Famous Quotes

If you know of any other good quotes to put here, comment to this blog entry or send me an email. Tons of more famous quotes here.

• Winston Churchill
• A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
• A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
• Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
• Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
• If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
• Never, never, never give up.
• Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
• The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.
• The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of a civilization. We must have a desire to rehabilitate into the world of industry, all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment.

• James Madison

• All men having power ought to be mistrusted.
• As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
• Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.
• 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.
• If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
• If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
• It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
• 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.
• Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
• Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
• Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
• No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
• Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
• Such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
• The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
• The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right.
• 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.
• The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
• The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
• The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
• The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.
• The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
• The proposed Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both.
• We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
• What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
• What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

• Benjamin Franklin

• They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
• Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.
• The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.
• The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.
• Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
• Half a truth is often a great lie.
• Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
• Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

• Thomas Jefferson

• Our principles are founded on the immovable basis of equal right and reason.
• An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental.
• The most sacred of the duties of a government is to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.
• The best principles of our republic is secure to all its citizens a perfect equality of rights.
• What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.
• I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
• Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.

• Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf)

• The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.
• All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.
• All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.
• By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.
• Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.
• He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.
• Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator - by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
• If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
• Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
• The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.
• The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.
• The great mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
• The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

• Margaret Mead

• A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, its the only thing that ever has.

• Abraham Lincoln

• The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
• I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
• These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people
• If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax
• The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
• I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down...
• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
• The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
• Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
• To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men
• America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

• George Washington

• Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
• Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.
• Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
• Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
• Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.
• If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
• It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.
• Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.
• Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
• The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon. (Unlike our own government)
• The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

• Martin Luther King

• A right delayed is a right denied.
• Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
• Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
• Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
• Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
• He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
• History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
• I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
• I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
• I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
• Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
• Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
• That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
• The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

• George W. Bush

• A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.
• America is the land of the second chance - and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
• America stands for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness and for the unalienable right for life. This right to life cannot be granted or denied by government because it does not come from government, it comes from the creator of life.
• Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
• I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.
• I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom.
• Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.
• We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.
• You can't put democracy and freedom back into a box.
• You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

• Alexander Hamilton

• Nothing is more common than for a free people, in times of heat and violence, to gratify momentary passions, by letting into the government principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. Of this kind is the doctrine of disqualification, disfranchisement, and banishment by acts of the legislature. The dangerous consequences of this power are manifest. If the legislature can disfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure by general descriptions, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion all those whom particular circumstances render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government, would be a mockery of common sense.
• I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.
• Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

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