Quotes on Liberty, Constitution, Bill of Rights, 2nd Amendment, Self-Reliance, This Day in History

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” – Frank Zappa

 

This Day in History:
October 30th, 1735 was the birthday of President John Adams. (Other sources cite his birthdate as October 19, 1735.) He died on July 4, 1826–just a few hours after the death of Thomas Jefferson.

“So what’s the difference between republican and democratic forms of government? John Adams captured the essence of the difference when he said, ‘You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.’ Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.” – Dr. Walter Williams

 

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments from Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.” – John Adams, A Defence of the Constitution of the United States Against the Attacks of M. Turgot, 1787

 

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one” – Bruce Lee

 

"No...weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women." – Ronald Reagan

"There are no easy answers but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what is morally right." – Ronald Reagan

 

“Survival depends a great deal on a person’s ability to withstand stress in emergency situations. Your brain is without doubt your best survival tool. It is your most valuable asset in a survival situation. It isn’t always the physically strong who are the most effective or better at handling fear in emergency situations. Survival more often depends on the individual’s reactions to stress than upon the danger, terrain, or nature of the emergency. To adapt is to live.” – Chris Conway, in The Attitude of Survival

 

Ah...but do we have the internal capacity to determine what is moral...or must we depend upon a book to do it for us?

 

Right and wrong is an internal value judgment call. A book can inform, but judgment must come from within.

 

“A pandemic is going to be a catastrophic nightmare. What we’re going to be doing is trying to make it less of a nightmare.” – Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, on preparations for a possible bird-flu pandemic, as recently quoted in GovExec.com

 

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” – Cicero

 

"Prohibit the peasants from owning katanas, wakizashis, arrows, spears, or matchlock rifles. If the peasants are armed, they will not pay nengu (taxes) and they will not be subordinate to the officials."

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Sword Hunt Edict of 1588, establishing the class division between the peasants (commoners) and the samurai (elite).

 

“Cogito, ergo armatum sum: I think, therefore I am armed.” - Collection of Quotes - Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

 

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin,1759

 

"...which from their verbosity, their endless tautologies, their involutions of case within case, and parenthesis within parenthesis, and their multiplied efforts at certainty by saids and aforesaids, by ors and by ands, to make them more plain, do really render them more perplexed and incomprehensible, not only to common readers, but to lawyers themselves. " - Thomas Jefferson

 

“The patronage of the government for the last three years has been wielded to corrupt everything that comes within its influence and was capable of being corrupted, and it would seem that virtue and truth has fled from its embrace. The administration of the government has stained our national character, and it rests with the people to work it out, by full expression of their disapprobation. The present is a contest between the virtue of the people, and the influence of patronage….I hope the virtue of the people may prevail, and all may be well.” – Andrew Jackson

 

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” – Ronald Reagan

 

“There are 1011 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.” – Dr. Richard Feynman, physicist from the Manhattan Project