Thomas Jefferson
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken from the banks, and restored to the people to whom it belongs.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
I have a right to nothing, which another has a right to take away.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
Samuel Adams
If you 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 arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.
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 freemen 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. We revere this lesson to much to forget it.
I believe there are more instances of abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
George Washington
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty, teeth and keystone under independence. The church, the plow, the prairie wagon and citizens’ firearms are indelibly related. From the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that, to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil influence. They deserve a place of honor with all that’s good. When firearms go, all goes. We need them every hour.
Daniel Webster
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
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 the 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.
Edmund Burke
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Others:
A nation of lemmings and sheep, unwilling to learn what the laws say and mean, deserves the tyranny it tolerates. ~C. F. Charpentier
In the beginning of change, the patriot is a scarce man brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. ~Mark Twain
We the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts— not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. ~Abraham Lincoln
There are two places only where socialism will work; in heaven where it is not needed, and in hell where they already have it. ~Winston Churchill
When words lose their meaning, people will lose their liberty. ~Confucius
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. ~Confucius
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. ~Albert Einstein
It is easy to take liberty for granted, if you have never had it taken away from you. ~Unknown
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant. ~Charles de Gaulle
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. ~Ernest Benn
There is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program. ~Milton Friedman
Members of Congress should be compelled to wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers, so we could identify their corporate sponsors. ~Caroline Baum
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. ~Oscar Ameringer
If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal. ~Emma Goldman
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen. ~George E. MacDonald
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. ~P.J. O’Rourke
The United States has a system of taxation by confession. ~Hugo Black
Did you ever notice that when you put “THE” and “IRS” together it spells “THEIRS”? ~Unknown
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ~Winston Churchill
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb. ~Unknown
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. ~H.L. Mencken
If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also. ~Fred Woodworth
In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other. ~Voltaire
Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods. ~H.L. Mencken
When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will. ~Frederic Bastiat
The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. Therefore, the heads of provinces, official agents, and deputies are ordered to collect all the weapons mentioned above and turn them over to the government. ~Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Shogun (circa 1558)
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. ~Tacitus
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. ~Frederic Bastiat
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. 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.
~Alan Greenspan (Gold and Economic Freedom, 1966)
Greater than the threat of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. ~Victor Hugo
The best way to predict your future is to create it. ~Peter Drucker
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. ~George Orwell
Gold, Silver and Lead… Freedom’s precious metals. ~Unknown
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. ~Goethe
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. ~Thomas Paine
Judicial verbicide is calculated to convert the Constitution into a worthless scrap of paper and to replace our government with a judicial oligarchy. ~Senator Sam Ervin
There is no law requiring a person to apply for a Social Security number, and there is no section of Title 18, United States Code, making it a crime to not have a social security number. ~Dorcas R. Hardy, former Commissioner of Social Security.
Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.
~Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765 – 1769)
A law repugnant to the Constitution is void. Marbury v. Madison, 5 US 137 (1803)
We are bound to interpret the Constitution in the light of the law as it existed at the time it was adopted. Mattox v. U.S., 156 US 237 (1895)
An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection, it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed. Norton v. Shelby County, 118 US 425 (1886)
The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his own private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to incriminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom, beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the State. …He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights.
Hale v. Henkel, 201 US 43 (1905)
They [the IRS] disregard the law and the advice of their own counsel. They disproportionately burden honest individuals. They flout due process. And they push people to abandon their citizenship.
These are mafia tactics, plain and simple. And like the Romans, Ottoman Empire, and French monarchy before, the tax system in the Land of the Free has become a desperate farce marked by fear and intimidation.
This is one of history’s obvious marks of a nation that has reached its terminal decline. We cannot seriously expect this time to be any different. Simon Black (January 2014)