More or less favorite quotations...in no particular order, but I really like the highlighted ones...
I do not mean to imply that I agree with every nuance of every quotation, but rather that they are worthy of consideration.
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." -- Voltaire
"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty. Now we bleat like sheep for security" -- Norman Vincent Peale
"What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner 'I stand for consensus'?" -- Margaret Thatcher
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation... -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error." -- Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Judge, in American Communications Association v. Douds, May 1950
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." -- Henry David Thoreau
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. 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 with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." -- William Pitt, in a speech to the House of Commons in 1783.
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." -- Patrick Henry, Virginia's Ratification convention, 1788
"Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent." -- Napoleon
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams
"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it ever come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence." - Daniel Webster
"The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"Those who say that all cultures are equal never explain why the results of those cultures are so grossly unequal." -- Thomas Sowell
"Moral relativists are staunchly uncertain, adamantly indecisive, self-righteously impotent and defiantly irrelevant." -- Rick Gaber
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.--John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
"That government is best which governs least, because its people discipline themselves." -Thomas Jefferson
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~ George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists
"It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny." ~ James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat, 1838
"Our policy is simple: We are not going to betray our friends, reward the enemies of freedom, or permit fear and retreat to become American policies. ... None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong. It is weakness ... that invites adventurous adversaries to make mistaken judgments." -- President Ronald Reagan
"Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world." - Daniel Webster, 1851
"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint." - Daniel Webster; 1847
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine
Inscribed on our Hallowed LIBERTY BELL are these words: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. We Paid the Price ONCE!"
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson
"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson
"No government is respectable which is not just. Without unspotted purity of
public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery
of laws, can give dignity to political society." -- Daniel Webster
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion
and morality are indispensable supports. It is impossible to rightly govern the
world without God and the Bible." -- George Washington
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the
minds of men that these liberties are the Gift of God? That they are not to be
violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect
that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious
sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be entrusted on any other
foundation than religious principle, not any government secure which is not
supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them
good citizens." -- Daniel Webster
"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one
indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of
Christianity." -- John Quincy Adams
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was
founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the
gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been
afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." -- Patrick Henry
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." -- William Penn
"There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men." -- Edmund Burke
"None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom, but
license." -- John Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649
"Only a virtuous people are capable of
freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of
masters." -- Benjamin Franklin
"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
"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded." -- C.L. De Montesquieu; The Spirit of the Laws, VIII
"The tone and tendency of liberalism...is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress." -- Benjamin Disraeli; Speech In London; June 24, 1872
An armed society is a polite society. -- Robert Heinlein
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. -- Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
"The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it." -- Woodrow Wilson; Speech in New York; Sept. 9, 1912
"To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." -- Theodore Roosevelt
“Liberals hate America, they hate "flag-wavers," they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam (post 9/11). Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now.” -- Ann Coulter
Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. -- Ann Coulter
We've finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don't want to fight it. They would, except it would put them on the same side as the United States. -- Ann Coulter
While the form of treachery varies slightly from case to case, liberals always manage to take the position that most undermines American security. -- Ann Coulter
"Interestingly, the elite (and increasingly unwatched) media always make "mistakes" in the same direction. They never move too quickly to report a story unfavorable to liberals." -- Ann Coulter
Whenever you come across a screw-up this big, you know the government is behind it." -- Ann Coulter
"On Sept. 11, 2001, when Bush had been in office for barely seven months, 3,000 Americans were murdered in a savage terrorist attack on U.S. soil by Muslim extremists. Since then, Bush has won two wars against countries that harbored Muslim fanatics, captured Saddam Hussein, immobilized Osama bin Laden, destroyed al-Qaida's base, and begun to create the only functioning democracy in the Middle East other than Israel. Democrats opposed it all – except their phony support for war with Afghanistan, which they immediately complained about and said would be a Vietnam quagmire. And now they claim to be outraged that in the months before 9-11, Bush did not do everything Democrats opposed doing after 9-11. What a surprise." -- Ann Coulter
The greater the desire to perform humanitarian deeds through legislation, the greater the violence required to achieve it." - Ron Paul
""What passes for "constitutional law" can be fairly summarized as: Heads we win, tails you lose. The only limit on liberal insanity in this country is how many issues liberals can get before a court." -- Ann Coulter
"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.' " -- Ronald Reagan 10-27-64
"After all the speculation about the sniper terrorizing Maryland and Virginia, at last we have some cold hard facts. He is a Muslim. He converted to Islam 17 years ago. He changed his name to John Muhammad. He belonged to Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. He cheered the terrorist attack of Sept. 11. He registered his getaway vehicle with the DMV on the anniversary of Sept. 11 – writing down the time of registration as 8:52 a.m. Naturally, therefore, the mainstream media have decided the crucial, salient fact about sniper John Muhammad is that he is a Gulf War veteran." -- Ann Coulter
You may not like rich people, but when was the last time a poor person gave you a job?" -- Gene Simmons
The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling. -- Thomas Sowell
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain” -- Thomas Sowell
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department. -- Thomas Sowell
“The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help."” -- Thomas Sowell
The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal." -- Peter Brimelow
"The myth of "McCarthyism" is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Sen. Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis." -- Ann Coulter
It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. -- Thomas Sowell
"A good plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite point in the future." -- Gen. George S. Patton
May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't."-- Gen. George S. Patton
“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism” -- Thomas Sowell
"MacArthur was still in Tokyo straightening out Japan in 1950 – five years after V-J Day. Not only was Japan an advanced and ethnically unified country, but U.S. forces also made things easier for MacArthur by killing several million of the most militant anti-American Japanese during World War II. Paul Bremer doesn't have this advantage in Iraq. In fact, he has the reverse situation: Saddam killed the most pro-American Iraqis before the war." -- Ann Coulter
The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. -- Albert Camus
"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent." -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis; Opinion in Olmstead vs. U.S., 1928
"A good government produces citizens distinguished for courage, love of justice, and every other good quality; a bad government makes them cowardly, rapacious, and the slaves of every foul desire." -- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquities of Rome, II c. 20 B.C.
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other. -- Oscar Ameringer
"The people are the masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it!" -- Abraham Lincoln
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Inaugural Address, 1953
Posterity - you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it. -- John Quincy Adams
If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory can be sure and not too costly, you may come to a moment when you have to fight with all the odds against you, and only a precarious chance to survive. There may even be a worse case - You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, and it will be better to perish than to live in slavery. -- William Churchill, 1937
Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home. -- David Frost
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right. -- Henry Ford
In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man and brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot. -- Mark Twain
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." -- Harry Truman
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true." -- James Branch Cabell
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. " -- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood." -- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced." -- Vic Gold
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " -- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence." -- Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." -- Will Rogers
"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. " -- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." -- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
Find out just what the 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 with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. -- Franklin Douglass 1857
"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them. " -- Samuel Palmer (1805-80)
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. " -- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Never mistake motion for action." -- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." -- Al Capone (1899-1947)
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men." -- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." -- General George Patton (1885-1945)
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence." -- George Washington
"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." -- Charles A. Beard (quite the liberal in many respects)
OTHER GREAT QUOTATION WEBSITES: