A list of my favorite quotes.
Words have power, and I've compiled a list of my favorite quites. I encourage you to add more in the comments sections or to debate the quotes stated.
Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
George Orwell
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell
The concept of nonviolence is a false ideal. It presupposes the existence of compassion and a sense of justice on the part of one's adversary. When this adversary has everything to lose and nothing to gain by exercising justice and compassion, his reaction can only be negative.
- George Jackson.
Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi.
- George Orwell.
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of a moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight--nothing he cares about more than his own safety--is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
"Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments"
--Frederick the Great
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
--Edmund Burke
"Understand the causes of terror? Yes, we should try, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this: nothing could ever justify the events of September 11 and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could"
-Tony Blair quote
"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..."
Samuel Adams
"The Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document; it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age."
Nadia Boulanger
I just want to say this. I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly: There is a tendency for the world to say to America, "the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out," and then to worry when America wants to sort them out.
- Tony Blair
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
Benjamin Franklin
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-Thomas Jefferson quotes
"Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty"
Aristotle quotes
"The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force"
Voltaire quotes
"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session."
Unknown
"All government, of course, is against liberty."
Henry Louis Mencken
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Disapproval of homosexuality cannot justify invading the houses, hearts and minds of citizens who choose to live their lives differently."
-Ira Glasser
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of liberty must undergo the fatigues of supporting it"
-Thomas Paine
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
-- James Madison, The Federalist Papers
"Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."
-- Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography, pg 446
Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest.
-- From the Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
G. K. Chesterton