Great Political quotes

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, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, 1849

I think we are in rats' alley. Where the dead men lost their bones. -Eliot

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." ~H. L. Mencken

"So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious." Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

"A man who has in mind an apparent advantage and promptly proceeds to dissociate this from the question of what is right shows himself to be mistaken and immoral. Such a standpoint is the parent of assassinations, poisonings, forged wills, thefts, malversations of public money, and the ruinous exploitation of provincials and Roman citizens alike. Another result is passionate desire - desire for excessive wealth, for unendurable tyranny, and ultimately for the despotic seizure of free states . These desires are the most horrible and repulsive things imaginable. The perverted intelligences of men who are animated by such feelings are competent to understand the material rewards, but not the penalties. I do not mean penalties established by law, for these they often escape. I mean the most terrible of all punishments: their own degradation." Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) =

"Find out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." : Frederick Douglass, African-American slave, and later abolitionist.

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." : Samuel P. Huntington

"The government of the absolute majority is but the government of the strongest interests; and when not effectively checked, is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised. [To read the Constitution is to realize that] no free system was ever farther removed from the principle that the absolute majority, without check or limitation, ought to govern."- -- John C. Calhoun - (1782-1850) American statesman

"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights." -- Rev. Edmund A. Opitz (1914-2006) American minister, author

We no longer live in a society, we live in an economy, where right and wrong is determined not by fairness, but by profitability -- and where the law no longer dictates corporate behavior, but corporate behavior dictates the law: Kelly Overton, Executive Director of People Protecting Animals & Their Habitats

"Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves. When zealous agents of the Government arrest suspected "radicals" without warrant, hold them without prompt trial, deny them access to counsel and admission of bail.... we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity..." -- Robert M. Lafollette, Sr. (1855-1925) U.S. Senator - Source: The Progressive, March 1920

"Whenever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator state, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units." -- Carl Gustav Jung - (1875-1961) Source: The Undiscovered Self, 1957

"Why nationalize industry when you can nationalize the people?": -- Adolf Hitler - (1889-1945) Source: quoted in Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 74.

"It seems that 'we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory'; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had 'territorial aggrandizement' been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations." : Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America

"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." -- Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) Source: Ponkapog Papers, 1903

Brahmanism: This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.: Mahabharata 5:1517
Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.: Matthew 7:12
Islam: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother what which he desires for himself.
Sunnah Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.: Udana Varga 5:18
Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowmen. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.: Talmud, Shabbat 31:a
Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you.: Analects 15:23
Taoism: Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss.: T'ai Shag Kan Ying P'ien
Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good: for itself. : Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security." : Albert Einstein - (1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921

"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.": Sir Francis Bacon

Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason: Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty: -George Mason

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men: -Plato

Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots: -H.L. Mencken

As Theodore Sturgeon said, "90% of everything is crap." But when you sample a bit of everything, the worthwhile ten percent reveals itself. Observation, judgment, cross-checking. The truth is out there, but you will not find it when you tune out. ---Novista, ICH commentary 8/19/07

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." ~George Washington

"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool." : Stephen King

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country - if the people lose their confidence in themselves - and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. - Walt Whitman

"What is the great Amercican sin? Extravagance? Vice? Graft? No; it is a kind of half-humorous, good-natured indifference, a lack of "concentrated indignation" as my English friend calls it, which allows extravagance and vice to flourish. Trace most of our ills to their source, and it is found that they exist by virtue of an easy-going, fatalistic indifference which dislikes to have its comfort disturbed....The most shameless greed, the most sickening industrial atrocities, the most appalling public scandals are exposed, but a half-cynical and wholly indifferent public passes them by with hardly a shrug of the shoulders; and they are lost in the medley of events. This is the great American sin.": Joseph Fort Newman, Atlantic Monthly, October 1922

"We are here to help others, but what the others are here for I cannot say." - - W.H. Auden

"May your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you strike, fall like a thunderbolt." -- Sun Tzu

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. When the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain they will take down the scenery, pull back the curtains, move all the tables and chairs, and you will see a brick wall at the back of the theater." Frank Zappa

A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. "We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." : Woodrow Wilson - From his Campaign Speeches, 1912

"...people who dreamed of 100 percent profit in a week were not deterred by an interest rate of 20 percent a year. When the public becomes mad with greed and is rubbing the Aladdin's lamp of sudden fortune, no little matter of interest rates is effective." --President Herbert Hoover

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.": Joseph Goebbels 1897 -1945. Goebbels was Hitler's Minister of Propaganda

"The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves." ---V. I. Lenin

"A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader." -- Plato - (429-347 BC) Source: The Republic > "If you are to be a true seeker of the truth, you must > at least once in your lifetime, doubt as far as > possible...all things." --Descartes

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? --W.B.Yeats

In creating, the only hard thing is to begin --James Russell Lowell

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." - Edward R. Murrow

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." - Edward R. Murrow

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." - Edward R. Murrow "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air - that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave." -- H. L. Mencken, "Why Liberty ?" January 30, 1927

"A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it." -- John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, 1861

"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else." -- Tom Clancy on Kudlow and Cramer 9/2/03

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1953

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both." -- James Madison

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." -- John Stuart Mill

"In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When ... the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." -- Sir Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

'If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.' Paul Wellstone

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. (1790): John Philpot Curran

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men: Voltaire

Patriotism does not oblige us to acquiesce in the destruction of liberty. Patriotism obliges us to question it, at least: Wendy Kaminer

Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason: Erich Fromm

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom: Marilyn Ferguson

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. -- Samuel Adams

"[ America ] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom." -- John Quincy Adams - (1767-1848) 6th US President Source: Speech before the House of Representatives, July 4, 1821; quoted in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Editors), The Idea of America (Les Belles Lettres, 2003)

"War itself requires no special motive but appears to be engrafted on human nature; it passes even for something noble, to which the love of glory impels men quite apart from any selfish urges. Thus among the "American savages", just as much as among those of Europe during the age of chivalry, military valor is held to be of great worth in itself, not only during war (which is natural) but in order that there should be war. Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, "War is an evil inasmuch as it produces more wicked men than it takes away." So much for the measures nature takes to lead the human race, considered as a class of animals, to her own end." -- Immanuel Kant - (1724-1804) German philosopher Source: Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, 1795

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people!" -- Patrick Henry - (1736-1799) US Founding Father

"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." -- Clarence S. Darrow -1857-1938 Source: Address to the Court, The Communist Trial, People v. Lloyd, 1920

"The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it's invalid on its face." -- Justice Potter Stewart : (1915-1985), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: Walker v. Birmingham , 1967

"We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fear -- unruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce what Whitman called 'the insolence of elected persons' -- in a word, free men." -- Gerald W. Johnson - (1890-1980) American Freedom and the Press, 1958

"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." --Marshall McLuhan

"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual." -- Frank Herbert, author of Dune

"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good." -- Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi - (1869-1948)

" Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." -- Woodrow Wilson: (1856-1924) 28th US President Speech, 1912

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 when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. --H L Menken

"The lust for power in dominating others inflames the heart more than any other passion." -- Cornelius Tacitus - (55-117 A.D.) Source: The Histories

"We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was legal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was illegal." -Martin Luther King Jr.

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." -- Edward Abbey

"All wars are sacred ... to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars in reality are money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is 'Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!' Sometimes it's "Down with Popery!' and sometimes ' Liberty !' and sometimes 'Cotton, Slavery, and States' Rights!'" -- Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it" - Adolf Hitler

"Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true." - Eric Hoffer

"People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to" - Malcolm Muggeridge

"It is easier to believe a lie that one has heard a thousand times than to believe a fact that no one has heard before" Author unknown

"Lying is done with words and also with silence." - Adrienne Rich

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you" - Friedrich Nietzsche

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - John F. Kennedy

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." Edward Everett Hale

"You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual: Thomas Jefferson

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war. James Madison 1751-1836 American Statesman, Fourth President of the US

It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured. Tacitus

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. James Madison

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

"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." - Thomas Paine

" Liberty , when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." - George Washington

In the beginning, the patriot is a scarce man -- brave, hated, and scorned. But when his cause succeeds, the timid join him. For then, it costs nothing to be a patriot. -- Mark Twain

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke 1729-1797

[DM rewrite:] I am only one. But I am one. I cannot do everything needed but I can do something---something beyond the ordinary. So I should not refuse to do the something that I can. And what I should do, by God I will do!"

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." ~Albert Einstein

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." Samuel Adams

"If a nation or individual values anything more than freedom, it will lose it's freedom; and the irony is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too." --W. Somerset Maugham

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. - Martin Luther King Jr.

"The battle for freedom is never won, and is never lost. The battle for freedom always continues. It is never too late, and it is never soon enough, to defend freedom." John Perna

"I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away." -- Thomas Jefferson to Uriah Forrest, 1787. Papers, 12:477.

"The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them..." -- Mark Twain

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."--Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819

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

"As government grows, its increased power to grant favors or inflict pain attracts more people who would abuse the system." -- John Fund

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." - Edward R. Murrow

"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. ... 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." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837

"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions." -- Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787

"We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do." -- Auberon Herbert

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

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts ... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it. Patrick Henry 1736-1799 American attorney, orator, revolutionary.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. Oscar Wilde 1854-1900 Irish novelist, playwright, poet, short story writer

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out...without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. H.L. Mencken 1880-1956 American journalist, satarist, social critic

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. Bertrand Russell 1872-1970 British philosopher, historian

The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus." - Noam Chomsky

The less innocent part is that all the major "news' outlets are now owned by corporations that are part of the "military industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned us about. And so they lie egregiously and intend to keep doing so. They will NOT print or broadcast one damned thing that they don't want you to know. So it is nonsense to believe or say.....if your "conspiracy theory" were true the media would tell us about it. DM

"A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization." - William Greider

"If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, - not democracy... But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country." Michael Parenti

"To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands." - Eric Alterman

George Orwell quotes: http://www.memorable-quotes.com/george+orwell,a215.html

One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence. -- Charles A. Beard

Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open. -- Clive Bell

There is little to be feared from the standard picture of a totalitarian society in which 'cogs,' who are watched by Big Brother or his equivalent, carry out orders emanating from the top. Such a society would collapse in inefficiency. What is infinitely more fearsome is the capacity of a dictatorship to use the principle of competition to organize terror and murder. -- Ronald Wintrobe

... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience ... [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society. -- John Locke

If the innocent honest Man must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors. -- John Locke

Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other. -- John Locke

Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars. -- Richard Mitchell

Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits -- Sir Josiah Stamp

If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. -- Thomas Edison

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless. -- Thomas Edison

To expose a 4.2 Trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last one-hundred years will be a tall order of business. -- R. Buckminster Fuller

Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery. -- R. Buckminster Fuller

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. -- R. Buckminster Fuller

There is no way to peace; peace is the way. -- A. J. Muste

All men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing the obtaining of happiness and safety. -- George Mason

Real wealth can only increase. -- R. Buckminster Fuller

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. -- Henry Ford

Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them. -- Harold Evans

Wars are caused by undefended wealth. -- Douglas MacArthur

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. -- James Madison

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance. -- James Madison

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. -- Richard Henry Lee

And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man from slavery. -- Lucanus

Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen. -- Bob Edwards

The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants. -- Bertrand Barere de Vieuzac

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it. -- Douglas MacArthur

To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them. -- George Mason

Who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country...? I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers. -- George Mason

That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State... -- George Mason

The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments. -- George Mason

A radical is one who speaks the truth. -- Charles A. Lindberg Sr.

This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill. -- Charles A. Lindberg Sr.

There are no hopeless situations; There are only men who have grown hopeless about them. -- Clare Boothe Luce

Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand. -- Robert E. Lee

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery. -- George Bernanos

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means. -- George Bernanos

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. -- David Brin

The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances. -- Harry Browne

No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation. -- Gen. Douglas MacArthur

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. -- Robert E. Lee

One has to multiply thoughts to the point where there aren't enough policemen to control them. -- Stanislaw Jerszy Lec

The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him. -- Stanislaw Jerszy Lec

To ignore the evidence, and hope that it cannot be true, is more an evidence of mental illness. -- William Blase

European merchants supply the best weaponry, contributing to their own defeat. -- Saladin

We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government. -- Charles Murray

At Waco, was there really an urgency to get those people out of the compound at that particular time? Was the press going to make it look heroic for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? At Ruby Ridge, there was one guy in a cabin at the top of the mountain. Was it necessary for federal agents to go up there and shoot a 14-year-old in the back and shoot a woman with a child in her arms? What kind of mentality does that? -- Clint Eastwood

The tendency of all strong governments has always been to suppress liberty, partly in order to ease the processes of rule, partly from sheer disbelief in innovation. -- John A. Hobson

"For your own good" is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction. -- Janet Frame

There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom. -- Andrew B. Law

To argue against any breach of liberty from the ill use that may be made of it, is to argue against liberty itself, since all is capable of being abused. -- Lord George Lyttleton

The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good. -- A. J. Muste

It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier

Letting a maximum number of views be heard regularly is not just a nice philosophical notion. It is the best way any society has yet discovered to detect maladjustments quickly, to correct injustices, and to discover new ways to meet our continuing stream of novel problems that rise in a changing environment. -- Ben Bagdikian

Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships. -- Andrei Sakharov

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. -- Victor Frankl

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience. -- Victor Frankl

Given a short time with a psycho-politician you can alter forever the loyalty of a soldier in our hands or a statesman or a leader in his own country, or you can destroy his mind... Lavrentii Pavlovich Beria

Psychologically, it is important to understand that the simple fact of being interviewed and investigated has a coercive influence. As soon as a man is under cross-examination, he may become paralyzed by the procedure and find himself confessing to deeds he never did. In a country where the urge to investigate spreads, suspicion and insecurity grow. -- Joost A. Merloo

The purpose of education is to make the choices clear to people, not to make the choices for people. -- Peter Mc Williams

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses. -- George Bernanos

The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force. -- Max Eastman

We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls. -- Wayne LaPierre

Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves. When zealous agents of the Government arrest suspected "radicals" without warrant, hold them without prompt trial, deny them access to counsel and admission of bail....we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity... -- Robert M. Lafollette Sr.

What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage. -- Bruce Barton

The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men. -- Robert M. Lafollette Sr

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. -- Edward Langley

If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers - normally good Americans, but Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free --Ezra Taft Benson

What's right with America is a willingness to discuss what's wrong with America. -- Harry C. Bauer

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. -- James Madison

Without doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built. -- Lord Herbert Lousi Samuel

Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine. -- Victor Ferkiss

The religious quality of Marxism also explains a characteristic attitude of the orthodox Marxist toward opponents. To him, as to any believer in a faith, the opponent is not merely in error but in sin. Dissent is unapproved of not only intellectually but also morally. -- Joseph Schumpeter

War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it. -- Desiderius Erasmus

Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we're not vigilant. -- Clint Eastwood

War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society these irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. -- Randolph Bourne

Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow. -- Elias Boudinot

It is necessary that the powers vested in government should be precisely defined, that the people may be able to know whether it moves in the circle of the Constitution. Article I, Section 8 is intolerably vague. The Federal government will push its taxing power to the limit. It is a general maxim that all governments find a use for as much money as they can raise. Indeed, they have commonly demands for more. Hence it is that all as far as we are acquainted are in debt. I take this to be a settled truth that they will all spend as much as their revenue. That is, will live at least up to their income. Congress will ever exercise their powers to levy as much money as the people can pay. They will not be restrained from direct taxes by the consideration that necessity does not require them. -- Melancton Smith

We know what a person thinks, not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions. -- Isaac Singer

Loud speech, profusion of words, and possessing skillfulness in expounding scriptures are merely for the enjoyment of the learned. They do not lead to liberation. -- Adi Shankaracharya

A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited. -- Herbert Spencer

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is a proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is condemnation before investigation. -- Herbert Spencer

The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth... It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths. -- Herbert Spencer

The liberty the citizen enjoys is to be measured not by governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the paucity of restraints it imposes upon him. -- Herbert Spencer

Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions. -- Herbert Spencer

Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right? -- Jean-Baptist Say

Let me write the songs of a nation - I don't care who writes its laws. -- Andrew Fletcher

What is the fairest fruit of the English Tree of Liberty? The security of our rights and of the law, and that no man shall be brought to trial where there is a prejudice against him. -- Thomas Erskine

It is, of course, true that if we continue to lose our freedoms, concentration camps on U.S. soil would eventually become a reality. -- Thomas R. Eddlem

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important. -- Hosea Ballou

Government schools will teach children that government is wonderful. -- Neal Boortz

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom. -- Louis Lamour

Sound money and free banking are not impossible; they are merely illegal. Freedom of money and freedom of banking...are the principles that must guide our steps.' -- Hans Senholz

The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward. -- Igor Sikorsky

In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Government of the self was the original basis for republican government, reflecting the view that civil society was much more than politics. Society was made up of men and women who gave order to their lives by entering into associations on a voluntary basis, quite apart from government, for all the various reasons of fellowship, philanthrophy, faith and commerce. -- Hans L. Eicholz

An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal. -- Emile Faguet

The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power. -- Douglas MacArthur

Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom. -- Oswald Spengler

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. -- Stendhal

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt. Robert Lindner

Religious liberty is primarily a man's liberty to profess a faith different from that of the dominant religion, and to unite in public worship with those who share his faith. -- Giovanni Miegge

The beginning of philosophy is the recognition of the conflict between opinions. -- Epictetus

I believe [that William Graham Sumner] was one of the greatest professors we ever had at Yale, but I have drawn far away from his point of view, that of the old laissez faire doctrine. I remember he said in his classroom: 'Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.' That amused his class very much, for he was as far from a revolutionary as you could expect. But I would like to say that if that time comes when there are two great parties, Anarchists and Socialists, then I am a Socialist. -- Irving Fisher

An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth, or it is an error; it can never be a crime or a virtue. -- Francis Wright

Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society. -- Francis Wright

Suppression of expression conceals the real problems confronting a society and diverts public attention from the critical issues. It is likely to result in neglect of the grievances which are the actual basis of the unrest, and this prevent their correction. -- Thomas I. Emerson

The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth. -- Jules Michelet

That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose. -- Barbara Ehrenreich

Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. -- Chester Bowles

The freedom to share one's insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes. -- Carl Friedrich Bahrdt

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights. -- John Wooden

We owe to democracy, at least in part, the regime of discussion with which we live; we owe it to the principal modern liberties: those of thought, press and association. And the regime of free discussion is the only one which permits the ruling class to renew itself... which eliminates that class quasi-automatically when it no longer corresponds to the interests of the country. -- Gaetano Mosca

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. -- James Madison

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. -- James Madison

Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. -- James Madison

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. -- James Madison

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. -- James Madison