Text: Remember:  He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he  establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. -- Thomas Paine  They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little  temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania , 1759.  History is made at night. Character is what you are in the dark.  --Lord Whorfin Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.  Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.  -- Archibald Macleish [So] long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.  -- Voltarine de Cleyre First they came for the fourth amendment, But I said nothing since I wasn't a drug dealer.  Then they came for the sixth amendment, but I kept quiet since I knew I wasn't guilty.  Finally they came for the first amendment, and by then it was too late to say anything at all.  --  Mark Eckenwiler The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants and patriots alike.  It is its natural manure.  -- Thomas Jefferson Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.  -- P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores 1935 will go down in history.  For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration.  Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.  --Adolf Hitler Hence it happened that all the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed perished.  --Machiavelli, 'Il Principe.' If I knew what you've made during the year, if I know what your withholding is, if I know what your spending pattern is, I should be able to generate for you a tax return. I am an excellent advocate of return-free filing. We know everything about you that we need to know. Your employer tells us everything about you that we need to know. Your activity records on your credit cards tell us everything about you that we need to know. Through interface with Social Security, with the DMV, with your banking institutions, we really have a lot of information... We could literally file a return for you. This is the future we'd like to go to.   - US Internal Revenue Service Document Processing System project manager, as reported by Wired, Dec. 1994, p. 174. Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. - Seneca, 65 CE Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans.  It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity.  But then, we elected them.   - Lily Tomlin There is a First Amendment right to speak in a encrypted way... The right to speak P.G.P. is like the right to speak Navajo.  The Government has no particular right to prevent you from speaking in a technical manner even if it is inconvenient for them to understand.   - Eben Moglen, Columbia U. professor of law and legal history, in a New York Times article by John Markoff, Sep. 21, 1993 I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. - E. M. Forster Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy. -- Orson Welles In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps.  -- Philip Elmer-Dewitt "Who Should Keep the Keys" TIME Magazine, 04 Mar94 We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ...  -- Bill Clinton  (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A) Our society has embraced the bloodthirstiness of trial law like no other.  In a courtroom, one can reap the benefits of total war without the bloodshed.  You can destroy another's freedom, their ability to earn money, retain property, or keep their families.  A Court Order to have one's fields sown with salt doesn't seem that far fetched to me.  -- Scott Ruggels No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever.  There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom.  Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand.  The Century learned this lesson once.  We will teach it to them again.  Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.  -- Citizen G'Kar Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.  -- Mark Twain It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably, and justly; or to live prudently, honorably, and justly, without living pleasurably.  -- Epicurus (B.C. 341-270) The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. -- Tacitus The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced. -- Lao-Tse, Tao Te Ching Never trust a government that doesn't trust its own citizens with guns. -- Thomas Jefferson When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.   -- Dresden James In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.   -- George Orwell The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they're not.   -- Hillary Clinton, 1992 60 Minutes interview One of the shrewdest ways for human predators to conquer their stronger victims is to steadily convince them with propaganda that they're still free...   -- Dr. N.A. Scott None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.   -- Johann Von Goethe It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.   -- Voltaire Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?   -- Patrick Henry The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.  The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.   -- Alan Ashley-Pitt The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.   -- Dresden James Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no Law, no Court can save it... Where do you stand Citizen?   -- Judge Learned Hand (1961) The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.   -- James Madison If you can't say Fuck, you can't say, Fuck the government.   -- Lenny Bruce Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.   -- attributed to President Andrew Jackson, who in 1836 forced the   closing of the Second Bank of the U.S. by revoking its charter All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.   -- John Adams I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.   -- Abraham Lincoln, shortly before his assassination The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight.   -- John F. Kennedy, at Columbia University,   10 days before his assassination The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless... From the conclusion of this [Revolutionary] war we shall be going down hill. It will not be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves 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 this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion. -- Thomas Jefferson Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.   -- Aristotle Imagine if a scientist claimed he had made up a law of physics or chemistry.  He'd be carted away to a lunatic asylum. As we'd expect, much of political law is complete fantasy.   -- Richard J. Maybury, Whatever Happened to Justice? Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.   -- William Pitt, speech to the House of Commons, [Nov. 18, 1783] The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable...   -- H.L. Mencken Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.   -- Theodore Roosevelt  

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