I've collected quotes over the years that serve to instruct, warn, and inspire.
I have gained much from them and hope you do also.

"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs."
Theodore Roosevelt

"The men American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars;
the men they detest most violently are those who try and tell them the truth."
H. L. Mencken

"No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer or quicker."
Theodore Roosevelt

"If we continue to teach about tolerance and intolerance instead of good and evil, we will end up with tolerance of evil."
Dennis Prager

"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
George Washington

"It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the Arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat."
Teddy Roosevelt

"...nuclear warfare is not necessary to cause a breakdown of our society. You take a large city like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago--their water supply comes from hundreds of miles away and any interruption of that, or food, or power for any period of time, you're going to have riots in the streets. Our society is so fragile, so dependent on the interworking of things to provide us with goods and services, that you don't need nuclear warfare to fragment us anymore than the Romans needed it to cause their eventual downfall."
Gene Roddenberry

"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact."
Robert E. Lee, 1863

"An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed."
Norton v. Shelby County, 118 US 425 (1885)

“It’s in our fallen, sinful nature for tyrants to rise up in every nation. And unfortunately, it’s also in our nature that the vast majority in every nation is either too stupid or too apathetic to do anything about it until the tyrants have put up their barbed wire and spilled a lot of blood.”
James Wesley, Rawles, Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse

"The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson

"A king can stand people fighting but he can't last long if people start thinking."
Will Rogers

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
Dwight David Eisenhower

"If a thing is old, it is a sign that it was fit to live. Old families, old customs, old styles survive because they are fit to survive. The guarantee of continuity is quality. Submerge the good in a flood of the new, and good will come back to join the good which the new brings with it. Old-fashioned hospitality, old-fashioned politeness, old-fashioned honor in business had qualities of survival. These will come back." - Eddie Rickenbacker

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does NOT mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country."
Teddy Roosevelt

"As long as a hundred of us remain alive we will never be subject to tyrannical dominion because it is not for glory or riches or honours that we fight, but for freedom alone which no worthy man loses except with his life."
The Declaration of Arbroath 1320

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
H. L. Mencken

Impotentes defendere libertatem non possunt. ("Those without power cannot defend freedom")
motto of Freedom Force

"When small men cast long shadows, it is a sign that the sun is setting."
Venita Craven

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."
Albert Einstein

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today."
Teddy Roosevelt, 1906

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. ... Our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."
Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, August 12, 1945

"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 only of her own."
John Quincy Adams, speaking of America in 1821

"Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."
Thomas Jefferson - August 19, 1785 in a letter to Peter Carr

"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily lives, and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
George Orwell

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Thomas Jefferson, 1816

"It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals."
Felix Frankfurter

"A sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand."
Seneca (the Younger)

"Life is tough. Life is tougher if you're stupid."
John Wayne

"Send them a message."
George C. Wallace

"Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny."
Aristotle

"What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. ... All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... Your interference is doing him positive injury."
abolitionist Frederick Douglass, 1865

"Of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Nazi leader, Hermann Goering (at the Nuremberg Trials, shortly before being sentenced to death)

"Sons of Scotland! I am William Wallace. and I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You've come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight? Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you'll live. At least awhile. And, dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!"
Mel Gibson as William Wallace, speaking to the Scots - outnumbered three to one - on the battlefield at Stirling Bridge, A.D. 1297. (Braveheart, 1995)

"Deny a man the right to defend himself and you deny him all other rights, for what a man has not the right to protect, it cannot be reasonably and intelligently argued he has a right to at all."
Paul Whitcomb

"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own 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

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."
George Washington

"In the beginning of change, the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot"
Mark Twain

"A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie."
Vladimir Lenin

"I think he's an honest man....I think at core he's an honest person....I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things."
CBS News anchor Dan Rather discussing Bill Clinton (05/15/2001, Fox Network)

"If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist."
Joseph Sobran (1995)

"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."
Ayn Rand

"Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body."
Thomas Jefferson

"So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others....When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him—by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own."
Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged, 1957

"Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character."
Henry Clay

"Tolerance is another word for indifference."
W. Somerset Maugham

"These things I believe: That government should butt out. That freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant government will take it all away. That individual freedom demands individual responsibility. That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil. That the executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid. That political parties have become close to meaningless. That government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away. That government should provide for the national defense and work to insure domestic tranquility. That foreign trade should be fair rather than free. That America should be wary of foreign entanglements. That the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That guns do more than protect us from criminals; more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government. That states are the bulwark of our freedom. That states should have the right to secede from the Union. That once a year we should hang someone in government as an example to his fellows."
Lyn Nofziger

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, [1759]
"The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security."
Louis Freeh, FBI Director, [1994]

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
Thomas Jefferson

"I would rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail."
Wendell L. Willkie

"Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered, and the courage with which he maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds."
Charles A. Lindbergh

"Statistically, more small children drown in mop buckets than die from gun accidents."
Columnist Holman Jenkins, Wall Street Journal

"The anti-gun factions constantly say if it saves one life, it's worth it. Well, my firearm saved one life -- mine -- and I promise you my mother thinks it was worth it."
Debra Collins, Colorado state coordinator for Second Amendment Sisters, sponsor of Armed Informed Mothers' March

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests, " I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."
Barry Goldwater

"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'"
Dosteovsky's Grand Inquisitor

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
Alexander Tyler on the fall of the Athenian Republic

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money - only for wanting to keep your own money."
Joseph Sobran

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but down right force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."
Patrick Henry

"There may not be much difference between Democrats and Republicans anymore."
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle (SD) 05/19/1999 discussing gun-control legislation

"Every effort must be made to increase forfeiture income."
Attorney General Richard Thornburgh warning federal prosecutors in 1990 when the Justice Department was falling short of the $470 million in asset forfeitures they had expected. (reported in Nando Times, July 5, 1999)

"The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty." Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute -- get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed."
Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

"The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice."
Mahatma Ghandi

"One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them."
Thomas Sowell

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
"The Inferno" by Dante

Compromise? "The damned use that word in hell."
Shakespeare

"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 until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass.

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history,the stage of rule by brute force."
Ayn Rand - The Nature of Government

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
Robert A. Heinlein

"We are the priests of power - do not forget this, Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power . . . If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face –– forever."
O'Brien, Inner Party member of the collectivist oligarchy and brain washing specialist in the final scene of Orwell's 1984

"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
Thomas Jefferson

"Give me control over a man's economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional heroes, I'll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to."
Benjamin A. Rooge

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."
Ronald Reagan

"Patriots are not revolutionaries trying to overthrow government. Patriots are counter-revolutionaries trying to prevent government from overthrowing the U.S. Constitution."
Author unknown

"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 constitutional rights secure."
Albert Einstein

"Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive."
Sidney Hook

"Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice to the act."
The Talmud

"If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed. If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people."
Chinese Proverb

"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
Richard Henry Lee

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go around repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence."
Charles A. Beard

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis,
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)

"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew...Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up."
Reverend Martin Neimoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the Gestapo in 1937

"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time."
Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke

"When a strong man armed, keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace."
Luke 11:21 (KJV)

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, a dangerous servant, and a fearful master."
George Washington

"The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended."
Frederic Bastiat

"Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free."
Montesquieu

"... America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
Alexis de Tocqueville

"Sound money and free banking are not impossible; they are merely illegal. Freedom of money and freedom of banking ... are the principles that must guide our steps."
Hans F. Sennholz

"The task must be to banish from mankind's thought the idea that anybody has the right to use force against righteousness, against justice, against mutual agreements."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
Edmund Burke

"If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it."
Charles F. Kettering

"The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."
Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903)

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."
William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830)

"Competition in the service of consumers is the one and only sure way to produce a prosperity permanently spiraling upward. All political spendings for purposes beyond the protection of life and property are a snare and a delusion."
Percy L Greaves, Jr. (1906 - 1984)

"It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth."
John Locke (1632 - 1704)

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
James Madison

"Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men."
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895)

"The Constitution is the origin and measure of legislative authority. It says to legislators, thus far ye shall go and no farther. Not a particle of it should be shaken; not a pebble of it should be removed ..."
Justice William Paterson (1745 - 1806)

"All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellowmen in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the burden of life from their own shoulders upon those of others."
William Graham Sumner (1840 - 1910)

"We have had so many years of prosperity, we have passed through so many difficulties and dangers without the loss of liberty - that we begin to think that we hold it by divine right from heaven itself ... It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty."
John C. Calhoun

"The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about [moral] values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation."
C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections (1943)

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt, speech before the Hamilton Club, Chicago, [April 10, 1899]

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
Thomas Jefferson, to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland [March 31, 1809]

"[G]overnment's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
Ronald Reagan, remarks to the White House Conference on Small Business, August 15, 1986

"The theory is that election to Congress is tantamount to being dispatched to Washington on a looting raid for the enrichment of your state or district, and no other ethic need inhibit the feeding frenzy."
George Will, "Oread Review"

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
William Pitt, speech to the House of Commons, [Nov. 18, 1783]

"Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "From Under the Rubble"

"European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "From Under the Rubble"

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Sir Edmund Burke, attributed

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Barry Goldwater, Acceptance Speech at the Republican Convention; 1964

"This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."
Ronald Reagan's Speech at the 1964 National Convention: A Time for Choosing

"One man with courage makes a majority"
Andrew Jackson

"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins."
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; Case of Wilkes Speech

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address; March 4, 1801

"It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be."
Sir Francis Bacon.

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
P.J. O'Rourke

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed--unlike citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animated contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, Great Quotations

"... The necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is to divide the community into two great classes, one consisting of those who, in reality, pay taxes and, of course, bear exclusively the burden of supporting the government; and the other, of those who are then recipients of their proceeds through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or in fewer words, divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers."
John C. Calhoun - 1833

"A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death."
Thomas Hobbes, 17th century English political philosopher

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which... historically has proven to be always possible."
United States Senator Hubert Humphrey

"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."
Noah Webster, author, An American Dictionary of the English Language

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms... serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
Ceasare Beccaria, 18th century criminologist

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."
Mahatma Gandhi, Indian political leader

"In countries under arbitrary government, the people oppressed and dispirited neither possess arms nor know how to use them. Tyrants never feel secure until they have disarmed the people."
Unknown author, from the Connecticut Courant, 1788

"The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. [...] They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results."
Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, 1923

"Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't."
(Bumper sticker)

"If our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right."
Cicero, Roman orator, 1st century B.C.

"It is only the athiest who adopts success as the criterion of right."
Robert Lewis Dabney

"Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less."
Robert E. Lee

"You may be whatever you resolve to be."
Thomas Stonewall Jackson

"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
Thomas Jefferson

"All that the South has ever desired was that the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth."
Gen. Robert E. Lee

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
Winston Churchill

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
Winston Churchill

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

"What luck for rulers, that men do not think."
Adolph Hitler

"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 leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category."
Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf, vol. 1, ch. 3 (1925))

"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one."
Adolph Hitler

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us."
P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
John F. Kennedy, 1962

"If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence."
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1698

"The history of liberty is a history of resistance."
Woodrow Wilson

"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."
Sir Winston Churchill, 1941, Address at Harrow School

"When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen’s constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all."
Justice William O. Douglas

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
Albert Einstein, Quoted in Saturday Review obituary, 1955

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Benjamin Franklin, 1776, After signing the Declaration of Independence

"No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution.…Revolution is but thought carried into action."
Emma Goldman, Anarchism, 1917

"The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to “create” rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting."
Justice William J. Brennan, 1982

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty."
Adolph Hitler, 1938

"The people of the various provinces are strictly 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."
Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi, August 29, 1558

"The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defence. 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 balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside.... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; ...the weak will become prey of the strong."
Thomas Paine

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..."
Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)

"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation [of power] first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence."
Thomas Jefferson

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed persons can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has..."
Margaret Mead

"We could have pursued no other course without dishonour. And as sad as the results have been, if it had all to be done over again, we should be compelled to act in precisely the same manner."
General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A.

Definition of a Gentleman - "The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman. The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly -- the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others."
General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A

"Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free."
Author unknown

"Truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter."
"A loss of courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days..."
"Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Commencement address at Harvard University, June 8, 1978

"Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom."
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859

"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable."
Thomas Jefferson

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the Body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. 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 walks."
Thomas Jefferson

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Joseph Stalin

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"We trained hard...but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
Petronius Arbiter, c. 60 AD.

"There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world."
Thomas Jefferson

"Peace proposals unaccompanied by a sworn covenant indicate a plot."
Sun Tzu [The Art of War]

"We have awakened a sleeping giant and instilled in it a terrible resolve."
Admiral Isoroku Yamamato, December 7, 1941

"It is not the evil itself which is horrifying about our times -- it is the way we not only tolerate evil, but have made a cult of positively worshipping weakness, depravity, rottenness and evil itself."
George Lincoln Rockwell

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
Thomas Jefferson

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
Aldous Huxley, Proper Studies

"It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
"The Man in the Arena"

"To ignore the evidence, and hope that it cannot be true, is more an evidence of mental illness."
William Blase

"Only two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein

"There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle."
Albert Einstein

"A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
Kierkegaard

"A nation of well-informed men, who have been taught to know and prize the rights that God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins!"
Benjamin Franklin

"Who owns the youth owns the future!"
Adolf Hitler

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
Rich Cook

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

“There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections....”
Samuel Adams

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand....The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

"Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; The next best they love and praise The next they fear; And the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, Some will lose faith in them, And then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, The people all remark, 'We have done it ourselves.'"
Lao-Tzu (6th century B.C.), Chinese philosopher. The Wisdom of Laotse, ch. 17 (ed. and tr. by Lin Yutang, 1948).

"Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created."
Ludwig von Mises ("Socialism", 1922)

"My pet, the world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business."
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949), U.S. novelist. Rhett Butler, in Gone with the Wind, vol. 2, pt. 4, ch. 47 (1936).

"When you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"He who knows best knows how little he knows."
Thomas Jefferson

"If there is going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it is going to be us. The FBI."
FBI Supervisory Special Agent Paul George, 4/6/2000, computer privacy meeting, Toronto Canada

"When you disarm your subjects you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

A Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.
A Republic: The flock gets to vote for which wolves vote on dinner.
A Constitutional Republic: Voting on dinner is expressly forbidden, and the sheep are armed.
Federal Government: The means by which the sheep will be fooled into voting for a Democracy.
Author unknown

"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

"Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy, that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; learn from Northern school books their version of the war; and taught to regard our gallant dead as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects of derision."
Gen. Patrick Cleburne, Confederate States of America

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
John Swinton, former Chief of Staff at the New York Times, New York Press Club, 1953

"Great leaders never tell people how to do their jobs. Great leaders tell people what to do and establish a framework within which it must be done. Then they let people on the front lines, who know best, figure out how to get it done."
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back. You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more."
Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)

Five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the war, nine died from wounds suffered in the war. Carter Braxton, a merchant, saw his ships swept from the sea by the British, sold his home to pay his debts and died in rags. Thomas McKeam died pennyless after serving in congress without pay. Vandals and soldiers of the British Army ravaged the homes of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Rutledge, Middleton. Thomas Nelson Jr. urged George Washington to fire upon his home after it was captured by General Cornwallis, the home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Frances Lewis had his home and property destroyed, his wife was jailed and died there in a few months. John Hart was driven from his dying wife's bedside. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His property was destroyed. After living in the woods for a year he returned home to find his wife had died, his children vanished, he died a few weeks later. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.

"When the Cambrian measures were forming, they promised perpetual peace,
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed they sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 'Stick to the Devil you know.'"
Rudyard Kipling

The Winston Churchill collection:

"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite" -- Winston Churchill 

Lady Astor: "Winston, if I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee." 
Winston: "Nancy, if I were your husband I'd drink it." 

"A modest man, who has much to be modest about." -- Winston Churchill On Clement Atlee 

"The Americans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives." -- Winston Churchill 

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -- Winston Churchill 

"One ought never to turn one's 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 

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." -- Winston Churchill 

"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." -- Winston Churchill 

"Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry." -- Winston Churchill 

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." -- Winston Churchill 

"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack." -- Winston Churchill 

"If you're going through hell, keep going." -- Winston Churchill 

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." -- Winston Churchill 

"There is no such thing as a good tax." -- Winston Churchill 

"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly." -- Winston Churchill 

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." -- Winston Churchill 

"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones." -- Winston Churchill 

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened." -- Winston Churchill 

"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber." -- Winston Churchill 

"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." -- Winston Churchill 

"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it." -- Winston Churchill 

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." -- Winston Churchill 

"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." -- Winston Churchill 

"We (The British) have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy." -- Winston Churchill 

"What kind of a people do they (Japan) think we are? Is it possible they do not realise that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?" -- Winston Churchill

"Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: "We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls." -- Winston Churchill 

"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." -- Winston Churchill 

"We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old." -- Winston Churchill 

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour." -- Winston Churchill 

"We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air--war with all our might and with all the strength God has given us--and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy." -- Winston Churchill 

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." -- Winston Churchill 

"If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -- Winston Churchill 

"To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!...Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder." -- Winston Churchill

"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him."
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The Captain
Captain, what do you think, I asked, of the part your soldiers play?
The Captain answered, I do not think. I do not think, I obey!
Do you think you should shoot a patriot down and help a tyrant slay?
The Captain answered, I do not think. I do not think, I obey!
Do you think your conscience was meant to die and your brains to rot away?
The Captain answered, I do not think. I do not think, I obey!
Then if this is your soldiers code, I cried, your mean unmanly crew,
And for all of your equipment, guns and braid, I'm more of a man than you.
For whatever my lot on earth may be and whether I swim or sink,
I can say with pride - I do not obey. I do not obey - I think!

Author unknown
(thanks to Louis Beam for this poem)