Quotes of Interest

12,043 words, 53 minutes approximate reading time.

I offer the following "quotes of interest" because I believe people may learn about others by knowing what he or she holds to be of value. I judge the following quotes to be of value. I maintain that if we discover the wisdom of history, that is the people of history, it may help us on a wise path for the future. We can learn from the wisdom of others.

I make no claim about the accuracy of the following quotes, only that I did not make them up. I would point to the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 1962 directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart and John Wayne: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend". My major interests in the following quotes are the ideas. Just because somebody famous said something does not make it true, but may make it interesting. It also follows, that even if the person who is given credit with saying something did not say it or did not say it first, what is said can still be of value and worth knowing.

Most of these quotes are libertarian, but some are life guides. I offer the following examples as wisdom that I agree with and I hope you will too. -Jim Burns, 2007, updated from time to time.

Quotes of Interest

"Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it." -Alfred North Whitehead

“Never doubt, that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." -Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)

"Never in the history of the world has there been a situation so bad that the government can't make it worse." -Unknown

“A nation of people who think and act as sheep, breeds a government of wolves.” -Unknown

“We the unwilling, lead by the unknowing have been told that never before have so few done so much for so many with so little for so long that we are beginning to think that we can do almost anything with almost nothing.” Not Known: but a common saying among members of the Libertarian Party of Nevada in the 1970’s

"The right to vote is a 'consequence', not a primary cause, of a free social system -- and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny." -Ayn Rand, US (Russian-born) novelist (1905 - 1982)

“Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.” -Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged) John Galt

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men: Blood, whips and guns - or dollars. Take your choice - there is no other." -Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

“So long as production was ruled by force and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer.” –Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"A viler evil than to murder a man is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides." -Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged. Part2, III) 1957

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." -Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, 1943)

"Morality is judgment to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, and integrity to stand by it at any price." -Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"If men want to oppose war, it is "statism" that they must oppose." --Ayn Rand (Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal p. 42)

"The right to life is the source of all rights--and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave." -Ayn Rand (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal)

"The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence." -Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964)

"Any alleged "right" of one man which necessitates the violation of rights of another is not, and cannot be, a right." -Ayn Rand, 1964

"If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you maybe sure that whatever their motives, love of man is not one of them." -Ayn Rand

"Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?" -Ayn Rand

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.” Ayn Rand

"Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form." - Ayn Rand

“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law” – Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness)

“… (a) group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members…” – Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness)

"Guard with jealous attention to the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." -Patrick Henry (1736 - 1799)

“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.” - Patrick Henry

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -Patrick Henry

“For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it.” - Patrick Henry

”I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.” - Patrick Henry

”I know no way of judging the future but by the past.” - Patrick Henry

”I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” - Patrick Henry

”If this be treason, make the most of it!” - Patrick Henry

“Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.” - Patrick Henry

“The great object is that every man be armed.” - Patrick Henry

"Those that hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.” - Patrick Henry

”The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.” - Patrick Henry

”We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power... the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.” - Patrick Henry

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” – Patrick Henry

"It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government." -Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)

“A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.” -Thomas Paine

“An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.” -Thomas Paine

“Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.” - Thomas Paine

“But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.” - Thomas Paine

“Character is much easier kept than recovered.” - Thomas Paine

"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 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. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated." -Thomas Paine

“In reviewing the history of the English government, its wars and its taxes, a by-stander, not blinded by prejudice, nor warped by interest, would declare, that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.” Thomas Paine (The Rights of Man, Volume 1)

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." - 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 himself." -Thomas Paine

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson (1743 -- July 4, 1826)

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." -Thomas Jefferson

…."A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Thomas Jefferson

“Either the people fear the government and you will have tyranny, or the government fear the people and you will have liberty.”– Thomas Jefferson

“I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.” – Thomas Jefferson

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” – Thomas Jefferson

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." -Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82)

"To place before mankind the common sense of the subject in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent." -Thomas Jefferson (some reasons given by Mr. Jefferson for the need for The Declaration of Independence.)

..."We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. 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..." -Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence 1776)

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." -Thomas Jefferson

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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." -Thomas Jefferson

"That government that governs least governs best." -Thomas Jefferson

“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” –Thomas Jefferson from a letter to Thomas Paine

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Paper is poverty… it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.” – Thomas Jefferson

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” - Thomas Jefferson

“I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” - Thomas Jefferson

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Never spend your money before you have it.” - Thomas Jefferson

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence: It is force, and like fire, makes a dangerous servant and fearful master." -George Washington (1732- 1799)

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

“Few people have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.” – George Washington

“A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.” -George Washington

"Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!" -George Washington

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments." -George Washington

“If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” –George Washington (Speech to the Officers of the Army, March 1783)

“…the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” – George Washington (Inaugural Address April 30, 1789)

“It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”– George Washington (Farewell Address 1796)

"God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: "This is my country." -Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790) (letter to David Hartley, December 4, 1789)

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" -Benjamin Franklin (1759)

"A penny saved is a penny earned." -Benjamin Franklin

“I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth, I traveled much, I observed in different countries that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves and became richer.” -Benjamin Franklin November 27-29, 1776

"Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other." -Benjamin Franklin (his Final Speech at the Constitutional Convention)

"We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall hang separately." -Benjamin Franklin

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. Sell not liberty to purchase power." -Benjamin Franklin

"The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." -Benjamin Franklin

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin

"We are men, no more, no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed."-Benjamin Franklin

"Jefferson still survives." -John Adams (1735 -- July 4, 1826) (last words after a lifetime competing with Thomas Jefferson who, unknown to Adams, died that same day before Adams)

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, - go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” – John Adams (Oration on American Independence August, 1776)

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." -John Adams

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." -John Adams (Journal, 1772)

"I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace that two are called a law firm and that three or more become a congress" -John Adams

“Remember democracy never last long, it soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” – John Adams April 15, 1814

"Commitment, there are only two creatures of value on the face of this earth, those with a commitment and those who acquire the commitment of others." -John Adams

“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.” - John Adams

“Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.” - John Adams

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” - John Adams

“It is not only his right, but his duty… to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.” -John Adams

"Great necessities call forth great leaders. Great necessities call out great virtues." -Abigail Adams (1744 -- 1818)

"We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them." -Abigail Adams

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country. - James Madison (1751-1836) U.S. President

“Democracy is the most vile form of government... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” - James Madison

“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” - James Madison

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. - James Madison

“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

“”The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the facts in controversy.” –John Jay (first Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court)

“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” –Sam Adams

“…whatsoever is done by delegated powers, must be referred to the principals: for none can give to any a power which they have not in themselves.” – Algernon Sidney (1622 - 1683)

“Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice.” - Algernon Sidney

“If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.” - Algernon Sidney

“Liars need to have good memories.” - Algernon Sidney

“Liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted.” - Algernon Sidney

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” - William Pitt

“The discipline of desire is the background of character.” - John Locke (1632 – 1704)

“No body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself.” - John Locke (Two Treatises)

“The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.” - John Locke

“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.” - John Locke

“The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.” - John Locke

“The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.”- John Locke

“The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property. “ - John Locke

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -Edmund Burke (1729 -- 1797)

"No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." -Edmund Burke

"Our patience will achieve more than our force." -Edmund Burke

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion." -Edmund Burke (Speech to the electors of Bristol, 3 Nov. 1774)

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."-Edmund Burke

"Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe." -Edmund Burke

"The art of constructing governments has usually been to organize the State in such a manner, as that this operation could be carried on to the best advantage for the administrators; and ...the art of administering those governments has been so to vary the means of seizing upon private property, as to bring the greatest possible quantity into the public coffers, without exciting insurrections... Those governments which are called despotic, deal more in open plunder; those that call themselves free, and act under the cloak of what they teach the people to reverence as a constitution, are driven to the arts of stealing. These have succeeded better by theft than the others have by plunder; and this is the principal difference by which they can be distinguished... Under those constitutional governments the people are more industrious, and create property faster; because they are not sensible in what manner, and in what quantities, it is taken from them...The administrators, in this case, act by a compound operation; one is to induce the people to work, and the other to take from them their earnings..." -Joel Barlow ("Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe - Resulting from the Necessity and Propriety of a General Revolution in the Principle of Government," 1792 -1795)

Under the system of natural liberty ... "every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own way and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men." -Adam Smith

“In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity,” business people “are led by an invisible hand… and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society…” – Adam Smith

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their self-love" -Adam Smith

"Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die!" --Robert Burns (1759 -- 1796)

"The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry," -Robert Burns, (To a Mouse Poem, November, 1785)

"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities." -Lord Acton

"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." -Lord Acton (Lecture, February 26, 1877)

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." -Lord Acton (Letter to Mary Gladstone, 1881)

"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.” -Lord Acton

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." -Frederick Bastiat, (Born 1801 Bayonne, France - 1850) (Government published in 1848)

"When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property. They safeguard all of these. They are defensive; they defend equally the rights of all." -Frederic Bastiat (The Law)

"You say: There are persons who have no money, and you turn to the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society. Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in. If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the law then plunders nobody. But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money. It does not promote equality of income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder." -Frederic Bastiat (The Law)

"The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty." -Frederic Bastiat (The Law)

"When goods do not pass borders, armies will." -Frederic Bastiat

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” –Frederic Bastiat

"Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign." -John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) (On Liberty)

"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." -John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1859)

"The authority to judge what are the powers of government, and what the liberties of the people, must necessarily be vested in one or the other of the parties themselves -- the government, or the people; because there is no third party to whom it can be entrusted. If the authority be vested in the government, the government is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with. If, on the other hand, that authority be vested in the people, then the people have all liberties (as against the government,) except such as substantially the whole people (through a jury) choose to disclaim; and the government can exercise no power except such as substantially the whole people (through a jury) consent that it may exercise." -Lysander Spooner, (1808 - 1887) (Trial by Jury)

"Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their person or property." -Lysander Spooner, (Vices Are Not Crimes, 1875)

“But for this right of resistance, on the part of the people, all governments would become tyrannical to a degree of which few people are aware. Constitutions are utterly worthless to restrain the tyranny of government, unless it be understood that the people will, by force, compel the government to keep within constitutional limits. Practically speaking, no government knows any limit to its power, except the endurance of the people. But that the people are stronger than the government, and will resist in extreme cases, our government would be little or nothing than else than organized systems of plunder and oppression…” -Lysander Spooner (Trial by Jury)

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." -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.” – Daniel Webster, January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852

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

“To bereave a man of life, or violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny through the whole kingdom.” –William Blackstone

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." -Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

"Jefferson said that government that governs least governs best, I say that government governs best which governs not at all." -Henry David Thoreau

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison." -Henry David Thoreau

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." -Henry David Thoreau

“Government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way.” -Henry David Thoreau

“A network of small, complicated rules. It does not break wills, but softens them. It does not tyrannize, it hinders, represses, stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” –Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1849

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." -Herbert Spencer (1820 -- 1903)

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." -Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 -- 1881)

"There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas." -Fyodor Dostoevsky

"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." -Carl Schurz (1829 - 1906)

"Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny." -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

"He who endeavors to control the mind by force is a tyrant, and he who submits is a slave." -Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)

"The more liberty you give away the more you will have.” -Robert Green Ingersoll

“The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.” -Robert Green Ingersoll

"Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty." -Robert Green Ingersoll

“When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism” -Robert Green Ingersoll

“What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man” -Robert Green Ingersoll

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” Edward Everett Hale, American Clergyman, April 3, 1822 – June 10, 1909

“Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country." Edward Everett Hale

“The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and facts.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country. Edward Everett Hale

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress." -Mark Twain

“Censorship is telling a man that he can’t have steak, just because a baby can’t chew it.” –Mark Twain

"No mans life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session" -Mark Twain

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself." -Mark Twain

"In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you." -Albert Jay Nock

"It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." -Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.” - H. L. Mencken

“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right... The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds. - H. L. Mencken

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.” - H. L. Mencken

“A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.” - H. L. Mencken

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -H. L. Mencken

"The state -- or to make the matter more concrete, the government -- consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods." -H. L. Mencken, 1936

"I believe 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

….”Is government, then, useful and necessary? So is a doctor. But suppose the dear fellow claimed the right, every time he was called in to prescribe for a bellyache or a ringing in the ears, to raid the family silver, use the family tooth-brushes, and executes the droit de seigneur upon the housemaid? – H.L. Mencken

“All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.” -H.L. Mencken

"If you attempt to prevent men from folly, you fill the world with fools." -H.L. Mencken

A definition of Puritanism: "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." -H.L. Mencken, (A Book of Burlesques, 1916)

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it." -H.L. Mencken, (Minority Report, 1956)

"When man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom he destroys." -George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

"Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." -George Orwell

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -George Orwell

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell

“Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.” - Will Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935)

“A fool and his money are soon elected.” - Will Rogers

“About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.” - Will Rogers

"An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out." - Will Rogers

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for." -Will Rogers

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." -Will Rogers, quoted in Saturday Review, Aug. 25, 1962

“A boy becomes a man when a man is needed” – John Steinbeck

"...The only men on earth worth their time on earth are the men who would fight for other men... We have struggled through from darkness but man moves forward with each day and each hour to a better freer life. That desire to go forward, that willingness to fight for it, cannot be put in a man but when it is there..." -Betty Davis ("Watch on the Rhine" by Lillian Hellman (1905 - 1984)

"A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police." -Ludwig von Mises, (Liberalism, 1927)

"He who wants to reform his countrymen must take recourse to persuasion. This alone is the democratic way of bringing about changes. If a man fails in his endeavors to convince other people of the soundness of his ideas, he should not ask for a law, that is, for compulsion and coercion by the police." -Ludwig von Mises, (Bureaucracy, 1945)

"It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom." -Ludwig Von Mises

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” – Henry Hazlitt, (Economic in One Lesson)

"When fascism comes, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross" -Sinclair Lewis

"You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced; and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are visited by the police." -J B R Yant

"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed." -Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love) (1907-1988)

“What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'.”- Robert A. Heinlein

“An armed society is a polite society.” - Robert A. Heinlein

"Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win." -Robert A. Heinlein, (Time Enough for Love) Excerpt from the notebooks of Lazarus Long.

"You live and learn. Or you don't live long." -Robert Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)

"What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell", avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!" -Robert Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)

"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." -Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)

"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at a tax collector and miss." -Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)

"Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig." -Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."-Robert A. Heinlein

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, can a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -Robert A. Heinlein

“The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough money to buy it back again.

However, take away from them the power to create money, 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 the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.” –Sir Josiah Stamp, Former Director of the Bank of England

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." -Barry Goldwater (1909 - 1998)

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to cancel old ones... I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is needed before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And, if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents interest, I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." -Barry Goldwater

"Politics [is] the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order." -Barry Goldwater

"Republic -- I like the sound of the word. It means that people can live free, talk free, come or go, buy or sell, drunk or sober however they choose." -John Wayne as David Crockett (the movie "The Alamo")

"We are going to need more men." -Billy Bob Thornton as David Crockett (the newer movie "The Alamo")

"The fundamental conflicts in human life are not between competing ideas one of which is true and the other false, but rather, between those that hold power and use it to oppress others, and those who are oppressed by power and seek to free themselves of it." -Thomas Szasz

"The individual can never escape the moral burden of his existence. He must choose between obedience to authority and responsibility to himself. Moral decisions are often hard and painful to make. The temptation to delegate this burden to others is therefore ever-present. Yet, as all history teaches us, those who would take from man his moral burdens be they priests or warlords, politicians or psychiatrists must also take from him his liberty and hence his very humanity." -Thomas Szasz

"Life as it is. I have lived for over forty years and I have seen life as it is: pain, misery, cruelty beyond belief. I have heard all the voices of Gods noblest creature: The moans from bundles of filth in the street. I've been a soldier and a slave. I've seen my comrade’s fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I've held them at the last moment: these were men who saw life as it is. But, they die despairing: no glory, no brave last words; only in their eyes, filled with confusion - questioning why. I do not think they were asking why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps, to be too practical is madness: to surrender dreams this may be madness, to seek treasure where there is only trash: too much sanity may be madness. But, maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be." -Man of La Mancha, Screenplay by Dale Wasserman: Peter O'Toole as Miguel Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes (1547 - 1616) Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha, 1615

"Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable." -Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Spanish writer & dramatist, author of Don Quixote

"Envy the country that has heroes. I say, pity the country that needs them." -Reign of Fire, Screenplay by Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka, and Matt Greenberg: Spoken by Matthew McConaughey

"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always even if it leads to your death. Safe-guard the helpless and do no wrong." -Kingdom of Heaven, Knights Oath, Screenplay by William Monahan

"...I remember once hearing a speech ... and the man who gave the speech talk about the struggle to control civilization and how we are always fighting the same fight. And, he used the dark ages as an example. And he talked about how on the one side you had the pragmatic king who was greedy and power hungry and basically took advantage of people whenever he could. And, on the other side the idealist church forcing everyone to follow the same rules, believe the same things and all that. Neither the king nor the church was completely right or wrong. Both sides ended up doing terrible things to get what they wanted: really terrible things. But, the point of the story was this: that this struggle from the dark ages has been going on forever. That the Church and the King might take on different forms and philosophies but that they would always fight each other. Pragmatist and Idealist: And most times you are better off staying on the side lines and let them duke it out. But, every once in a while, one side or the other decides it might be better just to blow up the whole world just to get its own way. And when that happens, you can't stand on the side lines anymore. You have to pick a team..." -The Closer: Serving the King, part 2, Written by James Duff & Mike Berchem: Spoken by Kyra Sedgwich

"and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" –John 8:32 (Bible King James Version New Testament)

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." the serenity prayer -Alcoholics Anonymous

"Nothing endures but change." -Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC)

"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." -Heraclitus (On the Universe)

"Tsze-Kung asked, saying, 'Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master said, "Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." –Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -Confucius

"To see what is right and not to do it, is want of courage." -Confucius

“Once Confucius was walking on the mountains and he came across a woman weeping by a grave. He asked the woman what her sorrow was, and she replied, ‘We are a family of hunters. My father was eaten by a tiger. My husband was bitten by a tiger and died. And now my only son!’ Why don’t you move and live in the valley? Why do you continue to live up here? Asked Confucius. And the woman replied, ‘But sir, there are no tax collectors here!’ Confucius added to his disciples, You see, a bad government is more to be feared than tigers.” –Lin Yutang

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." –Cicero, 55 BC

"As long as a hundred of us remain alive we will never be subject to tyrannical dominion because it is not for glory or riches or honors that we fight, but for freedom alone which no worthy man loses except with his life." -The Declaration of Arbroath 1320

"This above all: 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 (1564 - 1616)

"Mistrust those in whom the impulse to punish is strong."-Friedrich Nietzsche

“If in a free republic, a great government is the product of a great people, they will look to themselves rather than government for success. The destiny, the greatness of America lies around the hearthstone. If thrift and industry are taught there, and the example of self-sacrifice oft appears, if honor abide there, and high ideals, if there the building of fortune be subordinate to the building of character, America will live in security, rejoicing in an abundant prosperity and good government at home and in peace, respect, and confidence abroad. If these virtues be absent there is no power that can supply these blessings. Look well to the hearthstone, therein all hope for America lies.” Calvin Coolidge, April 27, 1920

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -Albert Einstein US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

"The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary." -Wilhelm Reich

“”An unarmed citizenry is potentially the victim, first of anarchy, then of tyranny and totalitarianism. The present campaign to infringe the right to keep and bear arms is a utopian assault upon the freedom of American citizens – an assault scornful of the testimony of history, the counsels of morality, and the express mandate of the Constitution.” –Frank S. Meyer

“I have learnt silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind: yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.” - Kahlil Gibran

“A man can be free without being great, but no man can be great without being free.” –Kahlil Gibran

“A government strong enough to give its citizens everything they want is strong enough to take from them everything they have.”–Kenneth W. Sollitt

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."-Edward R. Murrow

"The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish" -Robert Jackson

"Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." -Lenny Bruce (1923 -1966)

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, then they don’t have to worry about the answers.” –Thomas Pynchon

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." -Hunter S. Thompson

"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men." -Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006)

"A society that puts equality... ahead of freedom will end up with neither." -Milton Friedman: US Prof. Emeritus-Economics, University of Chicago, Nobel Prize, Hoover Sir Res Fellow Stanford

“Governments never learn. Only people learn.” - Milton Friedman

“I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.” - Milton Friedman

“I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. - Milton Friedman

“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.” - Milton Friedman

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” – Milton Friedman

“Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.” – Milton Friedman

“Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.” - Milton Friedman

….”Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.” - Milton Friedman

“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.” - Milton Friedman

“The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.” - Milton Friedman

“The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.” - Milton Friedman

"In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work." -Milton Friedman

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."-Milton Friedman

"Avoid problems, and you'll never be the one who overcame them." -Richard Bach (1936-)

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours." -Richard Bach

"To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there."-Richard Bach

"Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose." -Richard Bach

"It is not the challenge that we face that determines who we are and what we are becoming but the way we meet the challenge."-Richard Bach

"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long." -Thomas Sowell

“Economic freedom is the route to prosperity” John Stossel, June 19, 2010

"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled." -Michael Crichton, Caltech Michelin Lecture, January 17, 2003 (1942 - 2009)

"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."-Michael Crichton

"There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fear mongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban horse transport in the early twentieth century." -Michael Crichton (State of Fear)

"When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." -Alston Chase

"The first myth of management is that it exists." -Heller's Law

“We must get the government off of Opium. You know – OPM -- Other Peoples Money.” -Governor Sarah Palin, News Conference 11-13-08

“Who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘Death Panel’ … so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” –Sarah Palin (August 7, 2009 on Her Facebook)

"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it." -Mitch Hedberg

Nancy Pelosi, when she was the newly elected Speaker of the House said on January 4, 2007 “After years of historic deficits this 110^th Congress will commit itself to a higher standard, pay as you go, no new deficit spending” On December 28, 2010, Tucker Carlson reported on Fox News that under the rule of Nancy Pelosi “The 111^th Congress amasses over $3 Trillion in debt and that is more than the first 100 congresses combined … $10,429 for every man, woman and child in the country … Over half of the special loans given by the Fed went to foreign banks.”

"The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop." -P. J. O'Rourke (1947 - )

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -P.J. O'Rourke

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." -P. J. O'Rourke

"I guess it's hard to face the truth, but I suppose you yourself realize that if you'd had just a little more courage, just a little more strength of character, you could have been dead by now." -P.J. O'Rourke

"Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system." -P.J. O'Rourke

“A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.” P.J. O’Rourke

"Everything the government touches turns to crap." -Ringo Starr

“95 percent of anything is crap.” –Sturgeon’s Law

Invictus (1875)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

The Incredible Bread Machine

By R.W. Grant

This is a legend of success and plunder
And a man, Tom Smith,
Who squelched world hunger.

Now, Smith, an inventor, had specialized
In toys, so people were surprised,
When they found that he instead
Of making toys, was BAKING BREAD!

The way to make bread he'd conceived
Cost less than people could believe!
And not just make it! This device,
Could in addition, wrap and slice!
The price per loaf, one loaf or many,
The miniscule sum of under a penny!

Can you imagine what this meant?
Can you comprehend the consequent?
The first time yet the world well fed,
And all because of Tom Smith's bread.

A citation from the President,
For Smith's amazing bread,
This and other honors too,
Were heaped upon his head!

But isn't it a wondrous thing,
How quickly fame is flown?
Smith, the hero of today,
Tomorrow, scarcely known!

Yes, the fickle years passed by,
Smith was a millionaire,
But Smith himself was now forgot,
Though his bread was everywhere...
People, asked from where it came,
Would very seldom know.
They would simple eat and ask,
"Was not it always so?"

However, Smith cared not a bit,
For millions ate his bread...
And everything is fine, thought he,
I am rich, and they are fed!

Everything was fine, he though,
He reckoned not with fate.
Note the sequence of events,
Starting on the date,
On which the business tax went up.
Then, to a slight extent,
The price on every loaf rose too.
Up to one full cent!

"What's going on!" the public cried,
"He's guilty of pure plunder!
He has no right to get so rich
on other people's hunger!"

(A prize cartoon depicted Smith,
With fat and drooping jowls,
Snatching bread from hungry babes,
indifferent to their howls!)

Well, since the public does come first,
It could not be denied
That in matters such as this,
The public must decide!

So Anti-Trust now took a hand,
Of course, it was appalled
At what it found was going on.
The "Bread Trust" it was called.

Now this was getting serious,
So Smith felt that he must
Have a friendly interview
With the men in Anti-Trust.

So hat in hand, he went to them.
They'd surely been misled;
No Rule of Law had he defied.
But then their lawyer said:
"The Rule of Law, in complex times,
Has proved itself deficient.
We much prefer the Rule of Men,
It's vastly more efficient!"

"Now let me state the present rules,"
The lawyer then went on,
"These very simple guidelines,
You can rely upon:
You're gouging on your prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it's unfair competition if
You think you can charge less!"
"A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion...
Don't try to charge the same amount,
That would be Collusion!
You must compete. But not too much,
For if you do you see,
Then the market would be yours -
And that's monopoly!"

Price too high?
Or price too low?
Now, which charge did they make?
Well, they weren't loath to charging both,
With the Public Good at stake!

In fact, they went one better!
They charged "Monopoly!"
No muss, no fuss, oh, woe is us!
Egad, they charged ALL THREE!

"Five Years in jail," The Judge then said
"You're lucky it's not worse!
Robber Barrons must be taught,
Society comes first!"

Now bread is baked by government.
And as might be expected,
Everything is well controlled.
The public well protected.

True, loaves cost a dollar each,
But our leaders do their best!
The selling price is half a cent.
Taxes pay the rest.

Original Beginning of the Poem:

This is the story of a man whose name
Was a household word: a man whose fame
Burst on the world like an atom bomb;
Smith was his last name; first name Tom

Paranoia

By David Friedman

This man I never saw before

At 3am breaks down the door

To tell me my aspirin is LSD

“It says right there on the bottle,

Acetylsalicylic Acid.”

I tell you doctor, honestly,

It seems like someone’s after me.

I don’t think fighting is what I’m made for

But this lottery ticket I never paid for

Sold by a pusher known as Sam

Has won me a ticket to Vietnam,

A twelve months, expenses paid, tropical vacation

With a funeral free, from a grateful nation.

But the doctor says I need therapy

For thinking someone is after me.

And then there are things I just can’t ignore

Like the little man in our bedroom door

Says we’ll be in jail by the end of the night

Unless we turn over and do it right.

Doctor, Doctor, come and see

There’s really someone after me.

Then he asks, as he rips off the sheet,

For our marriage license and tax receipt;

Says “you need a license to shot at a duck

How come you think it’s free to f#*k.”

Who so blind as will not see;

The state, the state, is after me.

Page 71 The Machinery of Freedom

The Statue of Liberty Poem

The New Colossus

By Emma Lazarus, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

“When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;

I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,

There was no one left to speak out.”

- Reverend Martin Niemöller (1894-1982) German Anti Nazi Nationalist Activist

Quotes of Interest

The Statue of Liberty Poem

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