Favorite Quotes
"In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex.. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together"
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower - January 1961
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing.
Those who count the votes decide everything."
-- Joseph Stalin
"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right
by which all other rights are protected.
To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."
-Thomas Paine at U.S.'s founding
A Constitutional Republic is a government of laws
where the love of power of the few
is checked and balanced by
the power of love of the many.
- Jacque Christo
"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election
by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
--George Bernard Shaw
Governments arise either out of the people or over the people."
--Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", 1791
"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty,
are they thereafter any the less slaves?
If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them,
do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?"
Herbert Spencer (1884)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something
when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
-- Upton Sinclair
"Never do anything against conscience,
even if the state demands it"
-- Albert Einstein -
"All truth passes through 3 stages.
First, it is ridiculed,
Second, it is violently opposed,
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident"
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
"If you surrendery your liberties for security you will lose both your liberties and security"
-- Benjamin Franklin -
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
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 to bondage"
-- Alexander Fraser Tytler (1742-1813)