"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a free man and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion."
~ James Burgh, 1774 ~

"When government turns bad, the best of people ultimately become criminals. The people don't change; the laws do. Initiative, dissent, individual pleasures, and exercise of one's basic rights become 'crimes'."
~ Claire Wolfe (101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution) ~

"The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable."
~ Ulysses S. Grant - "Personal Memoirs" (1885) ~

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
~ William Pitt, 1783 ~

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress."
~ Frederick Douglas ~

"Never turn your back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!"
~ Winston Churchill ~

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."
~ Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minnesota) ~

"The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States"
~ Noah Webster, 1888 ~

"...for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of insuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion."
~ Alexander Hamilton ~

"Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority."
~ President Andrew Jackson - (1832) ~

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
~ Charles A. Beard ~

"We, the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts -- not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution."
~ Abraham Lincoln ~

"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves."
~ John Locke ~

"Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out just because I might yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater."
~ Peter Venetoklis ~

"This country was founded by religious nuts with guns."
~ P.J. O'Rourke ~

"Life, liberty and property do not exist because men made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place"
~ Frederic Bastiat ~

"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority..... from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason."
~ Lord Acton - "The History of Freedom in Antiquity" (1877) ~

"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
~ Aesop - "The Wolf and the Lamb" ~

"Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful easily break through them."
~ Anacharsis - (Philosopher - 600 B.C.) ~

"Judges ought to remember that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law."
~ Francis Bacon ~

"History is the torch that is meant to illuminate the past, to guard us against the repetition of our mistakes of other days. We cannot join in the rewriting of history to make it conform to our comfort and convenience."
~ Claude Bowers ~

"Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race."
~ Charles Bradlaugh ~

"Those who steal from private individuals spend their lives in stocks and chains; those who steal from the public treasury go dressed in gold and purple."
~ Marcus Porcius Cato - (Roman Statesman - 190 B.C.) ~

"The more laws, the less justice."
~ Marcus Cicero - "De Officiis" (44 B.C.) ~

"I am a revolutionist by birth, reading, and principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolt."
~ Mark Twain ~

"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
~ Mark Twain ~

"Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people."
~ President Grover Cleveland (1887) ~

"Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that 'Freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license'; and they will define and define freedom out of existence."
~ Voltarine De Cleyre ~

"The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority.... it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people."
~ Frank Cobb ~

"Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed."
~ Charles Colton ~

"Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past.... while we silence the rebels of the present."
~ Henry Steele Commager - (American educator - 1947) ~

"Who would be cleared by their Committees? Not Washington, who was a rebel. Not Jefferson, who wrote that all men are created equal and who's motto was "rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God...". Not Lincoln, who admonished us to have malice toward none, charity for all... or Justice Holmes, who said that our Constitution is an experiment and that while that experiment is being made, "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death."
~ Henry Steele Commager - (American educator - 1947) ~

"Individuality is the aim of political liberty."
~ James Fenimore Cooper ~

"It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny."
~ James Fenimore Cooper - "The American Democrat" (1838) ~

"Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their mind."
~ Dante - "Monarchy" (1309) ~

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free."
~ Clarence Darrow (1920) ~

"Probably all laws are useless; for good men do not want laws at all, and bad men are made no better by them."
~ Demonax - (Roman philosopher c. 150 A.D.) ~

"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken."
~ Benjamin Disraeli ~

"The World is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians."
~ Benjamin Disraeli ~

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential cause of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars..."
~ Will Durant - (American historian - 1944) ~

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
~ President John F. Kennedy ~

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."
~ President Gerald Ford ~

"The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights."
~ Erwin Griswold - (Dean, Harvard Law School - 1960) ~

"Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen."
~ George Savile, Marquess of Halifax - (c. 1680) ~

"The man whom God wills to stay in the struggle of life, He first individualizes."
~ Henrik Ibsen - "Brand" (1884) ~

"What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: to be himself."
~ Henrik Ibsen - "Peer Gynt" (1867) ~

"All politics are based on the indifference of the majority."
~ James Reston ~

"To be a revolutionary is to love your life enough to change it, to choose struggle instead of exile, to risk everything with only the glimmering hope of a world to win."
~ Andrew Kopkind - (American writer - 1968) ~

"It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part."
~ James Madison - "The Federalist" (1788) ~

"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one.
~ James Madison ~

"Many people are afraid of freedom. They are conditioned to be afraid of it."
~ Herbert Marcuse ~

"That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them."
~ George Mason - "Virginia Declaration of Rights" (1776) ~

"...to disarm the people (is) the best and most effective way to enslave them..."
~ George Mason ~

"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance."
~ Woodrow Wilson - 1912 ~

"Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties."
~ John Milton - (1644) ~

"The laws keep up their credit, not by being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools; still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity; but always by men, vain and irresolute authors."
~ Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580) ~

"The most desirable laws are those that are rarest, simplest, and most general; and I even think that it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we have."
~ Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580) ~

"In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments; in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing."
~ Charles De Secondat - "The Spirit of Laws" (1748) ~

"You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him."
~ John Morley - "On Compromise" (1874) ~

"A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."
~ Plato - "The Republic" (c. 380 B.C.) ~

"Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people."
~ Jean de la Fontaine - "Fables" (1668) ~

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchers?"
~ Juvenal - (Roman rhetorician - c. 100 A.D.) ~

"To be governed is to have every opinion, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected."
~ Pierre Proudhon - "The General Idea of the Revolution of the 19th Century" (1842) ~

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation."
~ Thomas Reed - (Speaker of the House of Representatives - 1886) ~

"War is an evil thing; but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse.... Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value.... To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side."
~ Thucydides - 413 B.C. ~

"He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by."
~ Jean Rousseau - "Emille" (1762) ~

"If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state --to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying toward its support."
~ Herbert Spencer ~

"All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree."
~ Lysander Spooner ~

"I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security--out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism..."
~ John Steinbeck - "America and Americans" (1966) ~

"The State calls its own violence, law; but that of the individual, crime."
~ Max Stirner ~

"The State, it cannot be too often repeated, does nothing and can give nothing which it does not take from somebody.
~ William Sumner ~

"The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws."
~ Cornelius Tacitus - "Annals" (c. 116 A.D.) ~

"I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; ... 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 they will have."
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

"There will never be a 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 ~

"The Revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and reflecting preference for freedom, not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence. It did not contract an alliance with the turbulent passions of anarchy, but its course was marked, on the contrary, by a love of order and law."
~ Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835 ~

"Before their thunder roars, there is a period of anticipation, in which more occurs than the literal minded tyrant can ever understand. A few overt acts of sedition shatter the heavy peace. But the greater force, unrecognized, rolls forward in near silence, as millions of individuals quietly withdraw their consent from the state. The pundits call it apathy. They could not be more wrong."
~ Claire Wolfe (101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution) ~

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
~ Claire Wolfe (Don't Shoot The Bastards-- Yet) ~

"Those who seek to be truly free, must abolish any form of government which takes property from one in order to give to another, regardless of reason or rationale. Such a redistribution of wealth is little more than government sanctioned theft. Each man must be free to choose with whom he will share his time, his energy, his friendship, and the fruits of his labor as he sees fit. Government coercion and intervention in these areas is nothing less than tyranny."