Democracy

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

"When the people fear the ‘government,' that is tyranny. When the ‘government' fears the people, that is liberty."

“To secure our rights is the reason we resort to government at all.”

"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather bed."

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...  

What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?

And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?

Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

"No free man shall ever be de|barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

[ This includes any U.S. government that would try to impose such an abomination as the U.S.A. Patriot Act upon the people!  C.M.M. ]

"..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.."

"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed … were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees."

                  --SS commandant at Auschwitz

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

"The Law is not designed to provide justice for the individual, but rather to preserve the collective and protect the power of certain groups."