Michael Russell Grimaila's Quotes Page

   "On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the
   time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit
   manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be
   squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the
   probable one in which it was passed."
   --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The
   Complete Jefferson, p. 322.
   "The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear
   arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in
   government."
   --Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J.Boyd, Ed., 1950)
   "... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a
   rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The
   part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the
   importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under
   such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the
   public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if
   it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people
   preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is
   to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What
   signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must
   be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and
   tyrants. It is its natural manure."
   --Richard Henry Lee, Senator, First Congress, Additional Letters from
   the Federal Farmer (1788) at 169.
   "Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the
   people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise
   an army upon their ruins."
   --Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate
   over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17,
   1789.
   "...the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and
   bear their private arms."
   --Trench Coxe in "Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the
   Federal Constitution." Under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the
   Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1.
   "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people
   always possess arms..."
   --Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Member of the First U.S. Senate.
   "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize
   Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of
   conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are
   peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..."
   --Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the
   Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Peirce & Hale, eds., Boston,
   1850.
   2, col. 2.
   "Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA --
   ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve
   the state."
   --Heinrich Himmler.
   "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains
   evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that is
   good."
   --George Washington
   "The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant,
   the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were
   base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the
   contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains
   are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The
   war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!"
   --Patrick Henry, in his famous "The War Inevitable" speech, March,
   1775.
   "It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry,
   Peace, Peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The
   next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash
   of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand
   we here idle? What is it that Gentlemen want? What would they have? 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, in his famous "The War Inevitable" speech, March,
   1775.
   "A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I
   advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it
   gives boldness, enterprise, and independence Games played with the
   ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and
   stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant
   companion of your walk."
   --Encyclopedia of Thomas Jefferson, 318 (Foley, Ed., reissued 1967)
   "That the Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress
   to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience;
   or to prevent "the people" of the United States who are peaceable
   citizens from keeping their own arms..." 
   "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like
   fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master".
   --George Washington
   "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in
   nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to
   convictions of honor and good sense."
   -- Winston Spencer Churchill, address at Harrow School, October 29,
   1941.
   "Never turn your back on a threatened danger and try to run away from
   it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it
   promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.
   Never run away from anything. Never!"
   --Winston Churchill
   "The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine.
   Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and
   repetitious."
   --Joseph Goebbels -- Nazi Minister of Propaganda
   "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success
   unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly . . . it
   must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
   --Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda
   "God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to
   guard and defend it."
   --Daniel Webster
   "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do
   nothing."
   --Edmund Burke
   "Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in
   time that men have died to win them."
   --Franklin D. Roosevelt
   "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart,
   I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
   --Oliver Cromwell, "Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth", upon
   dissolving Parliament
   --William Lenoir
   "Whenever people . . . entrust the defense of their country to a
   regular, standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power of that
   country will remain under the direction of the most wealthy
   citizens..."
   --"A Framer", in the Independent Gazetteer, 1791
   "We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the
   courts -- not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who
   pervert the Constitution."
   -- Abraham Lincoln
   "If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with
   army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary
   and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional
   privilege."
   --Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
   "The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against
   arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now
   appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be
   always possible."
   --Senator Hubert H. Humprey (D-Minnesota)
   "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will
   look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the
   blackest."
   --Mahatma Ghandi
   "The one weapon every man, soldier, sailor, or airman should be able
   to use effectively is the rifle. It is always his weapon of personal
   safety in an emergency, and for many it is the primary weapon of
   offense and defense. Expertness in its use cannot be overemphasized."
   --General Dwight D. Eisenhower
   --Charles A. Beard
   "Before God I swear this is my creed: my rifle and myself are the
   defenders of our country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the
   saviors of my life. So be it until victory is America's and there is
   no enemy, but peace!!
   --From "My Rifle", by Major General W.H. Rupertus, USMC.
   "The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation."
   --Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United 'States (1856-1924).
   "With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but
   with tyrants, I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they
   will certainly be lost."
   --William Lloyd Garrison
   "...to disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave
   them..."
   --George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380.
   "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they
   are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America
   cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole of the
   people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of
   regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United
   States."
   --Noah Webster, "An Examination into the leading Principles of the
   Federal Constitution." in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the
   Constitution of the United States , at 56 (New York, 1888).
   "...if raised, whether they could subdue a Nation of freemen, who know
   how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?"
   --Delegate Sedgewick, during the Massachusetts Convention,
   rhetorically asking if an oppressive standing army could
   prevail...Johnathon Elliot, ed., Debates in the Several State
   Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol. 2 at 97
   (2d ed., 1888).
   "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess
   over the people of almost every other nation...nothwithstanding the
   military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are
   carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are
   afraid to trust the people with arms."
   --James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist Paper No.
   46, at 243-244.
   "As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before
   them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must
   be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their
   power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed
   by the article in their right to keep and bear private arms."
   --Tench Coxe, in "Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the
   Federal Constitution." under the pseudonym, "A Pennsylvanian" in the
   Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 Col. 1.
   "The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the
   other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the
   plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.
   The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of
   arms, for all the world would be alike; but since some will not,
   others dare not lay them aside...Horrid mischief would ensue were one
   half the world deprived the use of them..."
   Thomas Paine, I Writings of Thomas Paine at 56 (1894).
   --Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the
   Constitution...Debates and other Proceedings of the Convention of
   Virginia, ...taken in shorthand by David Robertson of Petersburg, at
   271, 275 (2d ed. Richmond, 1805). Also 3 Elliot, Debates at 386.
   "Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation
   that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the
   difference between having our arms in possession and under our
   direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our
   defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can
   they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our
   own hands?"
   --Patrick Henry, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions
   45, 2d Ed. Philadelphia, 1836.
   "The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone."
   --James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist Paper No.
   46.
   "The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of
   the people at large or considered as individuals...It establishes some
   rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no
   majority has the right to deprive them of."
   --Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789.
   "This Year Will Go Down In History. For The First Time, A Civilized
   Nation Has Full Gun Registration! Our Streets Will Be Safer, Our
   Police More Efficient, And The World Will Follow Our Lead Into The
   Future!"
   --Adolph Hitler 1935 'Berlin Daily' (Loose English Translation) April
   15th, 1935 Page 3 Article 2 by Einleitung Von Eberhard Beckmann -
   "Abschied vom Hessenland!"
   "All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately...The SS,
   SA and Stahlhelm give every responsible opportunity of campaigning
   with them. Therefore anyone who does not belong to one of the
   above-named organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his
   weapon...must be regarded as an enemy of the national government."
   --SA Oberfuhrer of Bad Tolz, March, 1933.
   "There are going to be situations where people are going to go without
   assistance. That's just the facts of life."
   --LA Police Chief Gates
   The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States)
   assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may
   exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at
   all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person,
   freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press."
   --Thomas Jefferson
   "Enlighten people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and
   mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
   --Thomas Jefferson
   "...for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested,
   that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of ensuring
   their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the
   least suspicion."
   --Alexander Hamilton
   "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall
   be unfurled, there will be America's heart, her benedictions and
   prayers, but she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She
   is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the
   champion and vindicator of her own."
   --John Quincy Adams
   "This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the
   people against the maladministration of the Government, if we could
   suppose that in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended
   to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed. Now, I am
   apprehensive, sir, that this clause would give an opportunity to the
   people in power to destroy the Constitution itself. They can declare
   who are those religiously scrupulous, and prevent them from bearing
   arms."
   --Eldridge Gerry, speaking on the 2d Amendment (I Annals of Cong.
   August 17, 1789.)
   "[The American Colonies are] all democratic governments, where the
   power is in the hands of the people and where there is not the least
   difficulty or jealousy about putting arms into the hands of every man
   in the country. [European countries should not] be ignorant of the
   strength and the force of such a form of government and how
   strenuously and almost wonderfully people living under one have
   sometimes exerted themselves in defense of their rights and liberties
   and how fatally it quarrels, wars and contests with them."
   --George Mason from "Remarks on Annual Elections for the Fairfax
   Independent Company" quoted from the Papers of George Mason, 1725-1792
   edited by Robert A. Rutland (Chapel Hill, 1970)
   "What the subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear -- and
   long-lost proof that the Second Amendment to our Constitution was
   intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and
   carry arms in a peaceful manner, for the protection of himself, his
   family, and his freedom."
   --Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution,
   Preface, "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms"
   "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
   member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm
   to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
   warrant."
   --John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" 1859
   "It is not certain that with this aid alone (possession of arms) they
   would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to
   possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by
   themselves, who could collect the national will, and direct the
   national force; and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these
   governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be
   affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny
   in Europe would be speedily overturned, in spite of the legions which
   surround it."
   --James Madison, "Federalist No. 46"
   A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a
   Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force
   against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed
   populace."
   --James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.
   "They tell us Sir, that we are weak -- unable to cope with so
   formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the
   next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed,
   and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we
   gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the
   means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and
   hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have
   bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use
   of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power."
   --Patrick Henry (1736 - 1799) in his famous "The War Inevitable"
   speech, March, 1775.
   "Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in
   such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force
   which our enemy can send against us. Beside, sir, we shall not fight
   our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies
   of Nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for
   us."
   --Patrick Henry (1736-1799) in his famous "The War Inevitable" speech,
   March 1775.
   "They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary
   safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
   --Benjamin Franklin Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759).
   "The people of the various provinces are 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 Hideyoshit, Shogun, August 29, 1558, Japan.
   "War to the hilt between capitalism and communism is inevitable.
   Today, of course we are not strong enough to attack. Our time will
   come in 20 or 30 years. In order to win, we shall need the element of
   surprise. The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep, so we shall
   begin by launching the most spectacular peace movement on record.
   There will be electrifying overtures and unheard of concessions. The
   capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate
   in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be
   friends. As soon as their guard is down, we shall smash them with our
   clenched fist."
   --Attributed to Dmitri E. Manuisky, Lenin School of Political Warfare.
   "Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money,
   except when it comes to questions of national survival when they
   prefer to be generous with other peoples' freedom and security."
   --William F. Buckley
   "In recent years, it has been suggested that the Second Amendment
   protects the "collective" right of "the people" to keep and bear
   arms... The phrase "the people" meant the same thing in the Second
   Amendment as it did in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments
   -- that is, each and every free person. A select militia defined as
   only the privileged class entitled to keep and bear arms was
   considered an anathema to a free society, in the same way that
   Americans denounced select spokesmen approved by the government as the
   only class entitled to the freedom of the press."
   --Stephen P. Holbrook, "That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a
   Constitutional Right", University of New Mexico Press, 1984, pp.83-84.
   "He that violates his oath profanes the Divinity of faith itself."
   --Cicero (found on LA City Hall wall.
   "Disperse, you rebels -- Damn you, throw down your arms and disperse!"
   --Maj. John Pitcairn, Lexington, Massachusetts, April 19, 1775
   "Those who have command of the arms in a country are masters of the
   state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they
   please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference
   between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a
   standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed
   people."
   --Aristotle, quoted by John Trenchard and Walter Moyle "An Argument
   showing That a Standing Army is Inconsistent with a Free Government,
   and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English
   Monarchy."
   "Men that are above all Fear, soon grow above all Shame."
   --John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon "Catos' Letters: Or, Essays on
   Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects" [London,
   1755]
   "The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most
   governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right
   within the narrowest possible limits...and [when] the right of the
   people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext
   whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the
   brink of destruction."
   --Sir George Tucker, Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court and U.S.
   District Court of Virginia in I Blackstone COMMENTARIES Sir George
   Tucker Ed., 1803, pg. 300 (App.)
   "No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The
   possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.
   He who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be
   defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who
   things he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought
   to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; also he lives
   precariously, and at discretion."
   --James Burgh "Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public
   Errors, Defects, and Abuses" [London, 1774-1774
   "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been
   considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it
   offers a strong moral check against the usurpative and arbitrary power
   of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the
   first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
   --Joseph Story "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States;
   With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the
   Colonies and States before the Adoption of the Constitution." (Boston,
   1833)
   "How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some
   organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small
   danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to
   contempt, and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by
   this clause of our national bill of rights."
   --Joseph Story "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States;
   With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the
   Colonies and States before the Adoption of the Constitution" [Boston,
   1833]
   "The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police
   and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon
   of democracy. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have
   guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military. The hired
   servants of our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I
   intend to be among the outlaws."
   --Edward Abbey "The Right to Arms" [New York, 1979]
   "The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other;
   but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far better to be
   feared than loved if you cannot be both...Men worry less about doing
   an injury to one who makes himself loved than to one who makes himself
   feared. The bond of love is one which men, wretched creatures that
   they are, break when it is to their advantage to do so; but fear is
   strengthened by a dread of punishment which is always effective."
   --Machievelli, The Prince; Chapter 17
   "The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination
   of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty
   bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights
   secure."
   --Albert Einstein
   "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single
   experiment can prove me wrong."
   --Albert Einstein
   "If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop
   was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms -- never --
   never -- NEVER! You cannot conquer America!"
   --William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; Speech in the House of Lords,
   November 1777.
   "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never -- in nothing,
   great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to the
   convictions of honor and good sense."
   --Winston Spencer Churchill; Address at Harrow School, October 29,
   1941.
   "Never turn your back on a threatened danger and try to run away from
   it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it
   promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.
   Never run away from anything. Never!"
   --Winston Churchill
   "...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine.
   Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and
   repetitious."
   --Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
   "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success
   unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must
   confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
   --Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
   "God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to
   guard and defend it."
   --Daniel Webster
   "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do
   nothing."
   --Edmund Burke
   "Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free
   men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows."
   --Franklin D. Roosevelt
   "Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget that
   men have died to win them.
   --Franklin D. Roosevelt
   "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart,
   I say, and let us be done with you. In the name of God, go!"
   --Oliver Cromwell, in dissolving Parliament, 1653.
   "Congress may give us a select militia which will, in fact, be a
   standing army -- or Congress, afraid of a general militia, may say
   there shall be no militia at all. When a select militia is formed, the
   people in general may be disarmed."
   --John Smilie
   "Whenever people...entrust the defense of their country to a regular,
   standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power of that country will
   remain under the direction of the most wealthy citizens."
   --"A Framer" in The Independent Gazetteer, 1791
   "We, the People, are the rightful masters of both Congress and the
   courts -- not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who
   pervert the Constitution."
   --Abraham Lincoln
   "What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It
   is not...the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant
   and disciplined army...our reliance is in the love of liberty which
   God has planted in our bosoms."
   --Abraham Lincoln, 1858
   "Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look
   upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
   --Mahatma Ghandi
   "..."The right of the people peacefully to assemble for lawful
   purposes existed long before the adoption of the Constitution of the
   United States. In fact, it is and always has been one of the
   attributes of a free government. It 'derives its sources' to use the
   language of Chief Justice Marshall, in Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat.,
   211, 'from those laws whose authority is acknowledged by civilized men
   throughout the world, wherever civilization exists. The Second
   Amendment declares that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is
   one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the
   powers of the National Government..."
   --UNITED STATES V. CRUIKSHANK; 92 US 542; (1875)
   "The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun ."
   --R. Buckminster Fuller
   "If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian
   control of the military."
   --President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)
   "If a gun bill will pass because of the politics of a situation, you
   must see to it that its burdens are imposed upon a man because of a
   criminal background and not because he is an ordinary citizen and
   perhaps poor."
   --Gen. James H. Doolittle
   "You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
   reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
   the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
   independence."
   --Charles A. Beard
   "The great body of our citizens shoot less as time goes on. We should
   encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all
   classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our
   power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving
   peace in the world...The first step -- in the direction of preparation
   to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come --
   is to teach men to shoot!"
   --President Theodore Roosevelt's last message to Congress
   "Before God I swear this creed: My rifle and myself are the defenders
   of our country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of
   my life. So be it until victory is America's and there is not enemy,
   but Peace!"
   --From "My Rifle" by Maj. Gen. W.H. Rupertus, USMC.
   "The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation!"
   --Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)
   "With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but
   with tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they
   will be certainly be lost."
   --William Lloyd Garrison
   "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
   when the government's purposes are beneficent...the greatest dangers
   to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning
   but without understanding."
   --U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
   "Poor people have access to the courts in the same sense that the
   Christians had access to the lions."
   --Judge Earl Johnson, Jr.
   "It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from
   falling into error."
   --Judge Robert H. Jackson
   "It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon 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 too much ...to forget it."
   --James Madison
   "The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything
   which would be unlawful for them to do themselves."
   --John Locke
   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
   "We preserve our freedoms by using four boxes: soap, ballot, jury, and
   cartridge."
   --Anonymous
   "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never
   will. Find out just what 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 wither
   words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by
   the endurance of those whom they suppress."
   --Frederick Douglas
   "...is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any
   manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second
   Amendment declares that it shall not be infringed, ...it shall not be
   infringed by Congress."
   --Supreme Court (US v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876)
      GOVERNMENT
   "...it is liberty rather than peace, which breeds genuine prosperity
   in a nation."
   --J.J. Rossueau, The Social Contract
   "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -- it is force!"
   --George Washington
   "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom
   of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power
   than by violent and sudden usurpations."
   --James Madison
   "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government
   of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
   --Thomas Jefferson
   "An economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce
   enough revenue to balance the budget -- just as it will never produce
   enough jobs or enough profits."
   --John F. Kennedy
   "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."
   --Thomas Jefferson
   "How does it become a man to act towards the American government
   today? I answer that he cannot, without disgrace, be associated with
   it."
   --Henry David Thoreau, An Essay on Civil Disobedience
   "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
   consent."
   --Abraham Lincoln
      WAR
   "Men since the beginning of time have sought peace...military
   alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn have
   failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The
   utter destructiveness of war not blots out this alternative."
   --Douglas MacArthur
   "The pioneers of a warless world are the men who refuse military
   service."
   --Albert Einstein
   "Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it."
   --George Santayana
   "History teaches us that man learns nothing from history"
   --Hegel
   "Historical myths have perhaps played nearly as great a role in
   shaping opinion as historical facts"
   --F.A. Hayek, Capitalism and the Historians
   "Let us look at the world not as something we have inherited from our
   parents, but as something we have borrowed from our children."
   --Anonymous, Kenya
   "Average is dumb."
   --Harvey Pekar
   "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every
   form of tyranny over the mind of man."
   --Thomas Jefferson
   "God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to
   guard and defend it."
   --Daniel Webster
   "The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution,
   are worth defending at all hazards."
   --Samuel Adams
   "Anyone may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as
   possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay
   the Treasury."
   --Judge Learned Hand, Helvering v. Gregory (1934)
   "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of
   ordinary Americans . . . ."
   --William J. Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993.
   "The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the
   state."
   --Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
   Right
   "In the bureaucracy, the identity of state interest and particular
   private aim is established in such a way that the state interest
   becomes a particular private aim over against other private aims."
   --Karl Marx
   "For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by
   him."
   --Karl Marx
   "The bureaucracy is a circle from which one cannot escape. Its
   hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the
   understanding of detail to the lower levels, whilst the lower levels
   credit the top with understanding of the general, and so all are
   mutually deceived."
   --Karl Marx
   "Any day you're free is a beautiful day."
   --ex-P.O.W. Air Force Col. Jim Lamar, Daily Texan, pg. 1, 1985
   "If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the
   crudest and most stupid things."
   --Adolph Hitler
   "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to
   do nothing."
   --Edmund Burke
   "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
   --Aldous Huxley
   "It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest."
   --Abraham Lincoln
   "Few sometimes know when thousands err."
   --John Milton, Paradise Lost
   "Many thousands of ideas there are which cannot be translated into
   popular phraseology."
   --J.J. Rosseau, The Social Contract
   "Democracies usually collapse not too long after the plebes discover
   that they can vote themselves both bread and circuses ...for a while."
   --Robert Heinlein, Expanded Universe
   "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are
   neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make
   things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they
   serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed
   man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
   --Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria
   "The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people
   of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their
   own arms."
   "Peace without justice is tyranny."
   - old Chinese proverb
   "The object of a Constitution is, to restrain the Government, as that
   of laws is to restrain individuals."
   - John C. Calhoun, Fort Hill Address, reprinted in 6 R. CRALLÉ,
   WORKS OF JOHN C. CALHOUN ___ (Six vols. 1854-59)
   "Your vote isn't a bet on who's going to win the election. It's a
   statement of who you are."
   - Karl Hess, Fundraising Letter written on behalf of the Libertarian
   Party, 11/90.
   "A decided case is worth as much as it weighs in reason and
   righteousness, and no more."
   -Judge Wanamaker, Adams Express Co., v. Beckworth, 100 Ohio St. 348
   (1919).
   It is every American's right, and obligation, to read and interpret
   the Constitution for himself."
   -Benjamin Franklin (from memory).
   "There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among
   the ablest men."
   -Lord Acton (letter to Mary Gladstone).
     "Robert F. Williams, Jr., . . . . had become head of the NAACP
     chapter in Monroe, North Carolina, in 1957. When threatened by the
     local Ku Klux Klan he organized a rifle club of sixty members and
     got it chartered by the National Rifle Association. This was partly
     to get the free ammunition provided NRA members by a grateful
     government, partly also, no doubt, a tribute to both groups' joint
     faith in self-defense. When the Klan organized a motorcade against
     one NAACP member's house, the club drove them off with gunfire. . .
     .
     . . . . He had deeply embarrassed the NAACP. It was bad enough that
     he rejected the nonviolent ethic, worse still that he did so with
     such success. His was the only armed NAACP chapter and, for its
     size, the most effective."
   - William L. O'Neill, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in
   the 1960's, 160-61 (1971).
   "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of
   ordinary Americans . . .."
   -President William Jefferson Clinton, USA TODAY, Mar. 11, 1993.
   Speaking of the 1994 Crime Bill at a press conference on May 6, 1994,
   two days after passage of the bill in the House, President Clinton
   stated, among other things:
   He called the bill "the most significant crime bill ever passed."
   He assured hunters "as long as I am President, those rights will be
   protected."
   "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
   inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government,
   they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their
   revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it."
   -Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
   "I believe the American would prefer the policeman's truncheon to the
   anarchist's bomb."
   -- Vice President Spiro T. Agnew
   "Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is
   the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
   -- William Pitt
   "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws.
   On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property
   existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."
   --Frederic Bastiat
   "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
   "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
   inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government,
   they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their
   revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
   --Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861.
   No one escapes when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails,
   and those who cried, "Appease, appease!" are hanged by those they
   tried to please.