“If everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted and unfailing. But there is another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: The incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man...in that primitive, universal and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.”

~Frederick Bastiat, 1848

"[Tyranny cannot be safe] without a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace."

James Madison, In his autobiography

"If we will not be governed by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants."

--Wm. Penn

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

John Adams (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President

"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny."

James Monroe (1758-1831), 5th US President

"I hope, therefore, a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the Federal government as they are already guarded against their State governments, in most instances."

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or by both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress."

--Frederick Douglass, 1849

"If you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains; if you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains."

—Cicero

"To advocate an efficient, sound, honest government is neither left-wing nor right-wing, it is just plain right."

-- J. Peter Grace, Co-founder CAGW

"That government is best,
which governs least."

Henry David Thoreau

"But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at one no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it."

Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

"Never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

-- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi chief of propaganda

"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."

John Philpot Curran, (1750-1817)

“I am concerned for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”

— General Douglas MacArthur.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."

Marcus Tullius Cicero (42B.C)

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism", they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened".

Norman Thomas
(for many years, U.S.Socialist Party presidential candidate)

"We have given you a republic, madam, if you can keep it."

Benjamin Franklin -

"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father

"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."

Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) US Senator (R-Arizona)

"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

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

- Mark Twain

"The Bible is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed."

Patrick Henry

"It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom."

Horace Greely

"I have always said, and will always say, that studious perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens."

Thomas Jefferson

"[T]he flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them."

Thomas Jefferson 3rd President of the United States (1743-1826)

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

John Adams

"Every step...towards...democracy is an advance towards destruction...Liberty has never yet lasted long in a democracy; nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism." (1801)

Fisher Ames    (1758-1808; Congressman from Massachusetts)

"Democracy is more dangerous than fire. Fire can't vote itself immune to water."

Michael Z. Williamson

"If the question of constitutionality of a certain governmental action is at stake, it is not incumbent upon the citizen to say to the government, "Where in the Constitution does it say this can't be done? The responsibility is on the federal official to show where in the Constitution it says it can be done.Unless that power has been delegated to the federal government somewhere in the Constitution, the federal government does not have that power."

John Eidsmoe

I have said I do not dread industrial corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them; but there is a corporation we may all dread. That corporation is the federal government. From the aggressions of this corporation, there can be no safety, if it is allowed to go beyond the well defined limits of it's powers. I dread nothing so much as the exercise of ungranted and doubtful powers by the government. It is, in my opinion, the danger of dangers to the future of this country. Let us be sure to keep it always within it's limits. If this great, ambitious, ever growing corporation becomes oppressive, who shall check it? If it becomes too wayward, who shall control it? If it becomes unjust, who shall trust it?

As sentinels of the country's watchtower, Senators, I beseech you to watch and guard with sleepless dread, that corporation which can make all property and rights, all states and people, all liberty and hope it's plaything in an hour, and it's victims forever."

Senator Benjamin H. Hill

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

Samuel Adams

"Can we restore the Constitution and recover our freedom? I have no doubt that we can. Like all great reforms, it will take an intelligent, determined effort by many people. I don't want to sow false optimism.

But the time is ripe for a constitutional counterrevolution. Discontent with the ruling system, as the 1992 Perot vote showed, is deep and widespread among several classes of people: Christians, conservatives, gun owners, taxpayers, and simple believers in honest government all have their reasons. The rulers lack legitimacy and don't believe in their own power strongly enough to defend it.

The beauty of it is that the people don't have to invent a new system of government in order to get rid of this one. They only have to restore the one described in the Constitution, the system our government already professes to be upholding. Taken seriously, the Constitution would pose a serious threat to our form of government.

And for just that reason, the ruling parties will be finished as soon as the American people rediscover and awaken their dormant Constitution."

Joe Sobran

"Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest."

Calvin Coolidge

Government is not the solution to our problem, Government is the problem."

Ronald Reagan

Rights don't defend themselves. People have only those rights they are willing and able to unite to defend, with armed force if necessary. If you don't defend others when their rights are violated, don't expect anyone to defend yours , and those rights will be violated if they are not defended.

— Jon Roland, 1994

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

--Thomas Jefferson

What this country needs more of is more unemployed politicians."

Langley

"Terrorism is the preferred weapon of weak and evil men."

Ronald Reagan

"Government is too big and important to be left to the politicians."

Governor Chester Bowles

"The kind of government that is strong enough to give you everything you need is also strong enough to take away everything that you have."

Ronald Reagan

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship"

Sir Alexander Tytler

"When those who are governed do too little, those who govern can, and will, do too much."

Ronald Reagan

      "When there is a single thief, it's robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it's taxation."

Vanya Cohen

      "Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

Ronald Reagan

"We did have a completely different class of people in 1776. When this country was formed you couldn't find 10 people on the continent who thought that it was the responsibility of the federal government to provide them with a job or health care. Know this...transport today's average American back to 1776 and the Revolutionary War would never have happened."

Neal Boortz

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

John Kennedy

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government. Far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

James Madison (1751-1836) Fourth President of the United States.

" ...A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government. "

- Alexander Hamilton, 1794