, , 'No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that...the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands...may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.'"
James Madison The Federalist Papers, No. 47"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." - Thomas Jefferson
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." - Thomas Jefferson
"In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also." Thomas Jefferson: Declaration on Taking Up Arms, 1775
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be ... The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe." - Thomas Jefferson
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson
"Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable." - John F. Kennedy
"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 lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of it's waters....power concedes nothing without a demand...it never did, 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 both...The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglass
"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth... For my part, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it." Patrick Henry
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin"We, the People, are the rightful masters of both the Congress and the Courts. Not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who have perverted it." - Abraham Lincoln
"If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last." - Ronald Reagan, 1964
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." - Abraham Lincoln
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." - Abraham Lincoln
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." - Samuel Clemens, writing under the pen name "Mark Twain"
"The right to freedom being the gift of God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave." - Samuel Adams
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." - President James Madison
"We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.
" - Sir Winston Churchill, "The Sinews of Peace," address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946."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." - U.S. Supreme Court in American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442
"First they arrested the Communists -- but I was not a Communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then they arrested the trade unionists -- and I did nothing because I was not one. And then they came for the Jews and the Catholics, but I was neither a Jew nor a Catholic and I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me -- and there was no one left to do anything about it."
--Nazi Prison Survivor: Rev. Martin Niemoller
[ Links ]
[ The Federalist
papers ]
1787-88 Authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John
Jay.
[ The Declaration of
Independence transcription ] [ The Constitution of the United States
]
[ Original 12 Amendments transcription
] [ Constitutional Amendments 11-27 transcription
]
[ "The Bill of Rights" transcription ] [ The Gettysburg Address ]
[ The library of Congress American Memory web Site ] [ Find out what happened Today in history ]
[ visit
the national archives' online exhibit hall ] [ National
Archives and Records Administration ]
About the Bowen Freedom Foundation
Produced by an association with: one day,walking. enterprises.
Compiled by L.Beau Benjamin; Founder ;Texas Truth Trekkers Two Thousand &
Benjamin Bowen founder ; The Bowen Freedom Foundation.
all rights reserved.
