• David
• Shannon
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• Ben
• Tom
• Abe

Elections, especially of representatives and counselors, should be annual, there not being in the whole circle of the sciences a maxim more infallible than this, 'where annual elections end, there slavery begins.' These great men ... should be [chosen] once a year -- Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, they rise, they break, and to the sea return. This will teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey.

-- John Adams

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

90% of success is just showing up.

-- Woody Allen (?)

Some people want to achieve immortality through their works or their descendants. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.

-- Woody Allen (as quoted in "Fuzzy Thinking" by Bart Kosko)

The utter vulgarity of the herd of men comes out in their preference for the sort of life a cow leads.

-- Aristotle, Ethics (as quoted in "Fuzzy Thinking" by Bart Kosko)

Every hour spent investigating a drug user or seller is an hour that could have been used to find a missing child.

-- Randy E. Barnett, "Curing the Drug-Law Addiction"

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 Austin Beard, historian

Life is suffering.

-- The Buddha (as quoted in "Fuzzy Thinking" by Bart Kosko)

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Initiative and referendum make government more responsive to its citizens, neutralize the power of the special interests and stimulate public involvement in state issues.

-- George W. Bush

Praise in public; criticize in private.

-- adapted from Catherine the Great

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

-- G. K. Chesterton, "The Man Who Was Thursday"

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so 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 be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

-- Winston Churchill

Governments do not give people rights. The People give government power in order to protect their preexisting rights.

-- Colorado Attorney General's Office, 1993

Every family should have at least three children. Then if one is a genius the other two can support him.

-- George Coote

We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money.

-- David Crockett, Congressman 1827-35

I have a black, battery-powered clock hanging above me on the wall. I call it "Death Clock". It ticks.

-- David Wallace Croft

The key to a successful marriage: a joint checking account and separate bathrooms.

-- David Wallace Croft

If the law does not respect the individual, the individual will not respect the law.

-- David Wallace Croft

Peer Reviewed is Peer Screwed.

-- David Wallace Croft, 2007-06-13

"Power" is the ability to control one's own destiny.

-- David Wallace Croft

A preacher paid is a truth mislaid.

-- David Wallace Croft, 2005

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it....

-- Declaration of Independence

Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.

-- Benjamin Disraeli, 1874

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle ... If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The 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.

-- Frederick Douglass, 1849

In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools.

-- K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation, 1986

Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

-- Thomas Edison

Organization! Hell! I'm the organization! ... Hell! There ain't no rules around here! We are trying to accomplish some'pn'.

-- Thomas Alva Edison (regarding laboratory organization rules)

God does not play dice with nature.

-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.

-- Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921

You do not know anything until you have practiced.

-- R. P. Feynman, Nobel laureate in physics

Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

-- Benjamin Franklin

I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons in such a manner that they may be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to any ordinary death the being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine with a few friends till that time, to be then recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!

-- Benjamin Franklin

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Religion explains; Science predicts.

-- Quoted by -- Joel N. Franklin, Ph.D., Professor of Applied Mathematics, Caltech

Time is Life.

-- Quoted by the mother of -- Joel N. Franklin, Ph.D., Professor of Applied Mathematics, Caltech

When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent. When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun. Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all.

-- Tim Freeman, tsf@cs.cmu.edu

We say to ourselves: it would indeed be very nice if there were a God, who was both creator of the world and benevolent providence, if there were a moral order and a future life, but at the same time it is very odd that this is all just as we should wish it ourselves.

-- Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (as quoted in "Fuzzy Thinking" by Bart Kosko)

Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.

-- Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books.

-- Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

The greatest challenge Internet users face is information overload.

-- James Gardner, "A DOS User's Guide to the Internet"

A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.

-- Barry Goldwater

Pragmatism is the convenient conclusion reached by those who lack the patience or intelligence to formulate a consistent ideology.

-- Mark G. Hanley

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.

-- Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Shogun of Japan, August 29, 1558.

Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State.

-- Heinrich Himmler

History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall.

-- Adolf Hitler, Edict of 18 March 1939

I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.

-- J. Edgar Hoover, supposedly

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

-- Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government

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 the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.

-- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

-- Thomas Jefferson

If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread.

-- Thomas Jefferson

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-- Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

-- Thomas Jefferson

My reason for fixing them in office for a term of years, rather than for life, was that they might have [an] idea that they were at a certain period to return into the mass of people and become the governed instead of the governors, which might still keep alive that regard to the public good that otherwise they might perhaps be induced by their independence to forget.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Shake off the fears of servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched . . . question with boldness even the existence of God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith.

-- Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to Peter Carr, his nephew, 1785)

Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonius reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.... Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.... We might as well require a man to wear the coat that fitted him as a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regime of their ancestors.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

-- Thomas Jefferson

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

-- Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

-- Thomas Jefferson

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

-- Thomas Jefferson

The bottom line is if you have dollars, you are in a greater position to help people. But if you have nothing, then it makes it kind of tough.

-- Martin King III, on selling his father's story rights

A good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.

-- Ronald Knox

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer....

-- Abraham Lincoln

Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

-- Abraham Lincoln

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.

-- James Madison

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world: indeed it's the only thing that ever has!

-- Margaret Meade

State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly alike one another; ... in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.

-- John Stuart Mill, 1859

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.

-- Marvin Minsky, "Scientific American", 1994 October.

The pig if I am not mistaken Supplies us sausage, ham, and bacon. Let others say his heart is big I call it stupid of the pig.

-- Ogden Nash

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

-- P.J. O'Rourke, in Parliament of Whores

Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons were I to make a whore of my soul.

--Thomas Paine

That government is best which governs least.

-- Thomas Paine, Masthead slogan of the Democratic Review

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

-- William Penn

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

-- William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783

A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

-- Ayn Rand, 1963

Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the nonexistent 'rights' of gang rulers. It is not a free nation's duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.

-- Ayn Rand, Collectivized "Rights", June 1963

I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics.

-- Ayn Rand

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.

-- Ayn Rand

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence.... The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957

I oppose registration for the draft... because I believe the security of freedom can best be achieved by security through freedom.

-- Ronald Reagan

It is difficult to find another branch of knowledge where a small amount of study produces such great results in increased efficiency in a country where the people rule, as in parliamentary law.

-- Henry M. Robert, Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, 10th Ed.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

-- Henry M. Robert, Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, 10th Ed.

The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.

-- Will Rogers, 1920's

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

-- Will Rogers

Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property ... He must be taught to amass wealth, but it must be only to increase his power of contributing to the wants and demands of the state... [Education] can be done effectually only by the interference and aid of the Legislature.

-- Benjamin Rush, 1786

Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others: The Constitution of this Republic should make a special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.

-- Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

-- Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967)

Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.

-- George Santayana

Decriminalization would take the profit out of drugs and greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the drug-related violence that is currently plaguing our streets.

-- Kurt L. Schmoke, Baltimore Mayor

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The real question is not whether machines think, but whether men do.

-- B. F. Skinner (as quoted in "Fuzzy Thinking" by Bart Kosko)

Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.

-- Justice John Paul Stevens

It seems each time the government screws up we get more government.

-- Karl Swisher, VP Membership, Libertarian Party of WV, 1997

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

-- Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, 1893

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state.

-- Mark Twain

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, ....

-- United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other's throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace.

-- Voltaire

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

-- George Washington

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