“I would rather be exposed
to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those
attending too small a degree of it.”
- Thomas Jefferson
"I hope we
shall...crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a
trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
- Thomas Jefferson
“An eye for an eye leaves
the whole world blind.”
- Gandhi
“The ultimate weakness of
violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing
it seeks to destroy… Toughness multiplies toughness… Through
violence you murder the hater; but you do not murder hate. In fact,
violence merely increases hate… The chain reaction of evil…must
be broken.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Our lives begin to end
the day we become silent about things that matter.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Why of course
the people don't want war… That is understood. But, after all, it
is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is
always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a
democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a
communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to
do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the
peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger.”
- Hermann Goering, Head of the Nazi Luftwaffer Air Force, during the
Nuremberg War Crimes Trial at the end of World War II
"To announce
that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to
stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and
servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
- President Theodore Roosevelt, Republican
"One of the great
attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills our worst wishes. In the
person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat.
Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly
virtuous."
- Aldous Leonard Huxley
"But could not
our situation be compared to one of a menacing epidemic? People are
unable to view this situation in its true light, for their eyes are
blinded by passion. General fear and anxiety create hatred and
aggressiveness. The adaptation to warlike aims and activities has
corrupted the mentality of man; as a result, intelligent, objective
and humane thinking has hardly any effect and is even suspected and
persecuted as unpatriotic."
- Dr. Albert Einstein, in "The Menace of Mass Destruction"
"The notion that
a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic.
He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of
us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it
debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good
citizen driven to despair."
- H.L. Mencken
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of
fighting a foreign enemy."
- James Madison
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.”
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
"When you can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a
damned secret, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers
didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix."
- Harry S. Truman
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should see sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of
others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of
hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and
daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest
walls of oppression and resistance."
- Robert F. Kennedy
“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
- Albert Einstein
“For every problem there is a solution that is simple, clean, and wrong.”
- Henry Louis Mencken
“Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
- Albert Einstein
“Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.”
- Jonathan Kozol
“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
- Nick Diamos
“Politicians and diapers should be changed often, and for the same reason.”
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