FREEDOM QUOTATIONS -- governments

Art Buchwald   1971

"I always wanted to get into politics,

but I was never light enough to make the team."

Doug Casey    1979

"The thought of how far the human race would have advanced without government

simply staggers the imagination."

Jim Follows(?)   1971

"We see in politicians what we see in rats: creatures so free from conviction, so

totally dependent on the temptations and conditioning of their immediate environment,

that to understand them requires nothing more complicated than a look at geography and a list of campaign contributors."

David Friedman   1973

"In the ideal socialist state, power will not attract power freaks.

People who make decisions will show not the slightest bias toward their own interests.

There will be no way for a clever man to bend the institutions to serve his own ends.

And the rivers will run uphill."

Thomas Jefferson   1787    Paris

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,

and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."

Vivien Kellems   1952

"They can take every penny we earn including the cloths off our backs.

There isn't enough wealth in this great, rich country of ours to satisfy the wants of

the plundering, grasping, greedy, unscrupulous, thieving gangsters and scoundrels who have been breed and nurtured by the income tax and

seized control of our government."

John Locke   1690    London

"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 Naisbitt   1982

"The AFL-CIO giving money to the Democratic Party has all the appearances of

dinosaurs mating."

Native American   1890

"The government made us many promises, more than I can remember.

But they never kept but one: they promised to take our land, and they took it."

Tom Paine   1776

"These are the times that try men's souls. Tyranny is not easily conquered;

the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. It would be strange indeed if

so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated."

Will Rogers   1935

"This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by aid of it."

Murray Rothbard   1978

"Despite our great heritage of economic and political thought and practice,

we have not had a fully integrated and consistent theory of liberty.

We now have that systematic theory. All other theories and systems have clearly failed:

socialism, liberalism, conservatism. Liberty has never been fully tried to

fulfill the world dream of liberty and prosperity for all mankind."

Herbert Spencer

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly

is to fill the world with fools."

Hunter Thompson   1972

What a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race

this country might have been,

if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little political hustlers.

Hunter Thompson   1970

"In a democracy, people usually get the kind of government they deserve,

and they deserve what they get."

Hunter Thompson   Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail    1973

"The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists. When professional antagonists become after-hours drinking buddies, they are not likely to turn each other in."

Henry David Thoreau    1849

"We've heard it said, that government is best which governs least.

That government is best which governs not at all,

and when men are prepared for it,

that will be the kind of government they will have.

Is a democracy the last improvement possible in government?

Isn't it possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing

the rights of men?

            I imagine a State allowing a few to live aloof from it,

who fulfill all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men.

A State which bore this kind of fruit

and allowed it to drop off as fast as it ripened,

would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State,

which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."

FREEDOM QUOTATIONS -- religion

            John Denver   1980

"We live in a world of separationists. Alienation began in The Church.

Nothing is more insidious than the separateness caused by The Church."

Will and Ariel Durant    1975

"The state allowed The Church to manage the making of wills--which encouraged sinners to buy promissory notes, collectible in heaven, in exchange for earthly property bequeathed to The Church."

Thomas Edison

"So far as religion is concerned, it's a damned fake. Religion is all bunk."

  Ruth Green

"There was a time when religion ruled the world: we know it as the dark ages."

            Robert Ingersoll   IF     1880

If Cathedrals had been Universities

If Temples had been Observatories

If Priests had been Philosophers

If Astrology had been Astronomy

If the Black Arts had been Chemistry

If Superstition had been Science

If Religion had been Humanity

The world would be a heaven filled with love, and liberty and joy.

Jefferson:   "Religions are all alike: founded on fables and myths."

H.L. Menken   1935

"Clergymen are the ticket scalpers outside the gates of heaven. Religion has been a curse to mankind."

Martin Niemoller   1945

"In Germany the Nazis came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionists. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up because I was Protestant. Then they came for me. By that time there was no one left to speak up for anyone."

[It's an old, tragic story: tyranny will pick on despised groups (drug dealers, cults, homosexuals, militias, prostitutes, etc), then once the precedents are established, those powers can be used on ANYONE. This explains why the ACLU is often in court defending various "untouchables". So when the police, DEA, INS, IRS, BATF and/or "Justice" Department come after you...]

Tom Paine   Age of Reason    1794

"Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but religious tyranny attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity."

Hunter Thompson:   "The Christian Church: two thousand years of vengeance."

Jarret Wollstein   1969

"It doesn't matter whether the coercive individuals or groups identify themselves as bandits, Mafia, Church, party, government, chief, Pharaoh, king, high priest or president. If they initiate force, they are all simply criminals, regardless of their aliases and pretensions."

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Colorado and Oregon libertarian friends

James Libertarian Burns for assisting with the essay "Imagine Freedom", and general criticism

Carolyn Phelps

Dave Phelps

Noah Brodbeck

Randall K. Hylkema cartoons, c/o Reason Magazine

Vic Lockman for the IRS thief picture

Ron Cobb (copyright owner unknown?)

Definitions, dates and spelling are based on Merriam-Webster's Third International Dictionary and the Encyclopedia Britannica

Some of the quotations have been edited.

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