Quotes

“America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

--Alexis de Tocqueville

“.. The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. For the conclusion of this war [for Independence] we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of the war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1791

"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins."

-- Benjamin Franklin

“Five percent of people think, ten percent think that they think, and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”

--Thomas Edison

Great Nations rise and fall...
The people go from bondage
to spiritual faith
from spiritual faith
to great courage
from courage
to liberty
from liberty
to abundance
from abundance
to selfishness
from selfishness
to complacency
from complacency
to apathy
from apathy
to dependency
from dependency
back again into bondage...

--Alexander Tytler

“Capitalism is the uneven distribution of wealth... Communism is the even distribution of misery.”

--Unknown

“Americans are so enamored with equality they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”

--Alexis de Tocqueville

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing!”

--Edmund Burke

“To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle.”

--Confucius

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”

--Marcus Tullius Cicero 42B.C

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

--Thomas Jefferson