quotes

The ultimate defense of our liberties is in three boxes:

* the ballot box
* the jury box
* the ammo box.

When the first two failed them, the Founders had to reluctantly turn to the third. I hope we never have to resort to it again. But it is one of the reasons for the 2nd Amendment.

The nobler the language, the more nefarious the purpose of any legal instrument.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

It astonishes me to find...[that so many] of our countrymen...should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty... which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries.

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

You cannot kill a breeze, a wind, a fragrance, you cannot kill a dream or an ambition. God, manufactured by mortals in their own quintessential image, exists only to make daily life bearable despite the path that every one of us treads toward extinction. As long as men are obliged to die, some of them, unable to endure the prospect, will concoct fond illusions. We cannot assassinate or kill an illusion. In fact, illusion is more likely to kill us — for God puts to death everything that stands up to him, beginning with reason, intelligence, and the critical mind. All the rest follows in a chain reaction.

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

go to work, send your kids to school
follow fashion, act normal
walk on the pavement, watch T.V.
save for you old age, obey the law

repeat after me: i am free

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, "Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down. Amen!"

If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Just as ideals do not depend on pieces of paper, freedom has no natural native soil.

When all government, 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.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.