The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins."
-- H.L. Mencken, 1923
"The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion." -- Edmund Burke, 1784
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."
-- Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel-Prize-winning economist.
"There is scarcely a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the people's money, then all their lands and then make them and their children servants forever."
-- Benjamin Franklin
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therfore, to resolve to conquer or die.” - Address to the Continental Army before the battle of Long Island (August 27, 1776)
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." -- Edward Abbey
"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." -- John Bradshaw (1602-1659)
"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 further obedience." -- John Locke, 1690
"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." -- George Washington, in his First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
"If your most basic right is the right to life, then it seems obvious to me that you have the right to defend your life. Guns are, in this century, the most effective means of doing so - so effective that every genocide has only been carried out against victims who were disarmed by their governments." -- William G. Hartwell