Signature Quotes: Politics

These are from my collection of sig quotes, collected from years of crawling about the Internet. Share and Enjoy...


"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the rights of the people by the gradual & silent encroachments of those in power than by violent & sudden usurpations." James Madison, Virginia Conv. 1788.
"The Constitution is constantly getting in the way." -- Hamilton Wright, principal architect of drug prohibition in the U.S., before passage of the Harrison Act of 1914.
I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a "disgrace", that two are called a "law firm", and that three or more become a "Congress". -- John Adams
"Power Corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
"If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, Maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. ... But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right." -- Martin Luther King jr. - (The Words of Martin Luther King, jr, Newmarket Press)
The tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots...and tyrants. -- Thomas Jefferson
"Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson
"When the Commander-in-Chief of a nation finds it necessary to order employees of the government or agencies of the government to do things that would technically break the law, he has to be able to declare it legal for them to do that." -- Ronald Reagan
"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." --Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural, 4-Mar-1801
"You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt." -- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
"Jerry Brown? I have to say that if Jerry Brown is the answer, it must be a damn peculiar question." -- Texas Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen (Dallas Morning News)
"Praise the humanities, my boy. That'll make them think you're broadminded!" -- Winston Churchill
"...To hell with the constitution." -- Mike Roos, Califonia State Assemblyman, Democrat-Glendale 1989.
"From each, according to his ability, to each, according to his needs." -- Democratic party leaflet (sound familiar?)
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." -- 9th Amendment, U.S. Constitution
"Vote Dempublican, it's easier than thinking." -- Unknown
Oliver Wendell Holmes, US supreme Court Justice, 1902: "The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact."
Harlan F. Stone, 12th Chief Justice, US supreme Court, 1941: "The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided."
Thomas Jefferson, 1789: "The new Constitution has secured these [individual rights] in the Executive and Legislative departments: but not in the Judiciary. It should have established trials by the people themselves, that is to say, by jury."
Thomas Jefferson, 1821: "...the Federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day and a little to-morrow, and advancing it's noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. ...when all government... in little as in the great thing, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
Thomas Jefferson: "...judges should be withdrawn from the bench whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may, indeed, injure them in fame or fortune; but it saves the Republic..."
We have four boxes used to guarantee our liberty:
The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box
"After listening to you for slightly more than one hour, I can tell that you are a strong and intelligent man and that you want peace". -- Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) on Saddam Hussein, April 1990 Baghdad, Iraq [Source: Page A14 of the 18 December 1990 Wall Street Journal]
"a Preppy, a Yalie, a sissy." Ronald Reagan's description of George Herbert Walker Bush. Quoted in The official Preppy Handbook, Lisa Birnbach editor.
It is interesting that the so called enlightened Democrats seem to espouse the same tactics of Hitler: disarm the public, create a national police force, and enlist the aid of the media propaganda machine to make all believe that the country must take drastic measures to correct the so called sins of the prior regime. Those that follow will be as culpable as the brownshirts and Hitler Youth.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such goverment and to provide new safeguards for their future security. .... Let the facts be submitted to a candid world. ..." -- Declaration Of Independence, July 4, 1776
"We, too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees." -- FDR
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#21) -- July 30, 1917
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men stood lookout.
President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting. -- The Washington Post
"Above all, as the keynote of all Democratic policy, in passing upon any question, let the controlling aim and ambition be to keep the road open for private enterprise and personal initiative." -- John W. Davis - Democratic candidate for President - 1924
"I do not want to live under a philanthropy. I do not want to be taken care of by the government.... We do not want a benevolent government. We want a free and a just government." -- Woodrow Wilson
"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual that the use of the drug itself." -- President Jimmy Carter (8/2/77)
220 years ago my government gave me certain inalienable rights.
Since then, they've been trying to correct their mistake.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. -- Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Mort Sahl: General, aren't you supporting Castro by smoking that Havana cigar?
Alexander Haig: I prefer to think of it as burning his crops to the ground.
(from an interview of Mort Sahl on National Public Radio, 23nov91)
"...when all government... in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821
"Read my lips, No New Haitians. ACK!" -- Bill the Prez
"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good" --- George Washington
"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it`s hell." -- Harry Truman
"If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side." -- Orson Scott Card
"...in the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it." -- George Will, Newsweek, 2/22/93
"A young man who is a conservative has no heart. An old man who is a liberal has no brain." -- Sir Winston Churchill
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient...the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis Brandeis Olmstead vs. United States, United States Supreme Court, 1928
"... an... officer who acts in violation of the Constitution ceases to represent the government." -- BROOKFIELD CO. V. STUART, (1964) 234 F. Supp 94, 99 (U.S.D.C., Wash.D.C.)
"... an officer may be held liable in damages to any person injured in consequence of a breach of any of the duties connected with his office... The liability for nonfeasance, misfeasance, and for malfeasance in office is in his 'individual,' not his official capacity..." -- from 70 AmJur2nd Sec. 50, VII Civil Liability.
"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a Government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Crime is contagious. If government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law. . ." -- from OLMSTEAD V. U.S., 277 US 348, 485; 48 S Ct. 564, 575; 72 LEd 944.
"When I make a joke, nobody gets injured...when Congress makes a joke, it's the law". - Will Rogers
"Disobedience or evasion of a constitutional mandate may not be tolerated, even though such disobedience may, at least temporarily, promote in some respects the best interests of the public." -- Slote vs. Board of Examiners, 274 N.Y. 367; 9 NE 2d 12; 112 ALR 660
"If everything had gone as planned, everything would have been perfect." --BATF spokesperson on CNN 3/2/93, regarding failed raid attempt in Texas. A 2 year old child was shot and killed by a BATF agent during that raid.
"If the price that I must pay to obtain my freedom, is to acknowledge that the Governmet was granted the power to infringe on them, then I am not free." -- Paul Anderson
"What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" - Patrick Henry
"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed." - Lazarus Long
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." -- Justice William O. Douglas
"The lesson of (the Waco) episode is not that the use of force was wrong in itself, but that at every stage the government acted incompetently." -- National Review, May 10, 1993, pg 13
Slavery was eliminated in the US in 1865 by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The imposition of Economic Serfdom on the entire US population was enabled in 1913 by the Federal Income Tax and is proceeding smoothly and now rapidly.
Those who attempt to ruin the country and fail are called traitors. Those who attempt to ruin the country and succeed are called politicians. -- Lovejoy, an English TV program, on A&E, Monday 7pm
"You won't settle for putting Susan B. Anthony on the new dollar then?" Justice Rehnquist, to Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a 1978 sex-discrimination case oral argument
"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills." -- Thomas Jefferson, October 1776
"God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it." -- Daniel Webster
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw
"When you have an individual that is committed to killing someone else, you can`t expect a restraining order or the police to provide 24-hour protection." -- Chicopee, MA District Attorney William Bennett 9/8/93
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves." -- Winston Churchill
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -- Abraham Lincoln
"Our safety, our liberty depends on preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the US are the right- ful masters of both Congress and the courts - Not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution" -- Abraham Lincoln
"Just do as you are told, or Nanny Reno will *spank*".
"In short, the 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up rather than the top down. ... but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, is likely to get us to world order faster than the old-fashioned frontal assault." (Richard Gardner, "The Hard Road to World Order", CFR journal _Foreign_Affairs_, April 1974, p.558)
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. -- Robert Heinlein
What do you expect? This is a country founded by religious nuts with guns.
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." -- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
"In an ideal world, the Federal government would live up to it's charter to provide for the common defense, promote the general national welfare, and arbitrate disputes among the States. Of course that's unlikely to happen given the womb to tomb security mentality, the bread and circuses desires, and the payoff of pork politics." - Gary Coffman KE4ZV
A Republic degrades into a Democracy, and a Democracy degrades into Despotism.
"For some reason, a glazed look comes over people's faces when we say 'Canada'. Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something." -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife to the Canadian ambassador to the U.S.
"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.
They said it was time for change. They didn't say they meant the change in my wallet...
"If we are willing to concede the President dictatorial authority where we happen to agree with him, as liberals have tended to do over the years, we will have little chance of tying his hands when we do not....You will see why many of us in the Congress understand how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when his creation ran amok." -- Senator George McGovern, May 1973
"In Germany, they came first 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 trade unionists but I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. 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 nobody was left to speak up." -- Martin Niemoeller, Protestant Minister & Holocast Survivor
"I did not commit a crime. What I did was to fail to comply with the law." -- NYC ex-mayor Dinkins, accused of not paying taxes for a number of years.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." --George Washington
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country." -- President Theodore Roosevelt
"Democracy: A government for the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting... results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic, negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate... Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
-- U.S. Army Training Manual, Nov 1928. --> LATER, A NEW DEFINITION -->
"Meaning of Democracy: Because the United States is a democracy, the majority of our people shall decide how our government is organized and run." -- U.S. Army "The Soldier's Guide," June 1952.
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it." Abraham Lincoln First Inaugural Address March 4, 1861
"... balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them ..." -- Thomas Paine
"If we has an income tax law, it would bring millions of money into the Treasury, and those paying would scarcely miss it, and it would lighten the burden that now rests so heavily upon the great body of consumers." -- J. Thomas Heflin (D-AL) on floor of the House in 1909 during the consideration of the 16th Amendment
The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers. -- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter
"Self-interest has no place in society" -- Sandy Cuney, HCI, 5/6/94
"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference." -- Thomas Jefferson 20 December, 1787
"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' 'interests', I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." -- Barry Goldwater
"Graft is as necessary as throwing up when you drink too much." -- Cerebus the Prime Minister
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have. -- Barry Goldwater.
[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided in me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they belive rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyrrany over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion. --Thomas Jefferson
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. --Martin Luther King
The people of South Carolina are trying to decide on a suitable punishment for Susan Smith who drove her car into a river, left drowning victims inside, and then lied to the entire nation about what she did.
In Massachusetts, it will get you a U.S. Senate seat.
"(Clarence Thomas) is on the Supreme Court. I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do of heart disease." -- Jullianne Malveaux, black TV commentator
"Those who have questioned the entire business of investigating Whitewater have been answered. There is every reason for the special prosecutor and Congress to keep seeking answers." -- "Persisting on Whitewater," NY Times editorial, 12/7/94
The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology ... . For while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang, or Cambridge, MA ... -- Francis Fukuyama
"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin.
And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." Ronald Reagan, Arlington, Virginia, September 25, 1987
"What I find somewhat amusing is that many of the same people who blockaded military recruitment offices, and shut down colleges with their sit-in's in order to protest the Vietnam War, now want to throw in jail people who use these same tactics in order to protest abortion." -- Mark.O.Wilson@atlantaga.ncr.com (Mark.O.Wilson)
"There is a strong body politic that sincerely believes we can eradicat evil, danger, and illness if we can just gain control of all these people walking around loose just doing whatever they please. They are very genuine in this belief, which makes them not just entertainingly idiotic, but quite dangerous as well. You cannot eradicate evil, but you can concentrate it in the state. A poor trade." -- Jack Rickard
"[Persons] who are recognized as citizens in any one state of the Union [have] the right to enter every other state, whenever they pleased... full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might meet; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." - US Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857)
Dr.Jack Kevorkian for White House Physician
"It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual...."
"This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture... The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call--to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness--idealism. By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men."
Adolf Hitler at Bueckeburg, Oct. 7, 1933
"The intelligent and efficient politician is a species virtually unknown in the galaxy. Perhaps I might secure a scraping [for my] cell library." -- Haviland Tuf from Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin
"I like a man who grins when he fights." -- Winston Churchill -
Can you trust a government that subsidizes tobacco and tries to ban vitamins to make intelligent choices about YOUR health care?
The data from the 1990 Harvard Medical Practice Study suggest that 150,000 Americans die every year from doctors' negligence -- compared with 38,000 gun deaths annually. Why are doctors not declared a public health menace? Because they save more lives than they take. And so it is with guns. -- Edgar A. Suter MD, Doctors for Integrity and Research in Public Policy
"Even illegal weapons have lost their panache. Zip guns and shanks were at least homemade. Where is the craft in a grade-schooler firing a magnum? What is the world coming to? It's not even bad to be a communist anymore!" -- John Waters, "Bring back the Juvenile Delinquent" Newsweek Special Issue, 1994, pg 76
Whitewater is a "highly-prosecutable $1.5M check-kiting scheme," according to a Kansas City RTC investigator (25 March 1994 Boston Globe)
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms" ---Aristotle, Politics Ch 10 para 4.
Even in the best and most peacefully civilized countries many occasions arise when a woman versed inthe knowledge and use of firarms may find that imformation and skill of great importance." --Annie Oakley Oct 1919
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."-- William Pitt 1783
"Corruptisima republica plurimae leges." Tacitus, Anals III 27
(The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.)
-- "When cryptography is outlawed, only outlaws Eldi9w sLwI&wls9v."
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient . . . the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis Brandeis
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"When the government fears the People, that is Liberty. When the People fear the Government, that is tyranny". Thomas Jefferson
"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be." -- Voltaire
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty used to mean that we watched the government, not the other way around."
"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all try something." Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"The fact is that a liberal Democrat doesn't want to talk about ideology because they don't want to explain publicly what they're really doing." -- Newt Gingrich, 12/1/91
"Please do not feed the squirrels. If you feed the squirrels, they'll become overweight, and prone to disease. Their population will grow, and they'll lose their ability to forage for food on their own. They will expect you to feed them and will attack you if you don't. They'll become like little welfare recipients, and you wouldn't want to do this to them."
- Sign reported by Clifford F. Thies in Rocky Mountain National Park
"....those who become princes through their skill acquire the pricipality with difficulty, buy they hold onto it with ease." -- Nicolo Machiavelli
"....it cannot be called ingenuity to kill one's fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; by these means one can aquire power but not glory." -- Nicolo Machiavelli
"....nothing is so unhealthy or unstable as the reputation for power that is not based on one's own power." -- Nicolo Machiavelli
"....for friendships that are acquired by a price and not by greatness and nobility of character are purchased but are not owned, and at the proper moment they cannot be spent." -- Nicolo Machiavelli
"Avoid taking a definite stand on great public issues either in the Senate or before the people. Bend your energies towards making friends of key men in all classes of voters." -- Quintus Tullius, to Cicero.
"Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad" -- Henry Kissinger
"...last minute maneuvers in congress can make a mockery of presidential decrees." ..Dan Rather, CBS Evening News, 3-3-95
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. Ignorance may deride it. But in the end, there it is." -- Winston Churchill
"My essential point is that the First Amendment does more for men than it does for women by protecting speech that supports patrimony" -- Law Prof. Mary Becker, U of Chicago Law School
"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." -- Abraham Lincoln, speech, Jan. 27, 1838
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any militia organization. In the 50's I would have said "communist". sigh
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." -Thomas Jefferson
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