Collection of famous "quotes"

Robert Cobb

New member
Here are the Quotes I found pertaining to Government, Arms, etc... If you have any that are not included here, feel free to post in this thread... Most of these were copied and pasted from HERE

“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.” -- Edmund Burke

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

"Tyranny is always better organized than freedom." -- Charles Peguy.

"My greatest fear is that too many members of the public will embrace the government's call to give up some freedom in return for greater safety, only to find that they have lost freedom without gaining safety." -- ACLU President Nadine Strossen, in the December, 2001 issue of Reason.

General George S. Patton said,"Live for something rather than die for nothing."

"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it." -- Daniel Webster (1834)

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."-- Thomas Jefferson

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." – Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791.

"The right to revolt has sources deep in our history." -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

"It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from
falling into error." -- U.S. Supreme Court in American Communications Association v. Douds

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." -- Samuel Adams

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." -- Thomas Jefferson, September 23, 1800, as inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial

"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on Earth... and what no just government should refuse." -- Thomas Jefferson in a Letter to James Madison, Paris, Dec. 20, 1787

"Government should be our servant, not our master." -- Doug Guetzloe

"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

"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error." -- Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Judge, in American Communications Association v. Douds, May 1950

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." -- Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816

"Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent??" -- Samuel Adams, founding father and leader of the Boston Tea Party

"It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all." -- Thomas Jefferson to Francois D'Ivernois, 1795

"Man is not free unless government is limited." -- Ronald Reagan: Farewell Speech, 1988

[The purpose of the Constitution is to] “keep the government off the backs of people.” -- Justice William O. Douglas

"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 until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass

"It's important to realize that whenever you give power to politicians or bureaucrats, it will be used for what they want, not for what you want."-- Harry Browne

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion; what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." -- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787

"The United States was supposed to have a limited government because the founders knew governmental power attracts swarms of crooks, demagogues and despots as surely as horse manure attracts swarms of horseflies." -- Rick Gaber

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms..." – Thomas Jefferson

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764

"The right of self-defense 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 when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." -- Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England.
 
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