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"When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot easily be cured of it."
-- The New York Times, in a 1909 editorial opposing the very first income tax

• It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. -Voltaire

• If the State of Louisiana can not get by with less money, how do they expect the hard working people of Louisiana to. -C.R.LeBlanc (: Quote of the year on the Moon Griffon Talk Show :) 

• "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection."
  -- John Stuart Mill
  
• "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, speech to the Virginia Convention, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775
  
• "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse 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."
  -- Alexander Tyler

• "As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."
  -- James Madison, National Gazette essay, March 27, 1792

• "Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
  -- James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788

• "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; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow."
  -- James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788

• "We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."
  -- James Madison, Speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 6, 1787

• "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
  With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.

• In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
  -- James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

• "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
  --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817

• "That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
  -- George Mason, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776

• "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, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

• "the true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best . . . (for) when all government . . . shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as . . . oppressive as the government from which we separated."
  --Thomas Jefferson

• "The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "We must confine ourselves to the powers described in the Constitution, and the moment we pass it, we take an arbitrary stride towards a despotic Government."
  -- James Jackson, First Congress, 1st Annals of Congress, 489

• "An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books."
  --Thomas Jefferson, 1813

• "All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
  -- James Madison in The Federalist

• "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
  -- Abraham Lincoln, October 16, 1854

• "We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute."
  -- Thomas Paine

• Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic ... That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
  -- James Madison, 1799

• RESOLVED: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers:
  That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
  -- Thomas Jefferson, 1799

• "You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; right derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe."
  -- John Adams

• "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 a right to deprive them of."
  -- Albert Gallatin, New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789

• "Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
  -- Ben Franklin, Respectfully Quoted, p. 201, Suzy Platt, Barnes & Noble, 1993

• "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
  -- Mark Twain, 1894

• "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that, if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too."
  -- William Somerset Maughan, 1941

• "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."
  -- James Madison, Federal No. 45, January 26, 1788

• "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1791

• "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, May 27, 1788

• "A wise and frugal government ... 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, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

• "Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which as not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind."
  -- James Wilson, Lectures on Laws, 1791

• "It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot be separated."
  -- James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, December 2, 1829

• "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions." James Madison, "Letter to Edmund Pendleton,"
  -- James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

• "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own."
  -- James Madison, National Gazette, March 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14 ed. R.A. Rutland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 266.

• "I see,... and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power... It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic."
  -- Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1825. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 16:146

• "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Q. XIII, 1782. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors ME 2:163

• "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
  -- Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 15:332

• "The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration and Protest of Virginia, 1825. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 17:445

• "Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors ME 17:387

• "The only greater [evil] than separation... [is] living under a government of discretion."
  -- Thomas Jefferson to William Gordon, 1826. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 10:358

• "[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 2:178

• "Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 17:380

• The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 2:221

• [T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.
  -- James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 6, 1788, Elliot's Debates (in the American Memory collection of the Library of Congress)

• It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration, and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the general government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the 4th resolution.
  -- James Madison, Proposing Bill of Rights to House, June 8, 1789

• "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 to himself."
  -- Thomas Paine

• That we will, at all times hereafter, consider ourselves as a free and independent state, capable of regulating our internal police, in all and every respect whatsoever -- and that the people on said Grants have the sole and exclusive and inherent right of ruling and governing themselves in such manner and form as in their own wisdom they shall think proper...
  -- Vermont Declaration of Independence, January 15, 1777

• " The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
  -- James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1794

• "The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights."
  -- H.L. Mencken

• "The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
  -- H.L. Mencken

• In a famous incident in 1854, President Franklin Pierce was pilloried for vetoing an extremely popular bill intended to help mentally ill. The act was championed by the renowned 19th century social reformer Dorothea Dix. In the face of heavy criticism, Pierce countered: "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for the public charity." To approve such spending, argued Pierce, "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."

• "Study the Constitution. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislatures, and enforced in courts of justice."
  -- Abraham Lincoln

• "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."
  --John Stuart Mill

• "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

• "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse 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."
  -- Professor Alexander Tytler over 200 years ago
  

• "If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?"
  -- South Carolina Senator William Draden 1828

• "When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot easily be cured of it."
  -- The New York Times, in a 1909 editorial opposing the very first income tax

• "For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute."
  -- H.L. Mencken

• "The State is great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."
  -- Frederic Bastiat

• "Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot.
  Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman.
  But, alas, I repeat myself."
  -- Mark Twain

• "To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
  --French socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Beverley Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), p.294

• "Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws."
  -- Thurgood Marshall, 1947

• "It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."
  -- Robert Houghwout Jackson, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge at the War-Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg

• "I would have government defend the life and property of all citizens equally; protect all willing exchange; suppress and penalize all fraud, all misrepresentation, all violence, all predatory practices; invoke a common justice under law; and keep the records incidental to these functions. Even this is a bigger assignment than governments, generally, have proven capable of. Let governments do these things and do them well. Leave all else to men in free and creative effort."
  -- Leonard E. Read, Freedom Daily, page 35, March 2001

• "The moment a person forms a theory his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Charles Thompson, September 20, 1787 in The Works of Thomas Jefferson, edited Paul L. Ford, Volume 5, Page 352, New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1904

• "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
  -- Alexis de Tocqueville

• "Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we 'ought to have known better,' is to be treated as a human person made in God's image."
  -- C.S. Lewis

• "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "He who dares not offend cannot be honest."
  -- Thomas Paine

• "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
  -- George Washington

• "...the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its
  jurisdiction."
  -- James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention [June 6, 1788]

• "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country"
  -- Nathan Hale (Sept 22, 1776, before being executed as a spy by the British)

• When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
  -- Benjamin Franklin

• ...[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
  --James Madison

• "No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous."
  -- Benjamin Franklin, Principles of Trade, 1774

• "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

• "Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

• "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
  --Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

• "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 to himself."
  -- Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791

• "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
  -- Representative Robert Goodloe Harper, Address, June 18, 1798 (Harper was the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means)

• "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it."
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 4, September 11, 1777

• "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."
  -- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787

• "To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
  -- George Washington, First Annual Message, January 8, 1790

• "The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratic council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor."
  -- John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson [November 13, 1815]

• 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

• "One single object. . . [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Livingston, March 25, 1825

• "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, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

• "To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

• " I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. 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."
  -- Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1776

• "The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated."
  -- Thomas Sowell

• "The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder."
  -- Ralph W. Sockman

• "[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia [1782]

• "Only a mediocre person is always at his best."
  -- W. Somerset Maugham

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

• "Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
  -- Thomas Sowell

• "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
  -- Milton Friedman

• "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. "
  -- Winston Churchill

• "When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
  -- Jonathan Swift

• "It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil."
  -- Friedrich A. Hayek

• "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. "
  -- Will Rogers

• "... 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. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or to forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because in the opinions of others to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. "
  -- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty [1859]

• "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. "
  -- Mark Twain (1866)

• "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; .... The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. "
  -- Frederick Douglass

• "The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs."
  -- F.A. Hayek

• "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection."
  -- John Stuart Mill
  

What the Framers said about our Second Amendment
Rights to Keep and Bear Arms

• "Whereas civil-rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as 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 their private arms."
  -- Tench Coxe, in Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution

• "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
  -- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188

• If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual State. In a single State, if the persons entrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.
  -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28
  

• "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 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850)

• "[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
  --James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46

• "To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws."
  --John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)

• "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 body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."
  --Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

• "Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American...[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."
  --Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

• "Whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it."
  --Richard Henry Lee, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

• "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."
  -- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356

• "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Proposal Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334,[C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950]

• "The right of the people to keep and bear ... arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country ..."
  -- James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789

• "What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty .... 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

• " ... to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
  -- George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380

• " ... but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights ..."
  -- Alexander Hamilton speaking of standing armies in Federalist 29

• "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 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 great object is, that every man be armed ... Every one who is able may have a gun."
  -- Patrick Henry, Elliot, p.3:386

• "O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone ..."
  -- Patrick Henry, Elliot p. 3:50-53, in Virginia Ratifying Convention demanding a guarantee of the right to bear arms

• "The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them."
  -- Zacharia Johnson, delegate to Virginia Ratifying Convention, Elliot, 3:645-6

• "Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms ... 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 proven to be always possible."
  -- Hubert H. Humphrey, Senator, Vice President, 22 October 1959

• "The militia is the natural defense of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpation of power by rulers. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally ... enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
  -- Joseph Story, Supreme Court Justice, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, p. 3:746-7, 1833

• " ... most attractive to Americans, the possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave, it being the ultimate means by which freedom was to be preserved."
  -- James Burgh, 18th century English Libertarian writer, Shalhope, The Ideological Origins of the Second Amendment, p.604

• "The right [to bear arms] is general. It may be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia, as has been explained elsewhere, consists of those persons who, under the laws, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon.... [I]f the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of the guarantee might be defeated altogether by the action or the neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose. But this enables the government to have a well regulated militia; for to bear arms implies something more than mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in so doing the laws of public order."
  -- Thomas M. Cooley, General Principles of Constitutional Law, Third Edition [1898]

• "And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress ... to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.... "
  --Samuel Adams

• "The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit."
  -- Samuel Gompers
  

• "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles ... that we are unable to think about reality."
  -- Bill Clinton, USA Today, 11 March 93, pg. 2A

• "The last time I checked, the Constitution said 'of the people, by the people and for the people'. That's what the Declaration of Independence says."
  -- Reuters News Agency
  ** Note: actually those words are in neither of those documents, but part of The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

• "We are taking the law and bending it as far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns [to ban]"
  -- Jose Cerda, Los Angeles Times, 22 Oct. 1997, Mr. Cerda was named as a White House Official who specializes in gun control

• "Gun registration is not enough."
  -- Janet Reno, U.S. Attorney General, Associated Press 10 Dec 1993

• "I want to make it as hard as possible. Gun owners would have to be evaluated by how they scored on written and firing tests, and have to pass the tests in order to own a gun. And I would tax the guns, bullets and the license itself very heavily."
  -- Jocelyn Elders, U.S. Surgeon General, Mother Jones magazine, Jan/Feb '94

• "Armas para que?" ("Guns, for what?")
  -- Fidel Castro, a response to a Cuban citizens who said the people might need to keep their guns, after Castro announced strict gun control in Cuba

• "I have made it considerably tougher for residents to get handgun permits."
  -- Joseph McNamara, Police Chief, San Jose, CA, in his book Safe and Sane, 1984

• "The second article of amendment (Second Amendment) to the Constitution of the United States is repealed."
  -- U.S. House Joint Resolution 438 introduced 11 March 1992 by Congressman Owens, D-NY

• " ... we could tax them [firearms] out of existence."
  -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. Senator, Washington Post, 4 Nov 93

• "If it were up to me we'd ban them all [firearms]."
  -- Mel Reynolds, U.S. Congressman, CNN Crossfire, 9 Dec 93

• "We're going to have to take this one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily - given the political realities - going to be very modest. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal - total control of all guns- is going to take time ... The final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition - except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs and licensed gun collectors - totally illegal."
  -- Nelson T. Shields III, Founder of Handgun Control, Inc., New Yorker Magazine, p. 57-58, 26 Jul 1976

• "There is no personal right to be armed for private purposes unrelated to the service in a well regulated militia."
  -- Sarah Brady, Chairman, Handgun Control, Inc., Richmond Times-Dispatch, 6 Jun 97, pg. 6

• "We must reverse this psychology (of needing guns for home defense). WE can do it by passing a law that says anyone found in possession a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail-period!"
  -- Carl Rowan, Washington DC Syndicated Columnist, 1981 article

• " ... as long as authorities leave this society awash in drugs and guns, I will protect my family."
  -- Carl Rowan, 1988 article titled "At Least They're Not Writing My Obituary"

• "Men possess handguns in order to compensate for sexual dysfunction."
  -- Dr. Joyce Brothers, Psychiatrist, TV personality
  ** her husband is among NYC elite that has been issued a permit to carry a concealed handgun

• "Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority. Firearms and ammunition found in a Jew's possession will be forfeited to the government without compensation ... Whoever willfully or negligently violates the provisions ... will be punished with imprisonment and a fine.
  -- Nazi Law, Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons, 11 Nov 1938, German Minister of the Interior

• "Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, or morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, 1816

• "I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil."
  -- Patrick Henry, letter to Robert Pleasants, January 18, 1773

• "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

• "[The Convention] thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men."
  -- James Madison, Records of the Convention, August 25, 1787

• "There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it."
  -- George Washington, letter to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786

• "We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."
  -- James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 6, 1787

• "Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States ... I have, throughout my whole life, held the practice of slavery in ... abhorrence."
  -- John Adams, letter to Robert Evans, June 8, 1819

• "It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused."
  --John Jay, letter to R. Lushington, March 15, 1786

• Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves.
  -- James Madison, Letter to R. H. Lee, July 17, 1785 (Madison, 1865, I, page 161)

• [W]e must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property. In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another, the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others, the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property.
  -- James Madison, Federalist, no. 54

• American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing the evil.
  -- James Madison, State of the Union,1810

• It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to truth; due to the sympathies of our nature; in fine, to our character as a people, both abroad and at home, that they should be considered, as much as possible, in the light of human beings, and not as mere property. As such, they are acted on by our laws, and have an interest in our laws. They may be considered as making a part, though a degraded part, of the families to which they belong.
  -- James Madison, Speech in the Virginia State Convention of 1829-30, on the Question of the Ratio of Representation in the two Branches of the Legislature, December 2, 1829.

• Outlets for the freed blacks are alone wanted for the erasure of the blot from our Republican character.
  -- James Madison, Letter to General La Fayette, February 1, 1830.

• [I]f slavery, as a national evil, is to be abolished, and it be just that it be done at the national expense, the amount of the expense is not a paramount consideration.
  -- James Madison, Letter to Robert J. Evans

• In contemplating the pecuniary resources needed for the removal of such a number to so great a distance [freed slaves to Africa], my thoughts and hopes have long been turned to the rich fund presented in the western lands of the nation . . ."
  -- James Madison, Letter to R. R. Gurley, December 28, 1831.