Quotes

For Anyone Who Loves Freedom:

James Madison

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this Land it will be in the Guise of Fighting a Foreign Enemy.”

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”

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

“We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations… the means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”

“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.”

John Adams

“Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.”

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

“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.”

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

“Power always thinks… that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”

“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. “

Thomas Jefferson

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.”

“Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.”

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.” 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:320

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

“I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.”

“We are overdone with banking institutions, which have banished the precious metals, and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium. . . These have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness. . . [These] are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.”

“This fictitious capital . . . is now to be lost, and to fall on somebody; it [the bank] must take on those who have property to meet it, and probably on the less cautious part, who, not aware of the impending catastrophe, have suffered themselves to contract, or to be in debt, and must now sacrifice their property of a value many times the amount of the debt. We have been truly sowing the wind, and are now reaping the whirlwind.”

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. “

“Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is their interest to go to war. Were the money which it has cost to gain, at the close of a long war, a little town or a little territory, the right to cut wood here or to catch fish, (or drill oil) there, expended in improving what they already possess, in making roads, opening rivers, building ports, improving the arts and finding employment for their idle poor, it would render them much stronger, much wealthier and happier. This I hope will be our wisdom.” — Notes on Virginia Q.XXII, 1782

“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.” ~ Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824. ME 16:73

George Washington

“We should avoid. . . the depreciation of our currency; but I conceive this end would be answered, as far as might be necessary, by stipulating that all money payments should be made in gold and silver, being the common medium of commerce among nations.”

“It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

Alexander Hamilton

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.”

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.”
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Norman Vincent Peale

“There was a time when the American people roared like lions for liberty, now they bleat like sheep for security. The solution for America’s problem is not in terms of big government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but God.”

Ron Paul

“We can achieve much more in peace than we can ever achieve in these needless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars.”

“Don’t we know if we sacrifice security for liberty we lose both, that’s what is happening in this country today!”

“If you look at every problem we’re facing today its because for the lack of rule of law and the constitution.”

“We live way beyond our means, with a foreign policy we can’t afford and an entitlement system that we have encouraged.”

“NO! I’m saying that we should take our marching orders from our Constitution!”

“…[the neo-cons] said we’d be in-and-out in 3 months, it’d be ducksoup, and it wouldn’t cost a thing because the oil would pay for it.”

“When we make a mistake, it is up to the people through their representatives to correct the mistake, not continue the mistake.”

“We stood up to the Soviets when they had 40,000 nuclear weapons, and now we’re fretting about third-world countries with no Army, Navy, or Air Force, and we’re getting ready to go to war.”

“I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas.”

“The freedom message unites us all, it does not divide us.”

“Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies”

“Terrorism is a tactic. You can’t have a war on a tactic”

“Freedom Is Popular!”

“Aggressive wars, income taxes, national IDs, domestic spying, torture regimes, secret prisons, Federal Reserve manipulation — we don’t have to take it any more.” — Ron Paul, Sept 27, 2007

On foreign policy:
“If we think we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred then we have a problem. . .”

On Romney consulting lawyers for war:
“This idea of consulting lawyers absolutely baffles me– Why don’t we open the constitution and read it! You’re not allowed to go to war without a declaration!”

On the Iraq war:
“We just marched in, we can just march out.”

“How many more have to die so we can save face?”

“Let me see if I get this right. We need to borrow $10 billion from China, and then we give it to Musharraf, who is a military dictator, who overthrew an elected government. And then we go to war, we lose all these lives promoting democracy in Iraq. I mean, what’s going on here?”