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|  A State Ex Rel. Torryson v. Grey | Where the words of a constitution are unambiguous and in their commonly received sense lead to a reasonable conclusion, it should be read according to the natural and most obvious import of the framers, without resorting to subtle and forced construction for the purpose of limiting or extending its operation. | |
| Bruce Ackerman | There is simply no escaping the fact that the fate of the Constitution is in our hands -- as voters, representatives, justices. If we allow ourselves to abuse the tradition of higher lawmaking, the very idea that the Constitution can be viewed as the culminating expression of a mobilized citizenry will disintegrate. After all, the American Republic is no more eternal than the Roman -- and it will come to an end when American citizens betray their Constitution’s fundamental ideals and aspirations so thoroughly that existing institutions merely parody the public meanings they formerly conveyed | |
| Bruce Ackerman | There is simply no escaping the fact that the fate of the Constitution is in our hands -- as voters, representatives, justices. If we allow ourselves to abuse the tradition of higher lawmaking, the very idea that the Constitution can be viewed as the culminating expression of a mobilized citizenry will disintegrate. After all, the American Republic is no more eternal than the Roman -- and it will come to an end when American citizens betray their Constitution’s fundamental ideals and aspirations so thoroughly that existing institutions merely parody the public meanings they formerly conveyed. | |
| Henry Brooks Adams | I would rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, than of holding all the offices that capital has to give from the presidency down. | |
| John Adams | The nature of the encroachment upon American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer; it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society. | |
| John Adams | I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination. | |
| John Adams | In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. | |
| John Adams | Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. | |
| John Adams | Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"… If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference? | |
| John Adams | Society's demands for moral authority and character increase
as the importance of the position increases. | |
| John Adams | We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. | |
| John Adams | When I went home to my family in May, 1770, from the town meeting in Boston, which was the first I had ever attended, and where I had been chosen in my absence, without any solicitation, one of their representatives, I said to my wife, "I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning, that you may prepare your mind for your fate." She burst into tears, but instantly cried out in a transport of magnanimity, "Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined." These were times, my friend, in Boston, which tried women's souls as well as men's. | |
| John Adams | Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference? | |
| John Adams | [N]o good government but what is republican...
the very definition of a republic is
'an empire of laws, and not of men.' | |
| John Adams | It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. | |
| John Quincy Adams | Always stand on principle, even if you stand alone. | |
| Samuel Adams | He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man...The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people. | |
| Aesop | Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth. | |
| Publius Terentius Afer | I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want. | |
| Arnold Ahlert | [A] deep-rooted culture of incompetence and corruption has made it virtually impossible for government to function fairly and efficiently. And because most government employees are shielded by layers of protection, they couldn't care less. Never before in the history of this nation has there been a greater divide between a self-serving federal leviathan and millions of Americans... 'Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,' Ronald Reagan reminded us during his inaugural address in 1981. Nothing's changed since then, with one exception: It's gotten far worse. | |
| Thomas Bailey Aldrich | The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks. | |
| Corri Alius | Do whatever you can to capture, or recapture, your life spark - unless it harms others, in which case suffer with as much happiness as you can muster. Your nobility of spirit will spark itself. | |
| Roger Allen | Congress is continually appointing fact-finding committees, when what we really need are some fact-facing committees. | |
| American Bar Association | I shall not counsel or maintain any suit or proceeding which shall appear to me to be unjust, nor any defense except such as I believe to be honestly debatable under the law of the land. | |
| Amos v. Mosley | If the legislature clearly misinterprets a constitutional provision, the frequent repetition of the wrong will not create a right. | |
| Amos v. Mosley | If the legislature clearly misinterprets a Constitutional provision, the frequent repetition of the wrong will not create a right. | |
| Anacharsis | These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth. | |
| Mordechai Anielewicz | The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don’t adjust! Revolt against the reality! | |
| Marcus Aurelius Antoninus | A man should be upright, not be kept upright. | |
| Marcus Aurelius Antoninus | Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect. | |
| Saint Thomas Aquinas | Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. | |
| Saint Thomas Aquinas | In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign.... Secondly, a just cause.... Thirdly ... a rightful intention. | |
| Hannah Arendt | What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. | |
| Pietro Aretino | I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself. | |
| Aristotle | We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. | |
| Aristotle | We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit | |
| Aristotle | Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. | |
| William D. Arnot | If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare. | |
| Isaac Asimov | Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. | |
| W. H. Auden | Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction. | |
| Sir Francis Bacon | The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies. | |
| Michael Badnarik | If I give you a forty five percent chance at lethal injection, a fifty percent chance at the electric chair, and a five percent chance for escape which are you going to vote for? The electric chair, because you're likely to win? | |
| Ben H. Bagdikian | In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always then. Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local candidates run without any party identification. No American citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political background, and commitments of each individual candidate. | |
| Walter Bagehot | So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience tells them it is wrong. | |
| Mikhail A. Bakunin | Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. | |
| William Barr | In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursing a deific end. They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides. | |
| William Barr | The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of ‘Resistance’ against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law. This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have always had in contesting the political issues of the day. It was adverted to by the old, curmudgeonly Federalist, Fisher Ames, in an essay during the early years of the Republic. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | Actually, it is not strange that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the human race was regarded as inert matter, ready to receive everything -- form, face, energy, movement, life -- from a great prince or a great legislator or a great genius. These centuries were nourished on the study of antiquity. And antiquity presents everywhere -- in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome -- the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their whims, thanks to the prestige of force and of fraud. But this does not prove that this situation is desirable. It proves only that since men and society are capable of improvement, it is naturally to be expected that error, ignorance, despotism, slavery, and superstition should be greatest towards the origins of history. The writers quoted above were not in error when they found ancient institutions to be such, but they were in error when they offered them for the admiration and imitation of future generations. Uncritical and childish conformists, they took for granted the grandeur, dignity, morality, and happiness of the artificial societies of the ancient world. They did not understand that knowledge appears and grows with the passage of time; and that in proportion to this growth of knowledge, might takes the side of right, and society regains possession of itself. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism -- including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice? | |
| O. A. Battista | One of the hardest things to teach a child is that the truth is more important than the consequences. | |
| Ezra Taft Benson | You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible! | |
| George Berkeley | He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave. | |
| Isaiah Berlin | Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time. | |
| Albert J. Beveridge | If liberty is worth keeping and free representative government worth saving, we must stand for all American fundamentals—not some, but all. All are woven into the great fabric of our national well-being. We cannot hold fast to some only, and abandon others that, for the moment, we find inconvenient. If one American fundamental is prostrated, others in the end will surely fall. | |
| Albert J. Beveridge | America would be better off as a country and Americans happier and more prosperous as a people if half of our government boards, bureaus, and commissions were Abolished, hundreds of thousands of our government officials, agents and employees were discharged, and two-thirds of our government regulations, restrictions, inhibitions were removed. | |
| Ambrose Bierce | In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity. | |
| Justice Hugo L. Black | The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges’ views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation. | |
| Léon Blum | Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice. | |
| Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux | Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return. | |
| William E. Borah | Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense -- the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen. | |
| Justice Louis D. Brandeis | At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. | |
| Justice Louis D. Brandeis | To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means – to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retribution. | |
| Justice William J. Brennan | The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to “create” rights. Rather they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting. | |
| David Brin | It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. | |
| Justice Janice Brown | The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable [...]
There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court. | |
| Buddha | Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds. | |
| Buddha | A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker. | |
| Edmund Burke | He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. | |
| Edmund Burke | Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. | |
| Edmund Burke | Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation. | |
| Edmund Burke | There never was a bad man that had ability for good service. | |
| Edmund Burke | It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. | |
| Samuel Butler | He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still. | |
| John C. Calhoun | To maintain the ascendancy of the Constitution over the lawmaking majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the [American] system must depend; unless that ascendancy can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the Executive, by influence of its patronage, will supersede the laws ... | |
| John C. Calhoun | Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government;
a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States,
or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail. | |
| William J. Campbell | Today the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury. | |
| Albert Camus | Integrity has no need of rules. | |
| Albert Camus | I'll tell you a big secret, my friend: Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day. | |
| Albert Camus | How many crimes are permitted simply because their authors could not endure being wrong. | |
| G. R. Capp | You cannot become a truly effective advocate unless you know all sides of your subject thoroughly, opposing arguments as well as your own. | |
| Andrew Carnegie | All honor's wounds are self-inflicted. | |
| Pablo Casals | Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted. I don't accept it. | |
| Helena Cassadine | Ah yes, truth. Funny how everyone is always asking for it
but when they get it they don't believe it because
it's not the truth they want to hear. | |
| Domingo Cavallo | Each peso [or dollar] is a contract between the government and the peso holder. That contract guarantees that each peso -- as a unit of value that the holder has worked hard to get -- will be worth as much tomorrow as today. If the government breaks the contract, it's breaking the law. The only role of government in the economy should be to guarantee the integrity of market transactions. | |
| Dick Cavett | As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it. | |
| Otis Chandler | Once we start to worry too often and too deeply about what certain individuals and what certain groups think about us, then we might start selling our souls for the sake of expediency. | |
| Edwin Hubbel Chapin | No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions. | |
| Alexander Chase | The peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened by convictions. | |
| Chilon of Sparta | Prefer a loss to a dishonest gain; for the one is painful but once, but the other for one's whole life. | |
| Chinese Proverb | If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow. | |
| Chinese Proverb | Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one. | |
| Joseph H. Choate | The Act of Congress which we are impugning before you is communistic in its purposes and tendencies, and is defended here upon principles as communistic, socialistic - what shall I call them - populistic as ever have been
addressed to any political assembly in the world. | |
| Frank Chodorov | If for no other reason, personal pride should prompt every governor and state legislator to take a secessionist attitude; they were not elected to be lackeys of the federal bureaucracy. | |
| Henry Clay | Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character. | |
| Henry Clay | I would rather be right than President. | |
| Grover Cleveland | When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government. | |
| Bill Clinton | We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans... | |
| Frank Moore Colby | I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top. | |
| Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor. | |
| Samuel Taylor Coleridge | If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. | |
| Confucius | The superior man cannot be known in little matters, but he may be entrusted with great concerns. The small man may not be entrusted with great concerns, but he may be known in little matters. | |
| Confucius | To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice. | |
| Confucius | If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything. | |
| Joseph Conrad | You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. | |
| Benjamin Constant | No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being... | |
| Samuel Cooke | Fidelity to the public requires that the laws be as plain and explicit as possible, that the less knowing may understand, and not be ensnared by them, while the artful evade their force. | |
| Marvin Cooley | We must pity the poor wretched, timid soul who is too faint-hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the song of the dammed: “I can’t fight back; I have too much to lose; I own too much property; I have worked too hard to get what I have; They will put me out of business if I resist; I might go to jail; I have my family to think about.” Such poor miserable creatures have misplaced values and are hiding their cowardice behind pretended family responsibility -- blindly refusing to see that the most glorious legacy that one can bequeath to posterity is liberty; and that the only true security is liberty. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. | |
| James Fenimore Cooper | It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil. It behooves the well-intentioned, therefore, vigorously to watch the tendency of even their most highly-prized institutions, since that which was established in the interests of the right, may so easily become the agent of the wrong. | |
| Georges Courteline | If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits oneself, life would be unbearable. | |
| Steven R. Covey | The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. | |
| Noël Coward | It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. | |
| Noel Coward | It is discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. | |
| Davy Crockett | I leave this rule for others when I'm dead, Be always sure you're right -- then go ahead. | |
| Davy Crockett | I want people to be able to get what they need to live: enough food, a place to live, and an education for their children. Government does not provide these as well as private charities and businesses. | |
| Benjamin Curtis | A greater principle is at stake than the fate of any particular president | |
| Benjamin Curtis | My first position is that when Congress speaks of treason, bribery, and other crimes and misdemeanors, it refers to and includes only high criminal offenses against the United States made so by some law of the United States existing when the acts complained of were done. And I say that this is plainly to be inferred from each and every one of the provisions of the constitution on the subject of impeachment. | |
| Richard Henry Dana, Jr. | Our experience has shown us that in the excitement of great popular elections, deciding the policy of the country, and its vast patronage, frauds will be committed, if a chance is given for them. If these frauds are allowed, the result is not only that the popular will may be defeated, and the result falsified, but that the worst side will prevail. The side which has the greater number of dishonest men will poll the most votes. The war cry, "Vote early and vote often!" and the familiar problem, "how to cast the greatest number of votes with the smallest number of voters", indicate the direction in which the dangers lie. | |
| Alma Daniel | It is up to you to decide whether or not you’re ready to be free, really free.
This pertains to your relationship as well as your activities in the world.
You are limitless, if you choose that! Your freedom comes from letting go.
Freedom means empowerment to be, do, go, feel, whatever your heart tells you.
Only you have kept yourself from having this freedom out of some
misunderstanding of what your responsibilities really are.
Your responsibilities are to your Self. Serve that truly, fully, and you serve All. | |
| Clarence S. Darrow | The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along. | |
| François Duc de La Rochefoucauld | Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence. | |
| François Duc de La Rochefoucauld | Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them. | |
| Salvador De Madariaga | He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power. | |
| Michel de Montaigne | A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself. | |
| Michel de Montaigne | I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can. | |
| Michel de Montaigne | Not being able to govern events, I govern myself. | |
| Michel de Montaigne | There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thought under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life. | |
| Michel de Montaigne | I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly. | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | Where are we then? The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate subjection, and the meanest and most servile minds preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principles are the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where nothing is linked together, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a taste for law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true? | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle. | |
| Eugene Debs | Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. | |
| Declaration of Independence | But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. | |
| Anthony J. Dennis | Standing armies consist of professional soldiers who owe their livelihood and income to the government. Unlike civilians who render periodic service in local militia, professional soldiers do not own property and therefore do not have any source of income other than the government’s military paymaster. Thus, they are more likely to serve the government’s interests, regardless of whether its leaders are dishonest and corrupt or not. In fact, standing armies may even promote rapacious foreign or domestic policies if such policies enrich the army. In contrast, arms bearing, property owning citizen militiamen have a stake in the health of the republic as a whole and can be trusted to act in the republic’s best interests, whether those interests call for action in support of or against the political leadership of the nation. | |
| John Dewey | The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity. | |
| Comtesse Diane | Conscience warns us before it reproaches us. | |
| Dick Cavett | It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear. | |
| Benjamin Disraeli | Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed. | |
| Rabbi Wayne Dosick | The reality is, if we tell the truth, we only have to tell the truth once. If you lie, you have to keep lying forever. | |
| Fyodor Dostoyevsky | A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself. | |
| William O. Douglas | The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think. | |
| William O. Douglas | A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left. | |
| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! -- and that! -- and that! -- and that! | |
| John Dryden | Ill habits gather by unseen degrees -- As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. | |
| Will Durant | To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. | |
| Will Durant | Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy. | |
| Eleanora Duse | I did not use paint, I made myself up morally. | |
| Albert Einstein | The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this. | |
| Albert Einstein | By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. | |
| Albert Einstein | Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. | |
| Albert Einstein | I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. | |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. | |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without. | |
| W. Vaughn Ellsworth | Pity the poor, wretched, timid soul, too faint hearted to resist his oppressors.
He sings the songs of the damned, 'I cannot resist, I have too much to lose,
they might take my property or confiscate my earnings,
what would my family do, how would they survive?'
He hides behind pretended family responsibility, failing to see that
the most glorious legacy that we can bequeath to our posterity is liberty! | |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson | Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. | |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson | Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. | |
| Thomas I. Emerson | It is frequently said that speech that is intentionally provocative and therefore invites physical retaliation can be punished or suppressed. Yet, plainly no such general proposition can be sustained. Quite the contrary…. The provocative nature of the communication does not make it any the less expression. Indeed, the whole theory of free expression contemplates that expression will in many circumstances be provocative and arouse hostility. The audience, just as the speaker, has an obligation to maintain physical restraint. | |
| Bergan Evans | The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts. | |
| Frederick W. Faber | There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character. | |
| William Faulkner | Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. | |
| Justice Stephen J. Field | Here I close my opinion. I could not say less in view of
questions of such gravity that go down to the very foundations of the government. If the
provisions of the Constitution can be set aside by an Act of Congress, where is the course
of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but
the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will
become a war of the poor against the rich; a war growing in intensity and bitterness. | |
| Martin H. Fischer | A man may be born a jackass; but it is his business if he makes himself a double one. | |
| Martin H. Fischer | A machine has value only as it produces more than it consumes — so check your value to the community. | |
| Andrew Fletcher | And I cannot see, why arms should be denied to any man who is not a slave, since they are the only true badges of liberty. | |
| Abraham Flexner | We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent. | |
| B. C. Forbes | The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure. | |
| Jerome D. Frank | Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. | |
| Arthur Freed | Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough. | |
| French Proverb | There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience. | |
| Dr. Thomas Fuller | He does not believe, that does not live according to his belief. | |
| Thomas Fuller | 'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it. | |
| Rick Gaber | A moderate is either someone who has no moral code of his own, or if he does, then he's someone who doesn't have the guts to take sides between good and evil. | |
| Rick Gaber | If I said, "The live-and-let-live people I've met are generally warm and generous, although often reserved and respectful, while the control freaks I've met are generally cynical, mean and aggressively obnoxious," would that seem likely to be true? Of course it does. It IS true, and it's obviously logically consistent and what you'd expect. BUT, if I said, "I've found the intellectual defenders of private property and laissez-faire capitalism whom I've met to be generally warm and generous, while the so-called "liberal" defenders of the welfare state I've found to be often cynical, mean and tight-fisted in their personal lives," would THAT seem likely to be true? Think about it. Well, it's also true ... it's a matter of semantics, or word choice. BECAUSE BOTH SENTENCES SAY EXACTLY THE SAME THING. | |
| Don Galer | Integrity is what we do, what we say, and what we say we do. | |
| Indira Gandhi | My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. ... Freedom and slavery are mental states. Therefore, the first thing to say to yourself: 'I shall no longer accept the role of a slave. I shall not obey orders as such but shall disobey them when they are in conflict with my conscience'. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. | |
| James A. Garfield | I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error. | |
| William Lloyd Garrison | Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion? | |
| William Lloyd Garrison | Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage. | |
| Henry George | He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it,
without asking who is for it or who is against it. | |
| Henry George | He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it. | |
| German Proverb | One does evil enough when one does nothing good. | |
| Khalil Gibran | The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention. | |
| Khalil Gibran | Some who are too scrupulous to steal your possessions nevertheless see no wrong in tampering with your thoughts. | |
| Andre Gide | It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. | |
| John Gilmore | Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death. | |
| Samuel P. Ginder | If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral. | |
| William E. Gladstone | National injustice is the surest road to national downfall. | |
| Ellen Glasgow | All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. | |
| Arnold H. Glasow | Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to. | |
| Jo Godwin | A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone. | |
| Emma Goldman | There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another… All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. | |
| Barry Goldwater | How did it happen? How did our national government grow from a servant with sharply limited powers into a master with virtually unlimited power? In part, we were swindled. There are occasions when we have elevated men and political parties to power that promised to restore limited government and then proceeded, after their election, to expand the activities of government. But let us be honest with ourselves. Broken promises are not the major causes of our trouble. Kept promises are. All too often we have put men in office who have suggested spending a little more on this, a little more on that, who have proposed a new welfare program, who have thought of another variety of 'security.' We have taken the bait, preferring to put off to another day the recapture of freedom and the restoration of our constitutional system. We have gone the way of many a democratic society that has lost its freedom by persuading itself that if 'the people' rule, all is well. | |
| Judge Joyce Hens Green | Although this nation unquestionably must take strong action under the leadership of the commander in chief to protect itself against enormous and unprecedented threats, that necessity cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over two hundred years... In sum, there can be no question that the Fifth Amendment right asserted by the Guantanamo detainees in this litigation -- the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law -- is one of the most fundamental rights recognized by the U.S. Constitution. | |
| Paul Greenberg | For the average American family, filling out a tax form has become like attacking a puzzle to which, often enough, there is no right answer. But we're all supposed to swear, on penalty of perjury, that we've done our best to find it. | |
| Alan Greenspan | Regulation -- which is based on force and fear -- undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. A fly-by-night securities operator can quickly meet all the S.E.C. requirements, gain the inference of respectability, and proceed to fleece the public. In an unregulated economy, the operator would have had to spend a number of years in reputable dealings before he could earn a position of trust sufficient to induce a number of investors to place funds with him. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory. | |
| Alan Greenspan | Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. | |
| Alan Greenspan | In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard. | |
| Alexander Haig | That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | Responsibility, in order to be reasonable, must be limited to objects within the power of the responsible party, and in order to be effectual, must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is in fact, and must be, regarded by the judges as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought of course to be preferred; or in other words, the constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government
with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that
every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity,
impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in
the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the land and naval forces, as first general and admiral ... while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies -- all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature. | |
| Judge Learned Hand | I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no courts to save it. | |
| Thomas Hardy | Persons with weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits. | |
| Vaclav Havel | Lying can never save us from another lie. | |
| Nathaniel Hawthorne | No man, for any considerable period,
can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude,
without finally getting bewildered as to which one is true. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | There can be no doubt that besides the regular types of the circulating medium, such as coin, notes and bank deposits, which are generally recognised to be money or currency, and the quantity of which is regulated by some central authority or can at least be imagined to be so regulated, there exist still other forms of media of exchange which occasionally or permanently do the service of money. Now while for certain practical purposes we are accustomed to distinguish these forms of media of exchange from money proper as being mere substitutes for money, it is clear that, other things equal, any increase or decrease of these money substitutes will have exactly the same effects as an increase or decrease of the quantity of money proper, and should therefore, for the purposes of theoretical analysis, be counted as money. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for? | |
| Justice Heath | Fraud may consist as well in the suppression of what is true as in the representation of what is false. If a man professing to answer a question, select those facts only which are likely to give a credit to the person of whom he speaks, and keep back the rest, he is a more artful knave than he who tells a direct falsehood. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | The great trouble with religion – any religion – is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason – but one cannot have both. | |
| Robert A. Heinlein | Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not a sin - just stupid.) | |
| Matthew Henry | I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed. | |
| Patrick Henry | ...Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger. | |
| Patrick Henry | Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters should be a nation of freemen. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. | |
| Heraclitus | Man's character is his fate. | |
| A. A. Hodge | It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it. | |
| Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. | A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles. | |
| Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. | The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. | |
| George Jacob Holyoake | There can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth. | |
| Elbert Hubbard | Men are not punished for their sins, but by them. | |
| Elbert Hubbard | The man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan. The man of genuine worth and insight wants to be himself; and he wants others to be themselves, also. | |
| Charles Evans Hughes | A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company. | |
| Victor Hugo | Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murders. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls. | |
| Thomas Henry Huxley | Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing. | |
| Hypatia of Alexandria | Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. | |
| Michael Iapoce | Reputation is character minus what you've been caught doing. | |
| Robert G. Ingersoll | They say the religion of your fathers is good enough. Why should a father object to your inventing a better plow than he had? They say to me, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man. | |
| Andrew Jackson | There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. | |
| Andrew Jackson | The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger. | |
| Japanese Proverb | The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | We are all doubtless bound to contribute a certain portion of our income to the support of charitable and other useful public institutions. But it is a part of our duty also to apply our contributions in the most effectual way we can to secure this object. The question then is whether this will not be better done by each of us appropriating our whole contribution to the institutions within our reach, under our own eye, and over which we can exercise some useful control? Or would it be better that each should divide the sum he can spare among all the institutions of his State or the United States? Reason and the interest of these institutions themselves, certainly decide in favor of the former practice. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blind-folded fear...
Do not be frightened from this inquiry
from any fear of its consequences.
If it ends in the belief that there is no God,
you will find incitements to virtue
in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise... | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | It is a great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all it's good dispositions. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | [F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. | |
| Kimberly Johnson | Never ruin an apology with an excuse. | |
| Dr. Samuel Johnson | It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. | |
| Dr. Samuel Johnson | Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. | |
| Dr. Samuel Johnson | Knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. | |
| Dr. Samuel Johnson | Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels but they live like men. | |
| Dr. Samuel Johnson | There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself. | |
| Chief Joseph | It does not require many words to speak the truth. | |
| Juvenal | Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having. | |
| Garrison Keillor | You taught me to be nice, so nice that now I am so full of niceness, I have no sense of right and wrong, no outrage, no passion. | |
| Walt Kelly | We have met the enemy and he is us. | |
| L. Lionel Kendrick | Integrity is the core of our character. | |
| John F. Kennedy | Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. | |
| John F. Kennedy | A man does what he must -- in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers -- and this is the basis of all human morality. | |
| Robert F. Kennedy | The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use -- of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public. | |
| Alan Keyes | Character is the accumulated confidence that individual men and women acquire from years of doing the right thing, over and over again, even when they don't feel like it. People with character understand that their lives are filled with events and choices that are significant, above all, not because of the short term success or failure of the search for money or position, but because the choices we make are actually making us into one kind of person, or another. Our life of choices is a life-long labor to make ourselves into a person who has begun to respond adequately to the awesome gift we received from God when He made us in His image. | |
| Nikita Khrushschev | Your children’s children will live under communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have Communism. We won’t have to fight you; We’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?\\
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?\\
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?\\
But conscience asks the question, is it right?\\
And there comes a time when one must take a position\\
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular,\\
but one must take it because it is right. | |
| Charles Kingsley | There are two freedoms--the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought. | |
| Alfred Korzyybski | God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't. | |
| Judge Alex Kozinski | The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. | |
| Karen Kwiatkowski | Farce, gross incompetence, and tragedy is the hallmark of big centralized government, wherever it develops. Big centralized government has developed in the United States year after year since the 1930s, and it has both solidified and metastasized since 9-11. Today, we live at the will and by the grace of a dystopian and grasping government. There is not an exceptional amount of time left before this government collapses, but before it does, we the people will suffer far more than we have suffered to date. Banking collapses, mortgage fraud at the highest levels, government bailouts, currency printing, and inflation in food and energy are just a foretaste of the future, led by the same Washington public-private cartel we have suffered for decades. . . .<br><br>
I believe our government -- outdated, unrestrained by the Constitution and soon to default on every debt it has taken on in our name -- cannot long endure. But unlike those who run and benefit from our modern American nationalism, corporatism and socialism, I do not fear average Americans seeking self-government, rule of law and liberty.<br><br>
That's why on Sept. 11, I will not be celebrating America's undeclared wars on countries that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks 10 years ago. I will not be attending remembrances of victims of that day, because those remembrances refuse to count American liberty, rule of law and freedom of trade and movement uppermost on that list of the sacrificed. I will not attend any program offered by a religious or political organization that seeks to ride a federal government bandwagon to confirm some imperative of war against Islam halfway around the world, or that seeks to promote the false concept of a culture war as somehow God's intent for America.<br><br>
On this 10-year anniversary, I intend to go about my business as usual, and say a prayer of gratitude for the small freedoms I have left. In the afternoon, I'll be in Charlottesville, Va., learning about local apprenticeship and crafts demonstrations. In the evening, I'll check the livestock and gather the eggs. I won't allow what I personally experienced that day in the Pentagon, nor the subsequent government drumbeats for war, waving the Sept. 11 banner, to diminish my awareness of the meaning of liberty.<br><br>
The real battle for Americans today is a battle to reassert our independence from an overbearing and unsustainable state. Today, we can all celebrate that there are fundamental cracks in the federal state's veneer, and we can be grateful for the options we still have in our own lives to live free, to practice charity and faith, creativity and productivity and to rediscover our own power as individuals and communities. | |
| Ann Landers | Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. | |
| Frances Moore Lappé | [O]ur greatest contributions to the cause of freedom and development overseas is not what we do over there, but what we do right here at home. | |
| Doug Larson | A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience. | |
| Harold J. Laski | Every State is known by the rights it maintains. | |
| Harper Lee | Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. | |
| Richard Henry Lee | It is true, the yeomanry of the country possess the lands, the weight of property, possess arms, and are too strong a body of men to be openly offended—and, therefore, it is urged, they will take care of themselves, that men who shall govern will not dare pay any disrespect to their opinions. It is easily perceived, that if they have not their proper negative upon passing laws in congress, or on the passage of laws relative to taxes and armies, they may in twenty or thirty years be by means imperceptible to them, totally deprived of that boasted weight and strength: This may be done in great measure by congress. | |
| Robert E. Lee | ...[T]here is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's face and another behind his back. | |
| Robert E. Lee | You must study to be frank with the world: frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted that you mean to do right. | |
| Max Lerner | When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil. | |
| Max Lerner | The Seven Deadly Sins of the Press:\\
\\
- Concentrated Power of the Big Press. \\
- Passing of competition and the coming of monopoly. \\
- Governmental control of the press. \\
- Timidity, especially in the face of group and corporate pressures. \\
- Big Business mentality. \\
- Clannishness among the newspaper publishers that has prevented them from criticizing each other. \\
- Social blindness. | |
| Roger Levian | The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems. | |
| C. S. Lewis | Not to be, but to seem, virtuous -- it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery. | |
| C. S. Lewis | Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses. | |
| C. S. Lewis | A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself. | |
| C. S. Lewis | I do not like the pretensions of Government -- the grounds on which it demands my obedience -- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique. I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously.
On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They 'cash in'. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants' 'science'-- they didn't think much of Hitler's racial theories or Stalin's biology. But they can be muzzled. | |
| Georg Christoph Lichtenberg | One's first step in wisdom is to question everything -- and one's last is to come to terms with everything. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Nearly all men can withstand adversity; if you want to test a man's character, give him power. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | You can fool all the people some of the time,
and some of the people all the time,
but you cannot fool all the people all of the time. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | The people are the masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who
would pervert it! | |
| Abraham Lincoln | It is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong - throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time... | |
| Anne Morrow Lindbergh | The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. | |
| Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. | A radical is one who speaks the truth. | |
| John Locke | [W]henever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty. | |
| John Locke | Virtue is harder to be got than a knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. | |
| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong. | |
| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. | |
| Barry Lopez | How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. | |
| John Lubbock | If we are ever in doubt about what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done. | |
| Martin Luther | I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self. | |
| Thomas Babington Macaulay | The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. | |
| Charles Mackay | Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. | |
| James Madison | Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own. | |
| James Madison | Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can
only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. | |
| James Madison | If it be asked what is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part of the Constitution, and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer, the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them; as if the general power had been reduced to particulars, and any one of these were to be violated; the same, in short, as if the State legislatures should violate their respective constitutional authorities. In the first instance, the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers. | |
| James Madison | There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence. | |
| James Madison | No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. | |
| James Madison | [T]he delegation of the government, in [a republic], to a small number of citizens elected by the rest . . . [is] to refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. | |
| James Madison | In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. | |
| Maimonides | Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it. | |
| Orison Swett Marden | To many a man, and sometimes to a youth,
there comes the opportunity to choose
between honorable competence and tainted wealth.
The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable,
holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success. | |
| Christopher Marlowe | Goodness is beauty in the best estate. | |
| W. Somerset Maugham | You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency. | |
| W. Somerset Maugham | It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. | |
| Donald S. McAlvaney | In every declining civilization there is a small "remnant" of people who adhere to the right against the wrong; who recognize the difference between good and evil and who will take an active stand for the former and against the latter; who can still think and discern and who will courageously take a stand against the political, social, moral, and spiritual rot or decay of their day. | |
| Bob McEwen | In the 1950’s [America was] the richest nation, the richest city on earth was Detroit. They voted for change and so now it is the poorest city in America. At the same time, the nation of South Korea, of all the nations on earth, was third from the bottom. Virtually the poorest nation on earth. It is now tenth from the top. If you understand the principle, the greater freedom, the greater the wealth, you can then put any nation [on this chart]. Now you can go to Tagusagopos, you can go to Buenos Aires, you can go to Cairo, you can go to Philadelphia and all you need to know is what percentage of the Gross Domestic Product is controlled by government, and the greater the government, the greater the poverty, and that’s all politics is about. Every day politicians say, “I can make a better decision for you than you can for yourself, and let me take your money away from you and make it on your behalf” and thus make the nation poorer. | |
| Mignon McLaughlin | It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time. | |
| Mencius | The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute -- he simply speaks and does what is right. | |
| H. L. Mencken | The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country
more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a
good citizen driven to despair. | |
| H. L. Mencken | Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure. | |
| H. L. Mencken | Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking. | |
| James D. Miles | You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. | |
| John Stuart Mill | If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that person that he, if he had the power, would be in silencing mankind… If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. | |
| John Stuart Mill | The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. | |
| John Milton | None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants. | |
| John Milton | When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained that wise men look for. | |
| Molière | If everyone were clothed with integrity,
if every heart were just, frank, kindly,
the other virtues would be well-nigh useless,
since their chief purpose is
to make us bear with patience
the injustice of our fellows. | |
| Molière | If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows. | |
| Thomas S. Monson | Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect. | |
| Mary Wortley Montagu | I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations. | |
| Charles Edward Montague | A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie. | |
| Dwight Lyman Moody | I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met. | |
| Houston v. Moore | Sitting here, we are not at liberty to add one jot of power to the national government beyond what the people have granted by the constitution; and, on the other hand, we are bound to support that constitution as it stands, and to give a fair and rational scope to all the powers which it clearly contains. | |
| John Viscount Morley | The means prepare the end, and the end is what the means have made of it. | |
| John Viscount Morley | No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character. | |
| Gouverneur Morris | Corruption and some other offenses ought to be impeachable, but the cases ought to be enumerated and defined. | |
| Bill Moyers | If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press... They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds. | |
| Daniel Patrick Moynihan | The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare. | |
| Mugler v. Kansas | The courts are not bound by mere forms, nor are they to be misled by mere pretences. They are at liberty — indeed, are under a solemn duty — to look at the substance of things, whenever they enter upon the inquiry whether the legislature has transcended the limits of its authority. If therefore, a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is a palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of the courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution. | |
| Bert Murray | Conscience is that still, small voice that is sometimes too loud for comfort. | |
| Ogden Nash | There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,\\
And that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all. | |
| Suzanne Necker | Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them. | |
| Chester W. Nimitz | God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless. | |
| Lyn Nofziger | These things I believe: That government should butt out. \\
That government should butt out.\\
That freedom is our most precious commodity and\\
if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away.\\
That individual freedom demands individual responsibility.\\
That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.\\
That the executive branch has grown too strong,
the judicial branch too arrogant
and the legislative branch too stupid.\\
That political parties have become close to meaningless.\\
That government should work to insure the rights of the individual,
not plot to take them away.\\
That government should provide for the national defense\\
and work to insure domestic tranquillity.\\
That foreign trade should be fair rather than free.\\
That America should be wary of foreign entanglements.\\
That the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time\\
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.\\
That guns do more than protect us from criminals;\\
more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government.\\
That states are the bulwark of our freedom.\\
That states should have the right to secede from the Union.\\
That once a year we should hang someone in government\\
as an example to his fellows."\\ | |
| Norris v. Baltimore | Where the meaning of the Constitution is clear and unambiguous, there can be no resort to construction to attribute to the founders a purpose or intent not manifest in its letter. | |
| Oath Keepers | Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey.
Recognizing that we each swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and affirming that we are guardians of the Republic, of the principles in our Declaration of Independence, and of the rights of our people, we affirm and declare the following:\\\\
1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.\\
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people.\\
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" or to subject them to military tribunal.\\
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.\\
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.\\
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.\\
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.\\
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to "keep the peace" or to "maintain control."\\
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.\\
10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances. | |
| George Orwell | Every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered...History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. | |
| George Orwell | The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it. | |
| Thomas Paine | The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them... | |
| Thomas Paine | It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. | |
| Thomas Paine | He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression;
for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. | |
| Blaise Pascal | The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts. | |
| William Paterson | What is a Constitution? It is the form of government, delineated by the mighty hand of the people, in which certain first principles of fundamental law are established. The Constitution is certain and fixed; it contains the permanent will of the people, and is the supreme law of the land; it is paramount to the power of the Legislature, and can be revoked or altered only by the authority that made it. | |
| Alan Paton | You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right. | |
| Norman Vincent Peale | The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. | |
| Charles Peguy | He who does not bellow out the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers. | |
| William Penn | A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it. | |
| Roger Pilon | Over the 20th century, the federal government has assumed a vast and unprecedented set of powers. Not only has the exercise of those powers upset the balance between federal and state governments; run roughshod over individuals, families, and firms; and reduced economic opportunity for all; but most of what the federal government does today -- to put the point as plainly and candidly as possible -- is illegitimate because done without explicit constitutional authority. The time has come to start returning power to the states and the people, to relimit federal power in our fundamental law, to restore constitutional government. | |
| Roger Pilon | Under our Constitution, the federal government has delegated, enumerated and thus limited powers. Power is delegated by the founding generation or through subsequent amendment (that makes it legitimate); enumerated in the constitution (that makes it legal); and limited by that enumeration. As the 10th Amendment says, if a power hasn’t been delegated, the federal government doesn’t have it. For 150 years, that design held for the most part. When faced with a welfare bill in 1794, for example, James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, rose in the House to say that he could find no constitutional authority for the bill. A century later, when Congress passed a similar measure, President Cleveland vetoed it as beyond Congress’ authority. That all changed during the New Deal as both congress and the president sought to expand federal power. When the Supreme court objected, rather than amend the Constitution, Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court with six additional members. The scheme failed, but the threat worked. Thereafter, the court started reading the Constitution’s General Welfare and Commerce Clauses so broadly that the doctrine of enumerated powers was essentially destroyed—and with it limited government. | |
| Plutarch | What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. | |
| Polybius | [There can be no] rational administration of government when good men are held in the same esteem as bad ones. | |
| Proverb | An honest answer is the sign of true friendship. | |
| Snell Putney | There is no inherent misdirection in holding unorthodox views. Indeed, the autonomous individual, free from compulsive conformance and unquestioned assumptions, is likely to be unorthodox... They stimulate the climate of controversy without which political democracy becomes an empty formalism. | |
| Sir Walter Raleigh | A man must first govern himself ere he is fit to govern a family; and his family ere he be fit to bear the government of the commonwealth. | |
| Ayn Rand | In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. | |
| Ayn Rand | There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction. | |
| Ayn Rand | My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. | |
| Jon Rappoport | Think about the agendas behind universal vaccination, climate change, universal psychiatric treatment, GMO food, and other 'science-based' frauds. They all imply a false collectivist model, in which individuals give up their power in exchange for 'doing good' and becoming members of the largest group in the world: 'disabled' people with needs that must be addressed and satisfied. Instead of supporting the liberation of the individual, the controllers want to squash it. Why? Because they fear individual power. It is forever the unpredictable wild card. They want a society in which every thought an individual thinks connects him to a greater whole---and if that sounds attractive, understand that this Whole is a fiction, intentionally faked to resemble a genuine oceanic feeling. | |
| Ronald Reagan | There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit. | |
| Ernest Renan | To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes. | |
| Mary Renault | In all men is evil sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men. | |
| Samuel Richardson | For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse. | |
| Riley v. Carter | Economic necessity cannot justify a disregard of cardinal constitutional guarantee. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | 'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs. | |
| Theodore Roosevelt | It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. | |
| John Ruskin | To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education. | |
| Willy Russell | I pray that no child of mine would ever descend into such a place as a library. They are indeed most dangerous places and unfortunate is she or he who is lured into such a hellhole of enjoyment, stimulus, facts, passion and fun. | |
| William Safire | The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right. | |
| William Saroyan | Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. | |
| Justice Antonin Scalia | The Declaration of Independence, however, is not a legal prescription conferring powers upon the courts; and the Constitution's refusal to "deny or disparage" other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them, and even farther removed from authorizing judges to identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges' list against laws duly enacted by the people. | |
| Eric Schaub | Life is but a blink,
and it matters. | |
| Eric Schaub | Speak honestly, and the truth will make itself known. | |
| Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. | Righteousness is easy in retrospect. | |
| Dr. Laura Schlessinger | Integrity is its own reward. | |
| Bruce Schneier | It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state. | |
| J. Neil Schulman | Gun control advocates need to realize that passing laws that honest gun owners will not obey is a self-defeating strategy. Gun
owners are not about to surrender their rights, and only the most foolish of politicians would risk the stability of the government by trying to use the
force of the state to disarm the people. | |
| Carl Schurz | If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other. | |
| Carl Schurz | From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own. | |
| General H. Norman Schwarzkopf | Character is the single most important ingredient of leadership. Proper leadership would have prevented the wars in Kosovo and Somalia. | |
| General H. Norman Schwarzkopf | Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. | |
| C. P. Scott | The newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation, must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free but facts are sacred. | |
| Sir Walter Scott | O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! | |
| Sir Walter Scott | O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | Freedom can't be kept for nothing. If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | Unrighteous fortune seldom spares the highest worth; no one with safety can long front so frequent perils. Whom calamity oft passes by she finds at last. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | It is quality rather than quantity that matters. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | If one doesn't know his mistakes, he won't want to correct them. | |
| 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 | 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! | |
| Hans F. Sennholz | 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. | |
| Eric Sevareid | The bigger the information media, the less courage and information they allow. Bigness means weakness. | |
| Ben Shahn | Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists. | |
| William Shakespeare | 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 | 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 | True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. | |
| William Shakespeare | True nobility is exempt from fear. | |
| Jack Sharp | 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. | |
| 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 | The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. | |
| Henry Wheeler Shaw | Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity. | |
| Roger Sherman | The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war. | |
| Leo Shestov | 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? | |
| Johann Sigurjonsson | If we were all to be judged by our thoughts, the hills would be swarming with outlaws. | |
| Isaac Bashevis Singer | We know what a person thinks, not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions. | |
| Lillian 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. | |
| Logan Pearsall Smith | Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior. | |
| Brenda Snipes | I think I have served the purpose that I came here for, which was to provide a credible election product for our members. | |
| 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. | |
| 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? | |
| Solon | 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 | A half truth is the worst of all lies, because it can be defended in partiality. | |
| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good. | |
| 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 | The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. | |
| 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 | 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. | |
| Thomas Sowell | Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric. | |
| 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 | 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. | |
| 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 | 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. | |
| 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. | |
| State v. Sutton | When any court violates the clean and unambiguous language of the constitution, a fraud is perpetrated and no one is bound to obey it. | |
| Sir 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. | |
| James Fitzjames Stephens | 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. | |
| Robert Louis Stevenson | The cruelest lies are often told in silence. | |
| Tom Stoppard | It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. | |
| 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. | |
| Jim Stovall | Integrity is doing the right thing, even if nobody is watching. | |
| 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. | |
| 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 | 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. | |
| Herbert B. Swope | The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it is accurate, it follows that it is fair. | |
| Publilius Syrus | Take care that no one hates you justly. | |
| 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. | |
| Henry Taylor | Conscience is, in most, an anticipation of the opinion of others. | |
| Edwin Way Teale | 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. | |
| Tecumseh | 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. | |
| The Prisoner | 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. | |
| Bodie Thoene | What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient. | |
| Dorothy Thompson | It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | Goodness is the only investment that never fails. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | Law never made men a whit more just. | |
| 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 | 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 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 | 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 | Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. | |
| Dr. John J. Tigert | 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Pierre Trudeau | 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. | |
| 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 | It's an old political trick: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." But this time it won't work. | |
| 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. | |
| Mark Twain | A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. | |
| 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 | It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. | |
| 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 | If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. | |
| Sir Alex Fraser Tytler | 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. | |
| Sun Tzu | 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. | |
| Unknown | The slow man with integrity will ultimately catch the swift one who has none. | |
| Unknown | Integrity is not a conditional word.
It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather.
It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there
and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will. | |
| John Updike | The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it. | |
| U.S. Supreme Court | Congress may not abdicate or transfer to others its legitimate functions. | |
| Armando Valladares | Just as there is a very short distance between the U.S. and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what to do, how to think, and how to live. And sometimes your freedom is not taken away at gunpoint, but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one small silencing at a time. Never allow the government – or anyone else – to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do. | |
| William Van Alstyne | The difference between [people who take civil liberties seriously] and others ... is that such serious people begin with a constitutional understanding that declines to trivialize the Second Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment, just as they likewise decline to trivialize any other right expressly identified elsewhere in the Bill of Rights. It is difficult to see why they are less than entirely right in this unremarkable view. That it has taken the NRA to speak for them, with respect to the Second Amendment, moreover, is merely interesting -- perhaps far more as a comment on others, however, than on the NRA. | |
| Mark Van Doren | An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure. | |
| Vermont Declaration of Rights | That frequent recurrence to fundamental principles, and a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty, and keep government free. The people ought, therefore, to pay particular attention to these points, in the choice of officers and representatives, and have a right to exact a due and constant regard to them, from their legislators and magistrates, in the making and executing such laws as are necessary for the good government of the State. | |
| Virgil | Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly. | |
| Voltaire | Let the laws be clear, uniform and precise; to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them. | |
| Voltaire | It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. | |
| Voltaire | The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death. | |
| Immanuel Hermann von Fichte | If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it. | |
| Chad Walsh | From the utopian viewpoint, the United States constitution is a singularly hard-bitten and cautious document, for it breathes the spirit of skepticism about human altruism and incorporates a complex system of checks, balances and restrictions, so that everybody is holding the reins on everybody else. | |
| George Washington | The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity. | |
| George Washington | There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. | |
| George Washington | I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man. | |
| J. C. Watts, Jr. | Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking. | |
| Daniel Webster | No power but Congress can declare war; but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war? ... [T]hese remarks originate purely in a desire to maintain the powers of government as they are established by the Constitution between the different departments, and hope that, whether we have conquests or no conquests, war or no war, peace or no peace, we shall yet preserve, in its integrity and strength, the Constitution of the United States. | |
| Daniel Webster | The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. | |
| Daniel Webster | I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy. | |
| Noah Webster | When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, 'just men who will rule in the fear of God.' The preservation of [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this Duty; if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded. If [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine Commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws. | |
| Josiah C. Wedgwood | Men must have the right of choice, even to choose wrong, if he shall ever learn to choose right. | |
| Oscar Wilde | I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops. | |
| Oscar Wilde | Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. | |
| Oscar Wilde | [T]hough of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something. | |
| Wendell L. Willkie | Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love. | |
| James Wilson | Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over
the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common
law. Indeed, it is repugnant to the principles of natural law,
that such a state should subsist in any social system.
The reasons which we sometimes see assigned for the origin
and the continuance of slavery appear, when examined to the bottom,
to be built upon a false foundation. In the enjoyment of their
persons and of their property, the common law protects all. | |
| James Wilson | Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind. | |
| Woodrow Wilson | There is such a thing as a nation being so right it does not need to convince others by force that it is right. | |
| Woodrow Wilson | Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles. | |
| Ludwig Wittgenstein | Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. | |
| Harriet Woods | You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims. | |
| Wright v. United States | To disregard such a deliberate choice of words and their natural meaning, would be a departure from the first principle of constitutional interpretation. "In expounding the Constitution of the United States," said Chief Justice Taney in Holmes v. Jennison, 14 U.S. 540, 570-1, "every word must have its due force and appropriate meaning; for it is evident from the whole instrument, that, no word was unnecessarily used, or needlessly added. The many discussions which have taken place upon the construction of the Constitution, have proved the correctness of this proposition; and shown the high talent, the caution and the foresight of the illustrious men who framed it. Every word appears to have been weighed with the utmost deliberation and its force and effect to have been fully understood. | |
| Dr. Ravi Zacharias | It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one's private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation's moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? .... The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil. | |
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