole nations and empires — and the blind faith that such leaders can nevertheless inspire among the people who are enthralled by their words or their posturing.
-- Thomas Sowell		 
The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
-- Art Spander		 
Lucifer comes to give us the final … Luciferic initiation … that many people now and in the days ahead, will be facing—for it is an initiation into the New Age. … No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian initiation.
-- David Spangler		 
No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.
-- David Spangler (False)		 
Lucifer comes to give to us the final gift of wholeness. If we accept it then he is free and we are free. This is the Luciferic initiation. It is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will be facing, for it is an initiation in the New Age.
-- David Spangler		 
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.
-- Robert D. Specht		 
Hitler’s dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.
-- Albert Speer		 
Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy’s house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded – after all, the cop was protecting us.
-- Gerry Spence		 
Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know that government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last, has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed -- first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.
-- Gerry Spence		 
While birds can fly, only humans can argue. Argument is the affirmation of our being. It is the principal instrument of human intercourse. Without argument the species would perish.\\ As a subtle suggestion, it is the means by which we aid another.\\ As a warning, it steers us from danger.\\ As exposition, it teaches.\\ As an expression of creativity, it is the gift of ourselves.\\ As a protest, it struggles for justice.\\ As a reasoned dialogue, it resolves disputes.\\ As an assertion of self, it engenders respect.\\ As an entreaty of love, it expresses our devotion\\ As a plea, it generates mercy.\\ As charismatic oration it moves multitudes and changes history.\\ We must argue -- to help, to warn, to lead, to love, to create, to learn, to enjoy justice, to be.
-- Gerry Spence		 
A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals’ rights – which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state.
-- Gerry Spence		 
The Internet…has become the voice of the people in the first genuine experiment in democracy yet conducted in America. It stands ready to serve every facet, every faction.
-- Gerry Spence		 
These are dangerous times.  When we are afraid, we want to be protected, and since we cannot protect ourselves against such horrors as mass murder by bombers, we are tempted to run to the government, a government that is always willing to trade the promise of protection for our freedom, which left, as always, the question: How much freedom are we willing to relinquish for such a bald promise?    Already the President was calling for more power, more power for the FBI.  He wanted a thousand more men.  And he wanted to use the army, no less, in situations like Oklahoma City.  And he wanted more power to tap our phones and to invade our privacy.  He wanted express authority from Congress to infiltrate the fringe groups and, in short, to snoop and to peer and to spy on the citizenry, especially those who hold different beliefs from those that flow in the phlegmatic and murky mainstream of America.  But the question remains, will we really be safer with a thousand more, or even a hundred thousand more FBI agents armed with even greater power to more easily tap our phone that are already so easily tapped and to break into our homes that are no longer safe under the much-mangled exclusionary rule?
-- Gerry Spence		 
Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kind to rule, springing out of, and necessarily to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is the same in all cases -- less government.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?
-- Herbert Spencer		 
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is a proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is condemnation before investigation.
-- Herbert Spencer (Questionable)		 
If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?
-- Herbert Spencer		 
The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
A man’s liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
For what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? Why should they be educated? What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life -- to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this -- a government ought to mold children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen is and how the child may be molded into one.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth... It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
The liberty the citizen enjoys is to be measured not by governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the paucity of restraints it imposes upon him.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
The greatest of all infidelities is the fear that the truth will be bad.
-- Herbert Spencer		 
What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent.
-- Stephen Spender		 
Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.
-- Oswald Spengler		 
There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.
-- Oswald Spengler		 
Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
-- Baruch Spinoza		 
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.
-- Baruch Spinoza		 
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
-- Baruch Spinoza		 
The most tyrannical governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his own thoughts.
-- Baruch Spinoza		 
Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.
-- Baruch Spinoza		 
Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.
-- Baruch Spinoza		 
Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright.
-- Baruch Spinoza		 
The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others. No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develope their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.
-- Baruch Spinoza		 
A man who is without capital, and who, by prohibitions upon banking, is practically forbidden to hire any, is in a condition elevated but one degree above that of a chattel slave. He may live; but he can live only as the servant of others; compelled to perform such labor, and to perform it at such prices, as they may see fit to dictate.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
The 'nations,' as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such 'nations.' ... Our pretended treaties, then, being made with no legitimate or bona fide nations, or representatives of nations, and being made, on our part, by persons who have no legitimate authority to act for us, have intrinsically no more validity than a pretended treaty made by the Man in the Moon with the king of the Pleiades.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
If, then, it became so difficult, so nearly impossible, in most cases, to determine what is, and what is not, vice; and especially if it be so difficult, in nearly all cases, to determine where virtue ends, and vice begins; and if these questions, which no one can really and truly determine for anybody but himself, are not to be left free and open for experiment by all, each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being, to wit: his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge, and ascertain for himself, what is, to him,virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other words: what, on the whole, conduces to his happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to his unhappiness. If this great right is not to be left free and open to all, then each man’s whole right, as a reasoning human being, to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness," is denied him.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that -- however bloody -- can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
If those persons, who fancy themselves gifted with both the power and the right to define and punish other men’s vices, would but turn their thoughts inwardly, they would probably find that they have a great work to do at home; and that, when that shall have been completed, they will be little disposed to do more towards correcting the vices of others, than simply to give to others the results of their experience and observation.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
...only those who have the will and the power to shoot down their fellow men, are the real rulers in this, as in all other (so-called) civilized countries; for by no others will civilized men be robbed, or enslaved.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
No government knows any limits to its power except the endurance of the people.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
If a jury have not the right to judge between the government and those who disobey its laws, the government is absolute, and the people, legally speaking, are slaves.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: 'Your money, or your life.' And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a 'protector,' and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to 'protect' those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you. He does not keep 'protecting' you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot -- which is a mere substitute for a bullet -- because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency, into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this -- that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
And the so-called sovereigns, in these different governments, are simply the heads, or chiefs, of different bands of robbers and murderers.
-- Lysander Spooner		 

-- Lysander Spooner		 
If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
No attempt or pretence, that was ever carried into practical operation amongst civilized men -- unless possibly the pretence of a “Divine Right,” on the part of some, to govern and enslave others -- embodied so much of shameless absurdity, falsehood, impudence, robbery, usurpation, tyranny, and villany of every kind, as the attempt or pretence of establishing a government by consent, and getting the actual consent of only so many as may be necessary to keep the rest in subjection by force. Such a government is a mere conspiracy of the strong against the weak. It no more rests on consent than does the worst government on earth.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
The strong are always free by virtue of their superior strength. So long as government is a mere contest as to which of two parties shall rule the other, the weaker must always succumb. And whether the contest be carried on with ballots or bullets, the principle is the same; for under the theory of government now prevailing, the ballot either signifies a bullet, or it signifies nothing. And no one can consistently use a ballot, unless he intends to use a bullet, if the latter should be needed to insure submission to the former.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases. The result -- and a natural one -- has been that we have had governments, State and national, devoted to nearly every grade and species of crime that governments have ever practised upon their victims; and these crimes have culminated in a war that has cost a million of lives; a war carried on, upon one side, for chattel slavery, and on the other for political slavery; upon neither for liberty, justice, or truth. And these crimes have been committed, and this war waged, by men, and the descendants of men, who, less than a hundred years ago, said that all men were equal, and could owe neither service to individuals, nor allegiance to governments, except with their own consent.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
[T]he only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets ...
-- Lysander Spooner		 
The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: \\1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. \\2. Dupes—a large class, no doubt—each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is “a free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,” and such like absurdities. \\3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
Vices are not crimes.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. In vices, the very essence of crime—that is, the design to injure the person or property of another—is wanting. It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practices a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others. Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property, and the corresponding coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
For more than six hundred years -- that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215 -- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating or resisting the execution of such laws.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot -- which is a mere substitute for a bullet -- because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency, into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
[F]or everybody has a natural right to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to go to the assistance and defence of every one else whose person or property is invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on earth.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be a falsehood, or falsehood a truth.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
The Rothschilds, and that class of money-lenders of whom they are the representatives and agents - men who never think of lending a shilling to their next-door neighbors, for purposes of honest industry, unless upon the most ample security, and at the highest rate of interest - stand ready, at all times, to lend money in unlimited amounts to those robbers and murderers, who call themselves governments, to be expended in shooting down those who do not submit quietly to being robbed and enslaved.
-- Lysander Spooner		 
Does it not seem a vast waste of valuable human material that the pioneers of thought, those who by their genius dare to clear unknown paths in the arts and sciences and in government, should have to conform to the dictates of that non-creative, slow-moving mass, the majority? An appeal to the majority is a resort to force and not an appeal to intelligence; the majority is always ignorant, and by increasing the majority we multiply ignorance. The majority is incapable of initiative, its attitude being one of opposition toward everything that is new. If it had been left to the majority, the world would never have had the steamboat, the railroad, the telegraph, or any of the conveniences of modern life.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
Custom may suffice as the basis of law, but is inadequate as the basis of justice. Tyranny, not liberty, has been the custom in the past; and so Libertarians reject custom as a guiding principle, just as they reject power or might. They know that justice is not something that was, or is, but that is to be.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
Ethical right is largely abstract; legal right is mostly concrete. Ethical right the just man wishes to be established; legal right is already established. Ethical right and legal right mutually exclude each other; where one prevails, the other cannot endure. One is founded on power, on might; the other on justice, on equality. One appeals to the sword to settle matters, the other appeals to the judgment of men. For illustration: Governments have the right to do wrong; that is, they have the power, the legal right, to do anything they choose, regardless of whether it is good or bad — and their choice is usually bad from the ethical standpoint. Governments can and do invade nations, rob the people of their property, enslave or kill the inhabitants; all in perfect accord with legal rights, but in gross violation of ethical right. Let it be understood that the right of a government is coextensive with its power; it has not the right to invade, enslave or kill the people of a stronger nation or government, for it lacks the power on which this right is based; but, having the power, it has the right to commit these acts against a weaker nation. Let us not mistake things as they are for things as they ought to be.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
The greatest violator of the principle of equal liberty is the State. Its functions are to control, to rule, to dictate, to regulate, and in exercising these functions it interferes with and injures individuals who have done no wrong. The objection to government is, not that it controls those who invade the liberty of others, but that it controls the non-invader. It may be necessary to govern one who will not govern himself, but that in no wise justifies governing one who is capable of and willing to govern himself. To argue that because some need restraint all must be restrained is neither consistent nor logical.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
If all men had the same interests, there would be less harm in permitting a part of the people to legislate for all; but this is not the case. There is a great conflict of interests between the possessed and the dispossessed, between the poor and the rich, between the weak and the strong, between the ruler and the ruled, between the worker and the shirkers, between the producer and the appropriator, which is apparent in existing laws, always made by those powerful enough to take advantage of the State and of the law-abiding sentiment of the people. That their laws conflict with justice is no concern of theirs, for profit and not justice is their object. The object is legitimate because they make it legitimate. The game they play is lawful because they make the law to uphold their game; but they raise a hue and cry for "law and order" if they find any game conflicting with theirs, and declare it unlawful. It is easy to see that laws thus enacted are unjust, for to be just a law must be enacted for the benefit of all; thus it is in no wise logical to presume that the "legal" is the just.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
A political convention illustrates the workings of majority rule: If the minority in a party advocate a progressive move which is defeated when put to a vote in the convention, the minority are prohibited from advancing it during the campaign; if this minority refuse to advocate what the convention has decided to be right, they are barred from the platform and press, the cry of majority rule is raised against them, and they are called "traitors to the party;" but if they abandon their progressive ideas and advocate the wishes of the majority they are rewarded with office. Thus majority rule develops the dishonest politician: in order to rule sometime, he consents to being ruled at other times. The desire to rule and the willingness to be ruled ends in degradation; and no one who accepts the principles of equal liberty can endorse majority rule.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
The Law of Equal Freedom, as Adopted by The Libertarian League
Since life itself contains the impulse of physical growth and the development of faculties and therefore needs room and freedom to function; and since liberty is necessary to the exercise of faculties; and since the exercise of faculties is essential to happiness; therefore, to attain happiness one must have liberty. And since liberty, being essential to the individual, is also necessary to the race; and since this necessitates limiting the liberty of each to the like liberty of all, we therefore arrive at the sociological Law of Equal Freedom.
Libertarian Principles
Freedom of thought is essential to the discovery of truth.
Freedom of speech is essential to the vindication of truth.
Freedom of the press is requisite for the dissemination of knowledge.
Freedom of assembly is essential for the discussion of public questions.
Freedom in education is essential to the development of correct principles of study and teaching.
Freedom in science is essential to the demonstration of fact, through investigation and experimentation.
Freedom in literature, art and music is necessary for the highest expression of conceptions and emotions.
Freedom in amusements and sports is essential to the fullest enjoyment of recreation.
Freedom in religion is necessary to avert persecution (as, e.g., for adopting and professing religious opinions, and for worshiping or not worshiping, according to the dictates of conscience).
Freedom of initiative and association is necessary for efficiency and economic in individual or co-operative enterprise.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms.  They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
And here is the difference between the Libertarians and the Authoritarians: the latter have no confidence in liberty; they believe in compelling people to be good, assuming that people are totally depraved; the former believe in letting people be good, and maintain that humanity grows better and better as it gains more and more liberty. If Libertarians were merely to ask that liberty be tried in any one of the other fields of human expression they would meet the same opposition as their pioneer predecessors; but such is their confidence in the advantages of liberty that they demand, not that it be tried in one more instance only, but that it be universally adopted.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
The first great struggle for liberty was in the realm of thought. The libertarians reasoned that freedom of thought would be good for mankind; it would promote knowledge, and increased knowledge would advance civilization. But the authoritarians protested that freedom of thought would be dangerous, that people would think wrong, that a few were divinely appointed to think for the people.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
A reasonable action on the part of the majority is very rare, while the evidence of mob stupidity and brutality is overwhelming. The majority in power make laws for their own financial benefit, disregarding the interests of the minority, and when the weak minority, by adding to its numbers, becomes powerful, it, in turn, does the same thing; thus, by appealing to power to settle their conflicting interests, the conflict would go on forever.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
When we compare the laws made today and the method and purpose of their making, with those of the past, we find them to be in perfect harmony. It was the law and custom of the past to provide for a class of idlers, it was customary for the powerful to enslave the weak, for the rich to rob the poor, for the unscrupulous to make laws in their own interests, even as it is the law and custom today. Surely it must be evident that law does not have its basis in justice, but rather in custom. To both law and custom, justice is a total stranger.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
The history of civilized man is the history of the incessant conflict between liberty and authority. Each victory for liberty marked a new step in the world's progress; so we can measure the advance of civilization by the amount of freedom acquired by human institutions.
-- Charles T. Sprading		 
Behold! in Liberty's unclouded blaze\\ We lift our heads, a race of other days.
-- Charles Sprague		 
Men cannot see truth, because they love falsehood. The gospel is not seen, because it is too pure for their loose lives and lewd thoughts.
-- Charles Haddon Spurgeon		 
Print is dead... Get over it.
-- John Squires		 
Anger manages everything badly.
-- Stadius		 
Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.
-- Josef Stalin		 
If the opposition (citizen) disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.
-- Josef Stalin		 
The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.
-- Josef Stalin		 
Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
-- Josef Stalin		 
[After Communism succeeds] ...then, there will come a peace across the earth.
-- Josef Stalin		 
Comrades, I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how. But what is extraordinarily important is this: who will count the votes, and how.
-- Josef Stalin		 
World dictatorship can be established only when the victory of socialism has been achieved in certain countries or groups of countries … [and] when these federation of republics have finally grown into a world union of Soviet Socialist Republics uniting the whole of mankind under the hegemony of the international proletariat organized as a state.
-- Josef Stalin		 
America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.
-- Josef Stalin		 
One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic.
-- Josef Stalin		 
Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.
-- Sir Josiah Stamp		 
Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.
-- Dan Stanford		 
The production of wealth is the result of agreement between labor and capital, between employer and employed. Its distribution, therefore, will follow the law of its creation, or great injustice will be done.
-- Leland Stanford		 
When money is controlled by a few it gives that few an undue power and control over labor and the resources of the country. Labor will have its best return when the laborer can control its disposal.
-- Leland Stanford		 
I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
-- Philip Stanhope		 
The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
-- Philip Dormer Stanhope		 
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton		 
We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton		 
Government is like fire. If it is kept within bounds and under the control of the people, it contributes to the welfare of all. But if it gets out of place, if it gets too big and out of control, it destroys the happiness and even the lives of the people.
-- Harold E. Stassen		 
The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament...
-- State Department Paper 7277		 
No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state.... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the  freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.
-- State Gazette (Charleston)		 
The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions.
-- State vs. Kerner		 
Disobedience or evasion of a constitutional mandate may not be tolerated, even though such disobedience may, at least temporarily, promote in some respects the best interests of the public.
-- State v. Board of Examiners		 
When any court violates the clean and unambiguous language of the constitution, a fraud is perpetrated and no one is bound to obey it.
-- State v. Sutton		 
Freedom always carries a burden of proof, always throws us back on ourselves.
-- Shelby Steele		 
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
-- Gertrude Stein		 
Man is the only kind of varmint that sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
-- John Steinbeck		 
And this I must fight against: any idea, religion or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system.
-- John Steinbeck		 
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in all the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
-- John Steinbeck		 
We may be thankful that frightened civil authorities ... have not managed to eradicate from the country the tradition of the possession and use of firearms, that profound and almost instinctive tradition of Americans. Luckily for us, our tradition of bearing arms has not gone from the country, the tradition is so deep and so dear to us that it is one of the most treasured parts of the Bill of Rights -- the right of all Americans to bear arms, with the implication that they will know how to use them.
-- John Steinbeck		 
The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
-- Saul Steinberg		 
Law and justice are not always the same.
-- Gloria Steinem		 
No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.
-- Gloria Steinem		 
What is necessary to keep providing good care to nature has completely fallen into ignorance during the materialism era.
-- Rudolf Steiner		 
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable actions.
-- Stendhal		 
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
-- Stendhal		 
They said it couldn't be done but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
-- Casey Stengel		 
The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.
-- George Stephanopolous		 
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as plentiful as blackberries.
-- Leslie Stephen		 
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only by incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness.
-- Leslie Stephen		 
Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists) whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about his ignorance. And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon by your own bluster.
-- Leslie Stephen		 
Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.
-- Sir Leslie Stephen		 
The only shape in which equality is really connected with justice is this – justice presupposes general rules. If these general rules are to be maintained at all, it is obvious that they must be applied equally to every case which satisfies their terms.
-- James Fitzjames Stephens		 
So, what the cultural elites are doing is what plenty of other authoritarian and totalitarian societies have done in the past. They are making the cost of telling the truth high enough that a general mass of people will be afraid to declare it publicly or even privately.
-- Jarrett Stepman		 
When you think about it if somebody is a legal and responsible gun owner, let’s say in Massachusetts, why all of a sudden when he crossed the border is he an outlaw?
-- Howard Stern		 
Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom, so also the individual’s freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority.
-- Justice John Paul Stevens		 
The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.
-- Justice John Paul Stevens		 
As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.
-- Justice John Paul Stevens		 
The agency that is so strict on the way Americans keep their books cannot even pass a financial audit.
-- Ted Stevens		 
Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than the freedom to stagnate.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
Newspaper editors separate the wheat from the chaff -- and print the chaff.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
Freedom rings where opinions clash.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
We in America today would limit our freedom of expression and of conscience. In the name of unity, they would impose a narrow conformity of ideas and opinion… Only a government which fights for civil liberties and equal rights for its own people can stand for freedom in the rest of the world.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow it wherever the search may lead us.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
A hungry man is not a free man.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
It is a common heresy and its graves are to be found all over the earth. It is the heresy that says you can kill an idea by killing a man, defeat a principle by defeating a person, bury truth by burying its vehicle.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson II		 
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson		 
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson		 
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson		 
Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson		 
Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in history text books.
-- Jimmy Stewart		 
The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less that the right to speak out or the right to travel is, in truth, a “personal” right.
-- Justice Potter Stewart		 
The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights... . In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property.
-- Justice Potter Stewart		 
Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is the landmark of an authoritarian regime...
-- Justice Potter Stewart		 
The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.
-- Justice Potter Stewart		 
The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it’s invalid on its face.
-- Justice Potter Stewart		 
[A] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve it’s high purpose when it indices a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with things as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for understanding.
-- Justice Potter Stewart		 
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
-- Justice Potter Stewart		 
The state may not establish a ‘religion of secularism’ in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus ‘preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.'
-- Justice Potter Stewart		 
The salient feature of America in the Age of Obama is a failed government class institutionally committed to living beyond its means, and a citizenry too many of whom are content to string along.
-- Mark Steyn		 
If gun control bore any relation to homicide rates, Washington, DC would be the safest place in the country.
-- Mark Steyn		 
In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London’s mall for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on earth. Seventy years later ... Let’s not go there.
-- Mark Steyn		 
To put it baldly, there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it, for in the process of taking it away, wealth gets destroyed. A monopolist who overcharges for his product takes money from those whom he is overcharging and at the same time destroys value. To get his monopoly price, he has to restrict production.
-- Joseph E. Stiglitz		 
Illegitimati non carborundum. (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
-- General Joseph W. Stilwell		 
When the news first came that Japan had attacked us my first feeling was of relief that … a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people. This continued to be my dominant feeling in spite of the news of catastrophes which quickly developed.
-- Henry Stimson		 
We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move. … The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot.
-- Henry Stimson		 
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime. 
-- Max Stirner		 
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.
-- Max Stirner		 
A race of altruists is necessarily a race of slaves. A race of free men is necessarily a race of egoists.
-- Max Stirner		 
The major function of secrecy in Washington is to keep the U.S. people ... from knowing what the nation’s leaders are doing.
-- John Stockwell		 
Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn.
-- John Stockwell		 
To call Congress emasculated is to insult eunuchs.
-- David C. Stolinsky		 
The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.
-- Harlan F. Stone		 
If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law.
-- Harlan F. Stone		 
The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.
-- Harlan F. Stone		 
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
-- Tom Stoppard		 
The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
-- Tom Stoppard		 
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
-- Tom Stoppard		 
The pretence is made that to do away with right and wrong would produce uncivilized people, immorality, lawlessness, and social chaos. The fact is that most psychiatrists and psychologists and other respected people have escaped from moral chains and are able to think freely.
-- J. A. Stormer		 
The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day.
-- Joseph Story		 
Another not unimportant consideration is, that the powers of the general government will be, and indeed must be, principally employed upon external objects, such as war, peace, negotiations with foreign powers, and foreign commerce. In its internal operations it can touch but few objects, except to introduce regulations beneficial to the commerce, intercourse, and other relations, between the states, and to lay taxes for the common good. The powers of the states, on the other hand, extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, and liberties, and property of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.
-- Joseph Story		 
A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained.
-- Joseph Story		 
Men, to act with vigour and effect, must have time to mature measures, and judgment and experience, as to the best method of applying them. They must not be hurried on to their conclusions by the passions, or the fears of the multitude. They must deliberate, as well as resolve.
-- Joseph Story		 
This provision (the 4th Amendment) speaks for itself. Its plain object is to secure the perfect enjoyment of that great right of the common law, that a man's house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion.
-- Justice Joseph Story		 
Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.
-- Justice Joseph Story		 
If aliens might be admitted indiscriminately to enjoy all the rights of citizens at the will of a single state, the Union might itself be endangered by an influx of foreigners, hostile to its institutions, ignorant of its powers, and incapable of a due estimate of its privileges.
-- Justice Joseph Story		 
I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market.
-- John Stossel		 
The history books say that during the Progressive era, government trustbusters reined in business. Nonsense. Progressive 'reforms' -- railroad regulation, meat inspection, drug certification and the rest -- were done at the behest of big companies that wanted competition managed. They knew regulation would burden smaller companies more than themselves. The strategy works.
-- John Stossel		 
There are two kinds of statistics the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
-- Rex Stout		 
Integrity is doing the right thing, even if nobody is watching.
-- Jim Stovall		 
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe		 
The literature of a people must so ring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe		 
I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred -- that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe		 
We are socialists, we are enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalistic economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its unjust wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system!
-- Gregor Strasser		 
When you elevate victimhood as virtue, you will create a culture in which people are tripping over themselves to be oppressed.
-- Allie Beth Stuckey		 
Justice is open to everyone in the same way as the Ritz Hotel.
-- Judge Sturgess		 
Indifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery; for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it.
-- Henry St. John		 
Liberty is to the collective body what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
-- Henry St. John		 
Handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns.
-- Josh Sugarmann		 
Freedom of the press, or, to be more precise, the benefit of freedom of the press, belongs to everyone – to the citizen as well as the publisher… The crux is not the publisher’s ‘freedom to print’; it is, rather, the citizen’s ‘right to know.’
-- Arthur Hays Sulzberger		 
Give me the centralism of liberty; give me the imperialism of equal rights.
-- Charles Sumner		 
In “A jury’s duty” (11/8) by Mike Romano, John Junker asserts that juries have the right to nullify laws in principle but should not use this right in practice. Would he then be willing to give up the rights of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom to organize a labor union, abolition of slavery in the North, and the repeal of alcohol prohibition—all of which were given to us by juries who put the principle of nullification into practice? Without jury nullification no systematic veto exists for the people and tyranny ensues.
-- Patricia Michl Sumner		 
Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.
-- William Graham Sumner		 
Everywhere you go on the continent of Europe at this hour you see the conflict between militarism and industrialism. You see the expansion of industrial power pushed forward by the energy, hope, and thrift of men, and you see the development arrested, diverted, crippled, and defeated by measures which are dictated by military considerations.
-- William Graham Sumner		 
The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.
-- William Graham Sumner		 
The great foe of democracy now and in the near future is plutocracy. Every year that passes brings out this antagonism more distinctly. It is to be the social war of the twentieth century. In that war militarism, expansion and imperialism will all favor plutocracy. In the first place, war and expansion will favor jobbery, both in the dependencies and at home. In the second place, they will take away the attention of the people from what the plutocrats are doing. In the third place, they will cause large expenditures of the people’s money, the return for which will not go into the treasury, but into the hands of a few schemers. In the fourth place, they will call for a large public debt and taxes, and these things especially tend to make men unequal, because any social burdens bear more heavily on the weak than on the strong, and so make the weak weaker and the strong stronger. Therefore expansion and imperialism are a grand onslaught on democracy.
-- William Graham Sumner		 

-- William Graham Sumner		 
If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.
-- William Graham Sumner		 
Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.
-- William Graham Sumner		 
If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.
-- William Graham Sumner		 
All history is one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others.
-- William Graham Sumner		 

-- William Graham Sumner		 
No scheme which has ever been devised by them has ever made a collapsed boom go up again.
-- William Graham Sumner		 
Constitutional rights may not be infringed simply because the majority of the people choose that they be.
-- Supreme Court of the United States		 
What I do know is, in little more than 30 years, we have gone from a nation where the “quiet enjoyment” of one’s private property was a sacred right, to a day when the so-called property “owner” faces a hovering hoard of taxmen and regulators threatening to lien, foreclose, and “go to auction” at the first sign of private defiance of their collective will ... a relationship between government and private property rights which my dictionary defines as “fascism.”
-- Vin Suprynowicz		 
[T]his is why the tyrants are moving so quickly to take away our guns. Because they know in their hearts that if they continue the way they’ve been going, boxing Americans into smaller and smaller corners, leaving us no freedom to decide how to raise and school and discipline our kids, no freedom to purchase (or do without) the medical care we want on the open market, no freedom to withdraw $2,500 from our own bank accounts (let alone move it out of the country) without federal permission, no freedom even to arrange the dirt and trees on our own property to please ourselves ... if they keep going down this road, there are going to be a lot more Carl Dregas, hundreds of them, thousands of them, fed up and not taking it any more, a lot more pools of blood drawing flies in the municipal parking lots, a lot more self-righteous government weasels who were “only doing their jobs” twitching their death-dances in the warm afternoon sun ... and soon.
-- Vin Suprynowicz		 
Nut cases only succeed in multiple killings when they can be confident their prospective victims are disarmed.
-- Vin Suprynowicz		 
A free press stands as one of the great interpreters between the government and the people. To allow it to be fettered is to fetter ourselves.
-- George Sutherland		 
Do the people of this land…desire to preserve those [liberties] protected by the First Amendment… If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanquished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch for a saving hand while yet there was time.
-- George Sutherland		 
[T]he power system continues only as long as individuals try to get something for nothing. The day when a majority of individuals declares or acts as if it wants nothing from the government, declares that it will look after its own welfare and interests, then on that day the power elites are doomed.
-- Anthony Sutton		 
It is a rather pleasent experience to be alone in a bank at night.
-- Willie Sutton		 
Finally, the fundamental flaw, which will ultimately destroy this prohibition as it did the last one, is that criminal sanctions cannot, and should not attempt to, prohibit personal conduct which does no harm to others.
-- Judge Robert Sweet		 
Liberty must be a mighty thing; for by it God punishes and rewards nations.
-- Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine		 
[T]he child should be taught to consider his instructor... superior to the parent in point of authority.... The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous.... Parents have no remedy as against the teacher.
-- John Swett		 
As a general thing the only persons who have a legal right to give orders to the teacher are his employers, namely, the committee in some States, and in others the directors or trustees. If his conduct is approved by his employers the parents have no remedy as against him or them.
-- John Swett		 
The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous.
-- John Swett		 
It is a maxim among lawyers that whatever hath been done before may be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions, and the judges never fail of directing them accordingly.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
Laws are like cobwebs which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
-- Jonathan Swift		 
There is no such thing ... in America as an independent press.
-- John Swinton		 
The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it is accurate, it follows that it is fair.
-- Herbert B. Swope		 
The public expects too much from teachers because educationists have led it to believe teachers could be substitute parents, psychotherapists, cops, social workers, dieticians, nursemaids, babysitters, and nose wipers and still do a decent job teaching kids to read, write, and do math. Instead of saying no, educationists have added courses in environmental education, death education, personal hygiene, self-esteem, driver's ed, job readiness, sexual harassment, radon studies, yoga, yogurt awareness, and god-knows-what-else.
-- Charlie Sykes		 
The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts a medium of expression commonly used for the preservation and communication of information and ideas, thus triggering First Amendment scrutiny. Illinois has criminalized the nonconsensual recording of most any oral communication, including recordings of public officials doing the public’s business in public and regardless of whether the recording is open or surreptitious. Defending the broad sweep of this statute, the State’s Attorney relies on the government’s interest in protecting conversational privacy, but that interest is not implicated when police officers are performing their duties in public places and engaging in public communications audible to persons who witness the events. Even under the more lenient intermediate standard of scrutiny applicable to content-neutral burdens on speech, this application of the statute very likely flunks. The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests; as applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendment’s free-speech and free-press guarantees.
-- Judge Diane Schwerm Sykes		 
Audio and audiovisual recording are communication technologies, and as such, they enable speech. Criminalizing all nonconsensual audio recording necessarily limits the information that might later be published or broadcast -- whether to the general public or to a single family member or friend -- and thus burdens First Amendment rights. If, as the State’s Attorney would have it, the eavesdropping statute does not implicate the First Amendment at all, the State could effectively control or suppress speech by the simple expedient of restricting an early step in the speech process rather than the end result. We have no trouble rejecting that premise. Audio recording is entitled to First Amendment protection.
-- Judge Diane Schwerm Sykes		 
I think the inherent right of the government to lie to save itself when faced with nuclear disaster is basic -- basic.
-- Arthur Sylvester		 
I consider marijuana the worst of all narcotics, far worse than the use of morphine or cocaine. Under its influence men become beasts... Marijuana destroys life itself. I have no sympathy with those who sell this weed. The government is going to enforce this new law to the letter.
-- Judge John Foster Symes		 
Those who cannot afford to sue currently have no protection of their property rights if they come in conflict with a regulation.
-- Steve Symms		 
Take care that no one hates you justly.
-- Publilius Syrus		 
Keep the golden mean between saying too much and too little.
-- Publilius Syrus		 
The battle for the world is the battle for definitions.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity; they loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, thus confronting them with the possibility of insignificance.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Men are rewarded and punished not for what they do, but rather for how their acts are defined. This is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in behaving themselves.
-- Thomas Szasz		 
Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgi		 
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
The lust for power in dominating others inflames the heart more than any other passion.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
Such being the happiness of the times, that you may think as you wish, and speak as you think. [Lat., Rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet.]
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. (The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.)
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
In the struggle between those seeking power there is no middle course.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
The lust for power, for dominating others, inflames the heart more than any other passion.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
[That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty. [Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
Liberty is given by nature even to mute animals. [Lat., Liberatem natura etiam mutis animalibus datam.]
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.
-- Cornelius Tacitus		 
We are corrupted by prosperity. And when the state is corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.
-- Publius Cornelius Tacitus		 
When I say liberty…I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they wanted to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world…
-- Robert A. Taft		 
Every Republican candidate for President since 1936 has been nominated by the Chase National Bank.
-- Robert A. Taft		 
Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.
-- William Howard Taft		 
Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.
-- William Howard Taft		 
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
-- William Howard Taft		 
If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.
-- Rabindrnath Tagore		 
An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.
-- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord		 
An important art of politcians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.
-- Talleyrand		 
Who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act.
-- The Talmud		 
You see what power is -- holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them!
-- Amy Tan		 
In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances you were born with.
-- Amy Tan		 
[A]s recent advances in genetic and molecular science increasingly challenge the tenets of Neo-Darwinism, the teaching of non-random, intelligence-based alternatives should be permitted under the Establishment Clause provided such alternatives are supported by scientific evidence and are presented in a secular manner.
-- Roger L. Tarbutton		 
Illusions are like mistresses. We can have many of them without tying ourselves down to responsibility. But truth insists on marriage. Once a person embraces truth, he is in its ruthless, but gentle, grasp.
-- Rebazar Tarzs		 
The Constitution is like my old blue dress ... it doesn't fit anymore.
-- Rep. Ellen Tauscher		 
Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans.
-- R. H. Tawney		 
It is probable that democracy owes more to nonconformity than to any other single movement.
-- R. H. Tawney		 
Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.
-- A. J. P. Taylor		 
No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.
-- A. J. P. Taylor		 
Conscience is, in most, an anticipation of the opinion of others.
-- Henry Taylor		 
If the means to which the government of the union may resort for executing the power confided to it, are unlimited, it may easily select such as will impair or destroy the powers confided to the state governments.
-- John Taylor		 
Constitutions are violated, and it would be absurd to expect the federal government to enforce the Constitution against itself. If the very federal judges the Constitution was partly intended to restrain were the ones exclusively charged with enforcing it, then “America possesses only the effigy of a Constitution.” The states, the very constituents of the Union, had to do the enforcing.
-- John Taylor		 
... I suggest that the more the state intervenes in such situations, the more 'necessary' (on this view) it becomes, because positive altruism and voluntary cooperative behaviour atrophy in the presence of the state and grow in its absence. Thus, again, the state exacerbates the conditions which are supposed to make it necessary. We might say that the state is like an addictive drug: the more of it we have, the more we 'need' it and the more we come to 'depend' on it.
-- Michael Taylor		 
It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have it.
-- Edwin Way Teale		 
Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.\\ Trouble no one about his religion.\\ Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours.\\ Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.\\ Seek to make your life long and of service to your people.\\ Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.\\ Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.\\ Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.\\ When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. \\ Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.\\ Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.\\ When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.\\ Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
-- Tecumseh		 
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl!
-- Brad Templeton		 
No human has yet grasped 1% of what can be known about spiritual realities ... I grew up Presbyterian. Presbyterians thought the Methodists were wrong. Catholics thought all Protestants were wrong. The Jews thought the Christians were wrong. So, what I'm financing is humility. I want people to realize that you shouldn't think you know it all.
-- John Templeton		 
That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
-- Tennessee Constitution		 
This declaration ... gives to every man the right to arm himself in any manner he may choose, however unusual or dangerous the weapons he may employ, and thus armed, to appear wherever he may think proper, without molestation or hindrance, and that any law regulating his social conduct, by restraining the use of any weapon or regulating the manner in which it shall be carried, is beyond the legislative competency to enact, and is void.
-- Tennessee Supreme Court		 
Ring out the old, ring in the new,\\ Ring, happy bells, across the snow:\\ The year is going, let him go;\\ Ring out the false, ring in the true.\\
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson		 
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson		 
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
-- Mother Teresa		 
Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign. ... You must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.
-- Mother Teresa		 
It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man’s religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should lead us.
-- Tertullian		 
In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.
-- Nikola Tesla		 
...and in all cases of libels, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.
-- Texas Constitution		 
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.

When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.

When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.

When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.

...

These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.

The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.
-- Texas Declaration of Independence		 
These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution.
-- Texas Declaration of Independence		 
Not only, therefore, can there be no loss of separate and independent autonomy to the states, through their union under the Constitution, but it may be not unreasonably said that the preservation of the states, and the maintenance of their governments, are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the national government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states.
-- Texas v. White		 
To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained -- who can say this is not greatness?
-- William Makepeace Thackeray		 
Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
Perhaps I can summarise it best by saying this -- Nations that have pursued equality, like the Iron Curtain countries, I think have finished up with neither equality, nor liberty. Nations, which like us, in the past have pursued liberty, as a fundamental objective, extending it to all, have finished up with liberty, human dignity, and far fewer inequalities than other people.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
Where law ends, tyranny begins.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
We want a society in which we are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. That is what we mean by a moral society – not a society in which the State is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the State.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
Liberty, human dignity, a higher standard of living is fundamental. And, steadily, I think, people are beginning to realise that you don't have those things unless you have a pretty large private enterprise sector. Any Iron Curtain country has neither liberty, nor a very high standard of living. The two things go, economic and political freedom, go together. I've been right in the forefront of saying that, here, in the States, and it's very interesting to me now, to see a number of articles from people who are taking up the same theme. They are disturbed that Socialism is reducing liberty and freedom for ordinary people, and that's really what matters.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
Look, I think you're tackling public expenditure from the wrong end, if I might say so. Why don't you look at it as any housewife has to look at it? She has to look at her expenditure every week or every month, according to what she can afford to spend, and if she overspends one week or month, she's got to economise the next. Now governments really ought to look at it from the viewpoint of "What can we afford to spend?" They've already put up taxes, and yet the taxes they collect are not enough for the tremendous amount they're spending. They're having to borrow to a greater extent than ever before, and future generations will have to repay. Now, if anyone tells me that a Chancellor of the [Denis Healey] Exchequer can put up public expenditure in two years by -- and it's a tremendous figure -- twenty thousand million pounds, and he doesn't know where to get it down by about three thousand million pounds, then he ought never to have been in charge of the nation's finances ... never!
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
I think they've made the biggest financial mess that any government's ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they're now trying to control everything by other means. They're progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
But don't forget that we fought a 1974 election on saying really that pay couldn't go on going up as it was. The important thing … you must never look at pay on its own, what you've got to look at is pay in relation to the amount produced. It's when those two get badly out of line that you get inflation. And now obviously, we've got very much higher pay, but we're producing less than we were in 1970, so it's the relationship that you've got to watch. Don't look at pay separately. Once you start to cut off a man's pay from the fruits of his labour, he will inevitably feel enormous resentment. If he's going to work harder, of course he deserves more pay, and he doesn't want it all taken away in tax. But there are two sides of the equation you've got to look at.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
We should not expect the state to appear in the guise of an extravagant good fairy at every christening, a loquacious companion at every stage of life's journey, and the unknown mourner at every funeral.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
America, my friends, is the only country in the world actually founded on liberty -- the only one. People went to America to be free.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
I'm never quite sure what you mean by consensus politics. I believe that what most people want in their lives, is what the Conservative Party wants to have for them. I believe that our policies are fundamentally common sense policies. Just let's take taxation for an example. Wherever I go I hear enormous resentment about the amount which people are paying out of their own pay packet in tax. And, this goes right across the income ranges. Socialism started by saying it was going to tax the rich, very rapidly it was taxing the middle income groups. Now, it's taxing people quite highly with incomes way below average and pensioners with incomes way below average. You look at the figure on the beginning of a pay slip, sometimes it can look quite high, look along the slip to the other end, and see how many deductions you've had off, those deductions have increased enormously under Socialism ... Public expenditure, which they always boast about, is financed out of the pay packet in our pockets. People are saying that they really think too much is being taken out of the pay packet for someone to spend on their behalf, and they'd rather be left with more, and it's now well-known that Socialist Governments put up taxes and Conservative Governments take them down. It's part of our fundamental belief giving the people more choice to spend their own money in their own way.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
Jobs really come in the productive sector of the economy. The real jobs are where people are producing goods or services which other people will buy. Now, dependent on those people producing those goods, are a lot of others in the public sector. Now if you run up the public sector, you can only do it by draining money out of industry and commerce. But that's where the jobs are. And one of the reasons why you have to cut public expenditure is to get the money back out of the public sector, into industry and commerce, so that they, in fact, can invest, and improve, and expand; because that's where the secure jobs are.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom.
-- Margaret Thatcher		 
The Senate being tied is a start. Now, if only it could be gagged.
-- Bob Thaves		 
I don't know if I can live on my income or not -- the government won't let me try it.
-- Bob Thaves		 
Augustus won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and all men with the sweets of repose, and so grew greater by degrees, while he concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and the laws. He was wholly unopposed, for the boldest spirits had fallen in battle, or in the proscription, while the remaining nobles, the readier they were to be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion, so that, aggrandised by revolution, they preferred the safety of the present to the dangerous past.
-- The Annals of Tacitus		 
When the US government ended 'welfare as we know it' in 1996, it handed responsibility for reform to the states. In so doing, it also created a real-world test of two competing economic strategies used to fight poverty. The results are in and the lessons are clear: Low tax rates lift up the lives of America's poor.
-- The Christian Science Monitor		 
Under federal law the government is allowed to seize a person’s assets and distribute them, even if the accused is acquitted, or the charges eventually dropped, those assets may be transferred to state law enforcement agencies.
-- The Daily Oklahoman		 
For as long as one hundred of us shall remain alive, we shall never in any wise consent submit to the rule of the English, for it is not for glory we fight, nor riches, or for honour, but for freedom alone, which no good man loses but with his life.
-- The Declaration of Arbroath 1320		 
If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.
-- The Holy Bible		 
Unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: That the Lord thy God bless thee.
-- The Holy Bible		 
Take no usury of him, or increase... thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury.
-- The Holy Bible		 
For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
-- The Holy Bible		 
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
-- The Holy Bible		 
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
-- The Holy Bible		 
While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.
-- The Holy Bible		 
Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
-- The Holy Bible		 
So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever. And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.
-- The Holy Bible		 
But ye turned and polluted my name, and caused every man his servant, and every man his handmaid, whom he had set at liberty at their pleasure, to return, and brought them into subjection, to be unto you for servants and for handmaids.
-- The Holy Bible		 
Therefore thus saith the Lord; Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.
-- The Holy Bible		 
He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh.
-- The Koran		 
The ordinary "horseless carriage" is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.
-- The Literary Digest		 
This is the sum of all true righteousness: deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt by. Do nothing to thy neighbor which thou wouldst not have him do to thee hereafter.
-- The Mahabharata		 
[N]one are so emboldened as thugs who, in spite of the law are armed, in confrontations with law-abiding citizens who, because of the law, are disarmed.
-- The New American		 
I may die a beggar, but with the Grace of God, I will not die a slave. I will not be filed, stamped, briefed, debriefed, or numbered... My life is my own.
-- The Prisoner		 
If you add to the truth, you subtract from it.
-- The Talmud		 
If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the North American Republic [i.e., honest Constitutionally authorized debt-free money] should become indurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without a debt (to the International Bankers). It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe!
-- The Times of London		 
[President Clinton] ... ordered the Justice Department to begin studying gun licensing, registration, and collection proposals.
-- The Washington Times		 
Let me get this straight. For the past quarter-century or more, the central government has been stealing hundreds of billions of dollars each year from competent, hard-working, successful people and giving it to incompetent, lazy failures. As a result, middle-class America has increasingly been impoverished while the poor are even poorer. Now come calls for reforming the system, and liberals are denouncing reformers in the vilest language. What planet did you say liberals are from?
-- Paul Thiel		 
Thus, individualism is not antithetical to community. Rather, it can involve free association and a belief in an over-arching harmony of interests. In a free socety, individuals join with others because of love and mutual benefit, not because they are programmed or coerced.
-- Prof. Clifford Thies		 
When you walked through working-class neighbourhoods, you would sometimes see a cop slipping shamefacedly into his own house by a side door.
-- André Thirion		 
For this future emancipation, we have to rule out ideologies that aim at reinforcing the state, the police and controls in general, and at reducing liberty.
-- André Thirion		 
What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.
-- Bodie Thoene		 
If there are those who think we are to jump immediately into a new world order, actuated by complete understanding and brotherly love, they are doomed to disappointment. If we are ever to approach that time, it will be after patient and persistent effort of long duration. The present international situation of mistrust and fear can only be corrected by a formula of equal status, continuously applied, to every phase of international contacts, until the cobwebs of the old order are brushed out of the minds of the people of all lands.
-- Dr. Augustus O. Thomas		 
Welfare mostly subsidizes people in poverty, helping few escape from it. In their hearts, most people who are poor would like to be rich, or at least self-sustaining, but this president never talks about how they might achieve that goal. Instead, he criticizes those who made the right choices and now enjoy the fruits of their labor. Rather than use successful people as examples for the poor to follow, the president seeks to punish the rich with higher taxes and more regulations on their businesses.
-- Cal Thomas		 
A theory deeply etched in our law [is that] a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas		 
If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything ... quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 States.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas		 
A good argument diluted to avoid criticism is not nearly as good as the undiluted argument, because we best arrive at truth through a process of honest and vigorous debate. Arguments should not sneak around in disguise, as if dissent were somehow sinister… For it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas		 
Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law. That [affirmative action] programs may have been motivated, in part, by good intentions cannot provide refuge from the principle that under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the basis of race.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas		 
I believe that there is a moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality.... In my mind, government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas		 
I don’t believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas		 
Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas		 
[T]he courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.... The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas		 
In the beginning, there was nothing. Then God said 'Let there be light,' and there was still nothing, but you could see it.
-- Dave Thomas		 
No government of the Centre would seek powers to imprison individuals who have committed no crime merely on the say-so of "experts" who believe they might commit a crime. No libertarian government would want to reduce our right to trial by jury, to curfew children, to place "anti-social behaviour orders" on citizens, to conduct compulsory DNA and drug tests on all offenders. No government that was concerned with freedom would seek to ban pursuits that harm no one, such as foxhunting, simply because they are unpopular. No government that has respect for its citizens would seek to interfere so intimately with so many of their private activities -- for instance, what right does a government have to tell me under what terms and conditions I may sell my house. The transaction should, quite simply, be none of their business.
-- George Thomas		 
History suggests that the cause of national decline is, as a rule, that the state in the nation concerned has sought to do too much rather than too little. This applies as much to the Roman Empire as to the Spanish.
-- Hugh Thomas		 
We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people; we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.
-- Lewis Thomas		 
Dissent... is a right essential to any concept of the dignity and freedom of the individual; it is essential to the search for truth in a world wherein no authority is infallible.
-- Norman Thomas		 
The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.
-- Norman Thomas		 
After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement.
-- Norman Thomas		 
All statutes are presumed constitutional and the party challenging the constitutionality of a statute has the burden of clearly establishing that it violates the constitution.
-- Justice Robert R. Thomas		 
Political censorship is necessarily based on fear of what will happen if those whose work is censored get their way, or if they are effecting in persuading a large number of readers to share their point of view. The nature of political censorship at any given time depends on the censor’s answer to the simple question, “What are you afraid of?”
-- Donald Thompson		 
When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.
-- Dorothy Thompson		 
It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.
-- Dorothy Thompson		 
It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.
-- Dorothy Thompson		 
Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.
-- Dorothy Thompson		 
Jurors have found, again and again, and at critical moments, according to what is their sense of the rational and just. If their sense of justice has gone one way, and the case another, they have found “against the evidence,” ... the English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people: The jury box is where the people come into the court: The judge watches them and the people watch back. A jury is the place where the bargain is struck. The jury attends in judgment, not only upon the accused, but also upon the justice and the humanity of the Law.
-- E. P. Thompson		 
After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.
-- Fred Thompson		 
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
-- Hunter S. Thompson		 
It is suggested that the solution lies in the United Nations Security Council. It is interesting to note that each solution it achieves invariably results either in the country involved going communist or vast territories being turned to communist-type socialism. The United Nations is the great Trojan horse within our gates, and we can hope for absolutely no help from that quarter, especially while it promotes and arranges finances, encouragement, and prestige to dissenting groups involved in so-called liberation movements of terrorist revolutionary groups.
-- J. Ralph Thompson		 
Nothing is plainer than that, if the principles of the church of Rome prevail here, our Constitution would fall. The two cannot exist together. They are in open and direct antagonism with the fundamental theory of our government and of all popular government everywhere.
-- Richard Thompson		 
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison ... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Law never made men a whit more just.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause -- nor any charter of immunities and rights.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
To be awake is to be alive.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Others -- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders -- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few -- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men -- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part ...
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe... till we come to the hard bottom of rocks in place, which we can call reality.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe -- 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which the will have.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
That government is best which governs least.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Things do not change, we change.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls -- the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Wherever you may seek solitude, men will ferret you out and compel you to belong to their desperate company of oddfellows.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
I heartily accept the motto, that government is best which governs least ... Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, that government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? -- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
As for adopting the ways which the state has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
I make my own time. I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature can ever get the start of me.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
A gun gives you the body, not the bird.
-- Henry David Thoreau		 
The creation of money exclusively as debt is the critical, destabilizing flaw in the American Economy.
-- Theodore R. Thoren		 
Before the creation of the welfare state, immigrants who came to this country were for the most part attracted by America’s reputation as a land of freedom and opportunity. Laws and customs that then prevailed required immigrants to carve out their individual destinies by their own labor, perseverance, intelligence, and determination.
-- James Thornton		 
It is natural that citizens of great and powerful nations see themselves, collectively speaking, as immortal and immune to the processes that have brought down other illustrious nations and peoples.
-- James Thornton		 
The new puritans have been highly successful. All of the preconditions for new prohibitions on alcohol and tobacco are in place. ... Indeed, the future agenda of the federal government has already been established to outlaw alcohol and tobacco in the near future. ... If current trends persist, America will be moving toward stricter prohibitions, greater restrictions, and more centralized control over consumption. This represents an erosion of liberty at its most fundamental level.
-- Mark Thornton		 
Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
-- Thucydides		 
For it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.
-- Thucydides		 
The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage.
-- Thucydides		 
As the world goes, right is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
-- Thucydides		 
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
-- James Thurber		 
Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and nobody to be kicked?
-- Lord Chancellor Thurlow		 
Power can rarely be wielded effectively over long periods of time unless it is perceived by the community in which it is exercised as a form of legitimate authority, not as mere coercive force.
-- Brian Tierney		 
I do not believe there are more than a very limited number of persons, perhaps a hundred who really know what is in the Constitution of the United States.
-- Dr. John J. Tigert		 
The first duty of love is to listen.
-- Paul Tillich		 
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
-- Paul Tillich		 
From that point on, the extraordinary system of spies and informers which has played an important part in the political work of the French state into our own time took shape. (Sartine, who became lieutenant general de police in 1759, is supposed to have said to Louis XV, "Sire, when three people are chatting in the street one of them is surely my man.") Eighteenth-century police manuals like those of Colquhoun in England or Lemaire in France are no less than general treatises on the government's full repertoire of domestic regulation, coercion, and surveillance.
-- Charles Tilly		 
At the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco, Nelson Rockefeller was in the forefront of the struggle to establish not only an American system of political and economic security but a new world order.
-- New York Times		 
When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot be easily cured of it.
-- New York Times		 
Nelson Rockefeller was in the forefront of the struggle to establish not only an American system of political and economic security but a new world order.
-- New York Times		 
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
-- Preamble To The United States Constitution		 
The things that are wrong with the country today are the sum total of all the things that are wrong with us as individuals.
-- Charles W. Tobey		 
Man’s drive for self-expression, which over the centuries has built his monuments, does not stay within its bounds; the creations which yesterday were detested and the obscene become the classics of today.
-- Matthew Tobriner		 
The Rothschild family is the head of the organization in which I entered in Colorado. All the Occult Brotherhoods are part of it. It is a Lucifer Organization to install his reign in the whole world. … Supposedly the Rothschilds have personal dealings with the Devil. I have personally been in his villa and have experienced it. And I know it is true.
-- John Todd		 
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
-- Alvin Toffler		 
One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.
-- Alvin Toffler		 
You may not be interested in war, but war is very interested in you.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
The misapprehension springs from the fact that the learned jurists, deceiving themselves as well as others, depict in their books an ideal of government -- not as it really is, an assembly of men who oppress their fellow-citizens, but in accordance with the scientific postulate, as a body of men who act as the representatives of the rest of the nation. They have gone on repeating this to others so long that they have ended by believing it themselves, and they really seem to think that justice is one of the duties of governments. History, however, shows us that governments, as seen from the reign of Caesar to those of the two Napoleons and Prince Bismarck, are in their very essence a violation of justice; a man or a body of men having at command an army of trained soldiers, deluded creatures who are ready for any violence, and through whose agency they govern the State, will have no keen sense of the obligation of justice. Therefore governments will never consent to diminish the number of those well-trained and submissive servants, who constitute their power and influence.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
The strongest of all warriors are these two -- Time and Patience.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal -- that there is no human relation between master and slave.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
I know that most men -- not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems -- can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty -- conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
Hypocrisy is anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
The more that is given, the less people will work for themselves, and the less they work, the more their poverty will increase.
-- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi		 
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
-- Lily Tomlin		 
It is said, mostly by Libertarians, that ‘taxation is theft.’ Theft is too mild a word. Typically, a thief strikes only once, and doesn’t pretend that his robbery is legitimate. Taxation is actually slavery.
-- Rick Tompkins		 
[T]hroughout history the unarmed have been safe only as long as the armed (criminals or government agents) have allowed them to be safe. We should beware of any politician, bureaucrat, or intellectual who claims the Second Amendment is outdated, or that it does no more than guarantee the National guard’s right to bear arms. Many of these same people did their best to obstruct investigations of government wrongdoing at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
-- William R. Tonso		 
The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee		 
Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee		 
The last stage but one of every civilisation, is characterised by the forced political unification of its constituent parts, into a single greater whole.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee		 
An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee		 
We differ from Tory Socialism in so far as we are in favour, not of paternal, but of fraternal government, and we differ from Continental Socialism because we accept the principle of private property, and repudiate confiscation and violence. With Mazzini, we say the worst feature in Continental Socialism is its materialism. It is this indeed which utterly separates English Radical Socialists from Continental Socialists — our abhorrence and detestation of their materialistic ideal.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee		 
The Radical creed, as I understand it, is this: We have not abandoned our old belief in liberty, justice, and Self-help, but we say that under certain conditions the people cannot help themselves, and that then they should be helped by the State representing directly the whole people. In giving this State help, we make three conditions: first, the matter must be one of primary social importance; next, it must be proved to be practicable; thirdly, the State interference must not diminish self-reliance. Even if the chance should arise of removing a great social evil, nothing must be done to weaken those habits of individual self-reliance and voluntary association which have built up the greatness of the English people.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee		 
To a reluctant admission of the necessity for State action, we join a burning belief in duty, and a deep spiritual ideal of life. And we have more than an abstract belief in duty, we do not hesitate to unite the advocacy of social reform with an appeal to the various classes who compose society to perform those duties without which all social reform must be merely delusive.
-- Arnold J. Toynbee		 
Mr. Speaker, we are now in Chapter 11... Members of Congress are official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any bankrupt entity in world history.
-- James A. Traficant, Jr.		 
Mr. Speaker, in 1848, Karl Marx said, a progressive income tax is needed to transfer wealth and power to the state. Thus, Marx's Communist Manifesto had as its major economic tenet a progressive income tax. Think about it, 1848 Karl Marx, Communism.... I say it is time to replace the progressive income tax with a national retail sales tax, and it is time to abolish the IRS, my colleagues. I yield back all the rules, regulations, fear, and intimidation of our current system.
-- James A. Traficant, Jr.		 
America is in trouble... not from without, but from within! The Central Government has become too powerful. Citizens fear the Government. This is wrong. This is dangerous! I know the Government covered-up and promulgated LIES about Waco, Ruby Ridge, Pan Am Flight 103, Hoffa, and J.F.K. The Government knew I was right when I called Janet Reno a traitor. Janet Reno sold us out when she refused to investigate a $10-million payoff to the Democratic Party from a general in the Red Chinese Army (no less!). Think about it! And the Government knew that I had known why Reno was forced to betray America! I’m proud that I tried to do something about it! Someday the truth will come out. (I hope China never attacks us!)
-- James A. Traficant, Jr.		 
A memory is the life past, no one can take from you, forever it lasts.
-- Verka Paunovska Trajcesica		 
Those prepared to give their lives in freedom’s cause, come over to me...
-- Col. William Barrett Travis		 
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
-- Treason Clause		 
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
-- Treaty of Tripoli, 1796		 
It's the misfortune of all Countries, that they sometimes lie under a unhappy necessity to defend themselves by Arms against the ambition of their Governors, and to fight for what's their own. If those in government are heedless of reason, the people must patiently submit to Bondage, or stand upon their own Defence; which if they are enabled to do, they shall never be put upon it, but their Swords may grow rusty in their hands; for that Nation is surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it.
-- John Trenchard		 
Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the blood of real civilization.
-- G. M. Trevelyan		 
It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that just on the president's say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan, but at O'Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without access to a lawyer or court just because the government says he's connected somehow with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. That's not the American way. It's not the constitutional way.
-- Laurence Tribe		 
[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government.
-- Laurence Tribe		 
[I]f we won’t choose to pay the price of liberty, then by default we shall suffer the cost of servitude -- whether it be the iron chains of a tyrannical oligarchy or the regulatory chains of unelected, faceless bureaucrats. When we witness our neighbors abused by tyrants, will we skulk away and hope we’re not next? Or will we stand by them and challenge -- as freedom-loving Americans -- the tyranny of lawless leaders.
-- Phil Trieb		 
[I]f we won’t choose to pay the price of liberty, then by default we shall suffer the cost of servitude -- whether it be the iron chains of a tyrannical oligarchy or the regulatory chains of unelected, faceless bureaucrats. When we witness our neighbors abused by tyrants, will we skulk away and hope we’re not next? Or will we stand by them and challenge -- as freedom-loving Americans -- the tyranny of lawless leaders.
-- Phil Trieb		 
...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire.
-- Srdja Trifkovic		 
It is a known fact that the policies of the government today, whether Republican or Democrat are closer to the 1932 platform of the Communist Party than they are to either of their own party platforms in that critical year.
-- Walter Trohan		 
If our generation happens to be too weak to establish Socialism over the earth, we will hand the spotless banner down to our children. The struggle which is in the offing transcends by far the importance of individuals, factions and parties. It is the struggle for the future of all mankind. It will be severe, it will be lengthy. Whoever seeks physical comfort and spiritual calm let him step aside. In time of reaction it is more convenient to lean on the bureaucracy than on the truth. But all those for whom the word ‘Socialism’ is not a hollow sound but the content of their moral life - forward! Neither threats nor persecutions nor violations can stop us! Be it even over our bleaching bones the future will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth; because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future.
-- Leon Trotsky		 
Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.
-- Leon Trotsky		 
A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values.
-- Pierre Trudeau		 
As against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane.
-- Pierre Trudeau		 
Obviously, the state's responsibility should be to legislate rules for a well-ordered society. It has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation.
-- Pierre Trudeau		 
What is considered sinful in one of the great religions to which citizens belong isn't necessarily sinful in the others. Criminal law therefore cannot be based on the notion of sin; it is crimes that it must define.
-- Pierre Trudeau		 
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
Secrecy and a free, democratic government don’t mix.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
It's not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It's the hand that casts the ballot.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
You can't get rich in politics unless you're a crook.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
It's an old political trick: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." But this time it won't work.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country we punish men for the crimes they commit but never for the opinions they have.
-- Harry S. Truman		 
Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
-- Mao Tse-Tung		 
Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'  Our principle is that the [Communist] Party commands the gun and the gun will never be allowed to command the Party.
-- Mao Tse-tung		 
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
-- Mao Tse-Tung		 
I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if they had known they were slaves.
-- Harriet Tubman		 
We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them.
-- Benjamin R. Tucker		 
No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
-- Judge Gideon J. Tucker		 
No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.
-- Gideon J. Tucker		 
To secure their enjoyment, however, certain protections or barriers have been erected which serve to maintain inviolate the three primary rights of personal security, personal liberty, and private property. These may in America be said to be: 1. The bill of rights and written constitutions ...\\ 2. The rights of bearing arms -- which with us is not limited and restrained by an arbitrary system of game laws as in England, but is particularly enjoyed by every citizen, and is among his most valuable privileges, since it furnishes the means of resisting as a freeman ought, the inroads of usurpation.\\ 3. The right of applying to the courts of justice for the redress of injuries.
-- Henry St. George Tucker		 
Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery, the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring, or holding, in his own use. Hence, it will appear how perfectly irreconcilable a state of slavery is to the principles of a democracy, which form the basis and foundation of our government.
-- St. George Tucker		 
This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. ... The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
-- St. George Tucker		 
Let no Negroe or mulattoe be cabable of taking, holding, or exercising any public office, freehold, franchise or privilege. ... Nor of keeping, or bearing arms, unless authorized to do by some act of the general assembly, whose duration shall be limited to three years.
-- St. George Tucker		 
Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa ... Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty ... whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies ... whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die ... we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.
-- St. George Tucker		 
To the extent that these [New Deal policies] developed, they were tortured interpretations of a document [the Constitution] intended to prevent them.
-- Rexford Tugwell		 
Characteristically, however, the overthrow of the dictator simply means that there will be another dictator. ... the policies they follow will probably not be radically different. If we look around the world, we quickly realize that these policies will not be radically different from those that would be followed by a democracy either.
-- Gordon Tullock		 
Our system is changing and [Congress] is the one branch that must act if we are to reverse those changes. We are seeing the emergence of a different model of government, a model long-ago rejected by the framers. ... A dominant presidency has occurred with very little congressional opposition. Indeed, when President Obama pledged to circumvent Congress, he received rapturous applause from the very body that he was proposing to make practically irrelevant. Now many members are contesting the right of this institution to even be heard in federal court. ... This body is moving from self-loathing to self-destruction in a system that is in crisis. The president's pledge to effectively govern alone is alarming, and what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill that pledge. When a president can govern alone, he can become a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger the framers sought to avoid.
-- Jonathan Turley		 
Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to AIDS.
-- Carlton Turner		 
History does not exist for us until and unless we dig it up, interpret it, and put it together. Then the past comes alive, or, more accurately, it is revealed for what it has always been - a part of the present.
-- Frederick W. Turner III		 
We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.' We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of freedom! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, 'We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history.'
-- Bishop Desmond Tutu		 
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
-- Bishop Desmond Tutu		 
Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility.
-- Bishop Desmond Tutu		 
Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that experts fall for.
-- Amos Tversky		 
There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.
-- Mark Twain		 
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
-- Mark Twain		 
How you can win the population for war: At first, the statesman will invent cheap lying, that impute the guilt of the attacked nation, and each person will be happy over this deceit, that calm the conscience. It will study it detailed and refuse to test arguments of the other opinion. So he will convince step for step even therefrom that the war is just and thank God, that he, after this process of grotesque even deceit, can sleep better.
-- Mark Twain		 
Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state.
-- Mark Twain		 
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain		 
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
-- Mark Twain		 
When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.'

[After a pause.] Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.
-- Mark Twain

 
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
-- Mark Twain		 
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the congress is in session.
-- Mark Twain		 
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.  You cannot shirk this and be a man.  To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.
-- Mark Twain		 
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
-- Mark Twain		 
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
-- Mark Twain		 
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
-- Mark Twain		 
Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
-- Mark Twain		 
In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
-- Mark Twain		 
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.
-- Mark Twain		 
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
-- Mark Twain		 
Often, the surest way to convey information is to tell the strict truth.
-- Mark Twain		 
A classic is a book which people praise and don't read.
-- Mark Twain		 
Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption -- no, for the Lie, as Virtue, as Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains. My complaint, simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. ... If this finest of the fine art arts had everywhere received the attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or cry a single tear. I do not say this to flatter. I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition.
-- Mark Twain		 
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain		 

-- Mark Twain		 
Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
-- Mark Twain		 
Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-- Mark Twain		 
Carlye said, A lie cannot live; it shows he did not know how to tell them.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
-- Mark Twain		 
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
-- Mark Twain		 
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain		 
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
-- Mark Twain		 
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.
-- Mark Twain		 
... if it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary.
-- Mark Twain		 
The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
-- Mark Twain		 
One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed in it. They have also believed the world was flat.
-- Mark Twain		 
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.
-- Mark Twain		 
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
-- Mark Twain		 
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics.
-- Mark Twain		 
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
-- Mark Twain		 
I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition... (more)
-- Mark Twain		 
Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.
-- Mark Twain		 
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
-- Mark Twain		 
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
-- Mark Twain		 
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain		 
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain		 
Travel is lethal to prejudice.
-- Mark Twain		 
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
-- Mark Twain		 
My kind of loyalty was to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.
-- Mark Twain		 
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
-- Mark Twain		 
The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.
-- Mark Twain		 
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
-- Mark Twain		 
Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.
-- Mark Twain		 
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
-- Mark Twain		 
Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
-- Mark Twain		 
For in a Republic, who is "the country?" Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
-- Mark Twain		 
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain		 
I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two million dollars.
-- Mark Twain		 
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
-- Mark Twain		 
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
-- Mark Twain		 
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
-- Mark Twain		 
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
-- Mark Twain		 
Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -- the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
-- Mark Twain		 
Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.
-- Mark Twain		 
When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain		 
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
-- Mark Twain		 
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain		 
Often the less there is to justify a traditional custom the harder it is to get rid of it.
-- Mark Twain		 
It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many people can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval.
-- Mark Twain		 
I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.
-- Mark Twain		 
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-- Mark Twain		 
[N]o country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.
-- Mark Twain		 
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain		 
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain		 
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
-- Mark Twain		 
If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
-- Mark Twain		 
Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.
-- Mark Twain		 
I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't.
-- Mark Twain		 
As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?
-- William Marcy Tweed		 
I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.
-- William Marcy Tweed		 
According to the Taranto Principle, the press's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans.
-- R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.		 
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
-- Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (Questionable)		 
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complaceny to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage.
-- Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (Questionable)		 
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.... The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage.
-- Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (Questionable)		 
When the leader is morally weak and his discipline not strict, when his instructions and guidance are not enlightened, when there are no consistent rules, neighboring rulers will take advantage of this.
-- Sun Tzu		 
In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. Only one who knows the disastrous effects of a long war can realize the supreme importance of rapidity in bringing it to a close.
-- Sun Tzu		 
Those who excel in war first cultivate their own humanity and justice and maintain their laws and institutions. By these means they make their governments invincible.
-- Sun Tzu		 
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
-- Sun Tzu		 
All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.
-- Sun Tzu		 
We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.
-- Stewart L. Udall		 
[The problem is]...small arms are spreading throughout society with little documentation, since they are frequently bought from private individuals.
-- UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice		 
The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks he has found.
-- Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo		 
[The Clinton Administration] may find it useful to invoke the commitments made here [in the UN] to Americans as a lever to persuade the gun lobby.
-- Unidentified diplomat		 
I solemnly affirm to exercise in all loyalty, discretion and conscience ... in the interest of the United Nations ... and not to seek or accept instructions ... from any government or other authority external to the organization...
-- United Nations' Loyalty Oath		 
The age of nations must end... The governments of the nations have decided to order their separate sovereignties into one government to which they surrender their arms.
-- United Nations' World Constitution (False)		 
Everyone has the right…to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
-- United Nations		 
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
-- United Nations		 
No state shall emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, coin money...
-- United States Constitution		 
No State shall... coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts...
-- United States Constitution		 
... [the 16th Amendment] conferred no new power of taxation... [and]... prohibited the ... power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged...
-- United States Supreme Court		 
The Constitution is a written instrument. As such it's meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
...the intent of the lawmaker is to be found in the language that he has used.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is nonetheless a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation. This is not legislation. It is a decree under legislative forms.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many Citizens, because of their respect for what appears to be law, are cunningly coerced into waiving their rights due to ignorance.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
Our tax system is based upon voluntary assessment and payment, not upon distraint.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
The Constitution prohibits any direct tax, unless in proportion to numbers as ascertained by the census..... [and] ... prohibits Congress from laying a direct tax on the revenue from property of the citizen without regard to state lines...
-- United States Supreme Court		 
... bank records are not the depositor's private papers and having given the information to the bank, the depositor has no legitimate expectation of continued privacy... Records of an individual's accounts with banks are not the individual's private papers protected against compulsory production by the 4th Amendment, but instead are the business records of the banks.
-- United States Supreme Court		 
It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of the liberties ... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.
-- United States v. Robel		 


Daily Quotes
Ready to be inspired?
Sign up for a daily dose of Liberty Quotes!
Leave us your email address to subscribe.
Email:

Here's the Daily Quote history.

Browse quotes by
Authors, Categories,
and Cryptograms!



The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
A classic since 1953 with over 20,000 quotes from over 3,000 authors.


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


Stretch Your Wings
Famous Black Quotations for the Young


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


The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations


Last Words of Saints and Sinners
700 Final Quotes from the Famous, the Infamous, and the Inspiring Figures of History


America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations
Contains over 2,100 profound quotations from founding fathers, presidents, constitutions, court decisions and more


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


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


The Stupidest Things Ever Said by Politicians
Rise up, America -- and laugh out loud at the greatest gaffes that no spin doctor could possibly fix!


The 776 Even Stupider Things Ever Said
Another great collection of stupidity


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


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


2,715 One-Line Quotations for Speakers, Writers & Raconteurs
Invaluable sampler of witticisms, epigrams, sayings, bon mots, platitudes and insights chosen for their brevity and pithiness.


Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts Funny Sayings
A stupendous collection of quotes, quips, epigrams, witticisms, and humorous comments for personal enjoyment and ready reference.


Quick Quips and Quotes; 532 Things I Wish I Had Said
Quick Quips and Quotes is the Ultimate Collection of one liners.


Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
The ultimate anthology of anecdotes, now revised with over 700 new entries.


Quotations for Public Speakers
A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology


Liberty - The American Revolution
This compelling series traces the events leading up to the war and America's fight for freedom.


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


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


The Libertarian Reader
Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman


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


(c) Copyright 1999-2024