July 4th and Quotes about Freedom
CRISIS CURRICULUM AND RESOURCES
| CURRICULUM | CHARITY | EXPERTS | EMERGENCY NUMBERS | MILITARY | NEWS | POLITICIANS |
July 4th 2002
U.S. Independence Day
FREEDOM QUOTES
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.
A good argument diluted to avoid criticism is not nearly as good as
the undiluted argument, because we best arrive at truth through a
process of honest and vigorous debate. Arguments should not sneak
around in disguise, as if dissent were somehow sinister....For it
is bravery that is required to secure freedom.
A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a
confederacy against him.
Freedom of the press is perhaps the freedom that has suffered the
most from the gradual degradation of the idea of liberty.
Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom;
and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.
Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again,
and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its
publication is a duty.
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth...For my part,
I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to
provide for it.
Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the
international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve
System have never been audited. It operates outside of the control
of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States.
The wages of the average American worker, after inflation and
taxes, have decreased 17% since 1973, the only Western industrial
nation to so suffer.
A true party-man hates and despises candour.
In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are
not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always
then. Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some
libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local
candidates run without any party identification. No American
citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas,
political background, and commitments of each individual candidate.
The most important poitical office is that of private citizen.
The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of
individual property rights.
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest,
truthful, and virtuous.
I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon
constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes,
believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of
men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no
court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do
much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no
law, no courts to save it.
Why not include a provision that everybody shall, in good weather,
hunt on his own land and catch fish in rivers that are public
property and that Congress shall never restrain any inhabitant of
America from eating and drinking, at seasonable times, or prevent
his lying on his left side, in a long winter's night, or even on
his back, when he is fatigued by lying on his right.
People have a right to the Truth as they have a right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people
what they do not want to hear.
The rising power of the United States in world affairs...requires,
not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and
criticism...Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as
cheerleaders for our side...but to help the largest possible number
of people to see the realities.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person
were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in
silencing that person that he, if he had the power, would be in
silencing mankind....If the opinion is right, they are deprived of
the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose,
what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and
livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a
horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as
vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom
bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat
who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an
oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he
delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can
trust such creatures?
Crime does not pay...as well as politics.
Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
principles.
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To
never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity
of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue
beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or
complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above
all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And
never, never, to forget.