Random Bits Of Wisdom

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.

Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious."

Quote by: Aristotle
(384-322 BC) Greek philosopher Source: Politics, 343 B.C.

"Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been
dominant and controlling."

Quote by: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) Humorist

"Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.

Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."

Quote by: William F. Buckley, Jr.
(1925- ) American author and journalist, founded 'National Review'

"The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed.

A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny."

Quote by: William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)

"The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life."

Quote by: Justice William O. Douglas
(1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: Osborne v. United States

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."

Quote by: Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Quote by: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father, Date: 1755 Source: reply of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the governor, November 11, 1755. Later, the motto of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, c. 1759

"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."

Quote by: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father

"Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscious we never submitted, we could never submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

"But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

Quote by: Declaration of Independence Date: July 4, 1776

Happy Independence Day!

Remember how we won it, why we won it, from whom we won it, and the price we paid to secure it.

Don't cheapen it by giving it away.