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"As Mankind becomes more
liberal, they will be
more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy
members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of
civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations
of justice and liberality."
--
George Washington
|
| "The
accumulation of all powers,
legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands, whether of
one, a few, or many, may justly be pronounced the very definition of
tyranny."
|
| "Giant megamedia
conglomerates that our
founders could not possibly have envisioned are finding common cause
with an imperial state in a betrothal certain to produce not the sons
and daughters of liberty but the very kind of bastards that issued from
the old arranged marriage of church and state."
(Hear
the speech on Democracy Now)
|
"The liberty of a democracy is
not safe
if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it
becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence
is fascism: ownership of the government by an individual, by a group or
any controlling private power."
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
|
| "In war, the discretionary
power of the
Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors,
and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds,
are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same
malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of
fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of
war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual
warfare."
|
"Now we are confronted with the
problem
of a relative minority of people in our culture who hold massive wealth
and power. They use this to mold our opinions in their media, to
control our legislators by making obscene campaign contributions just
to protect their wealth and power, and to control our lives by owning
the great majority of jobs. They believe that the aristocracy and
feudal power of giant corporations and enormous personal wealth
entitles them to decide and dictate how all Americans should
live--completely removing American freedoms from our hands."
-- Thom Hartmann, "What Would
Jefferson
Do?"
|
"It
is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling
into error, it is the function of the citizen to keep the government
from falling into error."
-- US Supreme Court
Justice Robert H. Jackson
|
| "It
is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it".
|
| "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
|
"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."
|
"A
time comes when silence is betrayal."
--Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.
|
"Any society that would give up a little
liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither, and
lose both."
--Benjamin Franklin
|
"In
times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary
act."
--George Orwell
|
"The world is a
dangerous place, not because of those who do evil,
but because of those who look on and do nothing."
-- Albert Einstein
|
"Government
is us .. protecting us."
-- Thom Hartmann
|
"...eternal vigilance is the price of freedom..."
-- Thomas Jefferson
|
First
they came for
the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
by Rev. Martin
Niemoller, 1945
|
|
"There is a special place in hell for
those who remain neutral."
- Dante
|
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