Interesting Quotes for Thinking People

Interesting Quotes for Thinking People

(This list gets longer every day!)

"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." ---John Maynard Keynes

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks], will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." ---Thomas Jefferson

"I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." ---Thomas Jefferson

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." --Thomas Jefferson

"I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Taylor in 1816)

Quotations from the Works of Robert A. Heinlein

"And shepherds we shall be,
for Thee, my Lord, for Thee.
Power hath descended forth from Thy hand,
our feet may swiftly carry out Thy commands.
So we shall flow a river forth to Thee
and teeming with souls shall it ever be.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."
(From the film "Boondock Saints")

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
Anonymous Email Circular Letter

"Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
Thomas Jefferson

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE (email circular letter):1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject. 2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone. 3.Colt: The original point and click interface. 4.Gun control is not about guns; it's about control. 5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords? 6.If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words. 7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms. 8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any. 9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither. 10. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved. 11. What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you not understand? 12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others. 13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday. 14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians. 15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety. 16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive. 17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer. 18. Assault is a behavior, not a device. 19. Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer. 20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson. 21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them. 22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for. 23. Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don't make more. 24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves. 25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

"You may not like guns, and choose not to own one. That is your right. You might not believe in God. That is your choice. However, if someone is breaking into your home the first two things you are going to do are: 1) Call someone with a gun. 2) Pray they get there in time."
Anonymous

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot."
Henry Morgenthau, May 1938, FDR's Treasury Secretary

"The most important rule in a gunfight is: Always win and cheat if necessary."

"Don't forget, incoming fire has the right of way.."

"Make your attacker advance through a wall of bullets. You may get killed with your own gun, but he'll have to beat you to death with it, cause it's going to be empty."

"If you're not shootin', you should be loadin'. If you're not loadin', you should be movin', if you're not movin', someone's gonna cut your head off and put it on a stick."

"When you reload in low light encounters, don't put your flashlight in your back pocket.. If you light yourself up, you'll look like an angel or the tooth fairy... and you're gonna be one of 'em pretty soon."

"Do something. It may be wrong, but do something."

"Shoot what's available, as long as it's available, until something else becomes available."

"If you carry a gun, people will call you paranoid. That's ridiculous.. If you have a gun, what in the hell do you have to be paranoid for."

"Don't shoot fast, unless you also shoot good."

"You can say 'stop' or 'alto' or use any other word you think will work, but I've found that a large bore muzzle pointed at someone's head is pretty much the universal language."

"You have the rest of your life to solve your problems. How long you live depends on how well you do it."

"You cannot save the planet but you may be able to save yourself and your family."

The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield, and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental.

Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

I carry a gun cause a cop is too heavy.

When seconds count, the cops are just minutes away.

A reporter did a human-interest piece on the Texas Rangers. The reporter recognized the Colt Model 1911 the Ranger was carrying and asked him 'Why do you carry a 45?' The Ranger responded, 'Because they don't make a 46.'

An armed man will kill an unarmed man with monotonous regularity.

The old sheriff was attending an awards dinner when a lady commented on his wearing his sidearm. 'Sheriff, I see you have your pistol. Are you expecting trouble?' 'No ma'am. If I were expecting trouble, I would have brought my rifle.'

Beware of the man who only has one gun, because he probably knows how to use it very well.

'The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.' ~G. K. Chesterton

A people that values its privileges above its principles will soon lose both.

"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.." - Thomas Jefferson

"Governments like control -- the only real power governments have to fall back on if necessary to preserve their authority is the use of force. That is not as easy or effective against an armed population. So governments around the world seek to disarm everyone except their own military and LEO forces. This had been the case for thousands of years. It is still the case today. The only time governments want their average citizens to be armed historically is when the threat of losing their authority to foreign invaders is greater than the risk from their own population."
Zoogster

"More government equals less freedom. More freedom equals less government."

A Large Page of H.L. Mencken Quotes (from PHenry)

"Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
Elie Wiesel

"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them."
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833 Supreme Court Justice from 1811 to 1845. Member of the Sons of Liberty.

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."
(Tench Coxe in ‘Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution' under the Pseudonym ‘A Pennsylvanian' in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1)

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American.... [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."
(Tench Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.)

"How long would the Nazis have kept it up...if every Jew they came after had met them with a gun in his hand?"
Walter Mathau - Fail Safe - 1964

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Daniel Webster

"There are three reasons to own a gun: To protect yourself and your family, to hunt dangerous and delicious animals, and to keep the King of England out of your face."
Krusty the Clown

"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms..."
Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, 1798 - Sam Adams

"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 Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
President Thomas Jefferson

"I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state. That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union."
Governor Rick Perry of Texas, April 2009

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
Benjamin Franklin

"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Sir Winston Churchill, Speech, 1941, Harrow School

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it." Dr. Adrian Rogers , 1931 to 2005

"America is broken because the american family is broken. We can't run our own families and we expect to run an entire country? It's time to put the Lord back in the driver's seat. We cheat on our wives, fall into drugs, are abusive, unfaithful, unloving, etc. yet we (think we can) teach our kids to grow up and be faithful, sober, loving, slow to anger? This country is falling apart at the seams because the american family is falling apart at the seams...What this country needs more than anything right now is a revival of the Spirit and the family."
CZRev

"The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State--a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values--interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people...The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State."
Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism

"Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438

"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it."
William Burroughs

"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves."
Thomas Jefferson

"Professionals argue tactics. -- Amateurs argue caliber."
Anonymous

"The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies."
H.L. Mencken, February 12, 1923, Baltimore Evening Sun

"Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less."
"You must study to be frank with the world: frankness is the child of honesty and courage."
" I trust that a kind Providence will watch over us, and notwithstanding our weakness and sins will yet give us a name and place among the nations of the earth."
"If the Constitution and the Union established by our forefathers" were "restored" then there will be no truer supporters of that union and that Constitution than the Southern people. Every brave people who considered their rights attacked and their Constitutional liberties invaded, would have done as we did. Our conduct was not caused by any insurrectionary spirit nor can it be termed rebellion, for our construction of the Constitution under which we lived and acted was the same from its adoption and for eighty years we have been taught and educated by the founders of the Republic and their written declaration which controlled our consciences and actions."
"A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today."
"In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength."
Robert E. Lee

"You don't become a cop because you want to serve and protect. Anybody believes that is an idiot. You do it because you get respect. Because they let you carry a gun and a badge. Most people respect the badge... Everybody respects the gun."
Anonymous

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
Robert A. Heinlein

"Remember that Jefferson told us that the Second Amendment would not be needed until they tried to abolish it. There are people who have that in mind right now. The personal ownership and usage of firearms is not a common aspect of today's culture worldwide. It is up to Americans - those who know what it means to be an American - to uphold the light of liberty in the face of those both here and elsewhere who would extinguish it. We see the hysterics who feel that the abolition of firearms would bring about major changes in the human psyche, and that crime would disappear. We cannot reason with these people because they are impervious to reason, but we can expose them to ridicule and frustrate their political clout. That is a job not just for the National Rifle Association, but for everyone. If you want to make a resolution for the coming century, resolve to do something in defense of liberty every day, and by liberty, of course, we mean true liberty - the right to keep and bear arms. Without that liberty all other liberties are meaningless."
Col. Jeff Cooper

"Amateurs train until they get it right, professionals train until they cannot get it wrong. If you've seen police qualifications, you know this is false. Amateurs train until they get it right, professionals train no more than they are paid to."
E. Charles

"Gun Control - A theory espoused by some monumentally stupid people; who claim to believe, against all logic and common sense, that a violent predator who ignores the laws prohibiting them from robbing, raping, kidnapping, torturing and killing their fellow human beings will obey a law telling them that they cannot own a gun."
OldNoob

"As we learned many years ago, happiness may never be pursued as an end to itself, because happiness is the by-product of accomplishment. That may be the reason why we see no element of happiness on the faces of people in the casinos of Las Vegas and Reno. Nobody has accomplished anything, and nobody is likely to. Hitting a jackpot may be fun, but you did nothing to achieve it, and it cannot bring you happiness."
Jeff Cooper

"I was once asked by a lady visiting if I had a gun in the house. I said I did. She said 'Well I certainly hope it isn't loaded!' To which I said, of course it is loaded, can't work without bullets!' She then asked, 'Are you that afraid of someone evil coming into your house?' My reply was, 'No not at all. I am not afraid of the house catching fire either, but I have fire extinguishers around, and they are all loaded too.' To which I'll add, having a gun in the house that isn't loaded is like having a car in the garage without gas in the tank."
Anonymous

"That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It is so ordered."
Justice Antonin Gregory Scalia, June 26, 2008, DC v. Heller

"It's easy to be brave from a distance."
Aesop

"In the Army there were three levels of testing:
1. General proof was passed by most equipment
2. Officer/NCO proof needed to be quite a bit more rugged especially for the Engineering types.
3. Private proofing was the real test of equipment durability. To meet this level of testing the equipment needed to be virtually indestructible."
Doc Lee

"What we should have learned after 9/11 and Katrina was that those who expect government at any level to do anything more complex than garbage collection are inattentive."
Evan Marshall

"My choices early in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference." USA President Harry Truman

"You have no rights except those you take." Anonymous

"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves."
D. H. Lawrence

"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again."
Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws...you create a nation of law-breakers and then you cash in on guilt."
Ayn Rand

"The job of bureaucrats is to regulate, and left to their own devices, they will try to regulate everything they can."
Steven den Beste

"If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams

"God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed... what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson

"It is customary for republican governments to be bound by constitutions, and this is grand idea. The question does arise, however, about what recourse the citizen has when the government disregards its own constitution, as is the case with our own Tenth Amendment. What do you do if your government does not obey its own laws? Our Declaration declaims that when governments do not observe the God-given rights of man, it is not only the right but the duty of the people to alter or abolish them. The Declaration of Independence may not be the supreme law of the land - which is the Constitution - but it frames our philosophy of government and serves as a guide for those who respect our traditions. More people should."
Col. Jeff Cooper

Why do I need an "assault weapon?" Answer: You don't. You don't need an "assault weapon" any more than you need the right to speak freely, or the right to vote, or the right to drive whatever car you want, or the right to eat at whatever restaurant you want, or the right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure. If the government says you can only eat at one restaurant, can only drive mopeds, can not vote and can not speak without permission and can not ever speak against the government, and if the government can search your house anytime they want to... you won't die. None of those are NEEDS.
Then, ask how much they like their first amendment or fourth amendment rights? Tell them you like your second, and that the concept of freedom is not based on need- that would be communism. Freedom is based on being able to indulge in individual desires without repercussion. And also tell them that the constitution is a set of pillars upon which our republic is based... take down one pillar and you weaken the whole structure, so much so that other pillars may fall as well... or all of it could fall.
"Q"

"The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield, and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental."

As John Steinbeck once said:

1. Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.
2. If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics stink.
3. I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy.
4. When seconds count, the cops are just minutes away.
5. A reporter did a human-interest piece on the Texas Rangers. The reporter recognized the Colt Model 1911 the Ranger was carrying and asked him 'Why do you carry a 45?' The Ranger responded, 'Because they don't make a 46.'
6. An armed man will kill an unarmed man with monotonous regularity.
7. The old sheriff was attending an awards dinner when a lady commented on his wearing his sidearm. 'Sheriff, I see you have your pistol. Are you expecting trouble?' 'No Ma'am. If I were expecting trouble, I would have brought my rifle.'
8. Beware the man who only has one gun. HE PROBABLY KNOWS HOW TO USE IT!!!

"Having a gun in the house that isn't loaded is like having a car in the garage without gas in the tank."

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
Charles Austin Beard, American Historian, 1874-1948

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
Winston Churchill

"GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE PEOPLE I CANNOT SHOOT, COURAGE TO SHOOT THE PEOPLE I CAN, AND THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE."
Anonymous

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."
Mark Twain

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.... But then I repeat myself."
Mark Twain

"I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
Winston Churchill

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
George Bernard Shaw

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
Ronald Reagan (1986)

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."
Mark Twain (1866)

"The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other."
Ronald Reagan

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
Thomas Jefferson

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson Papers

"The Constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert 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.

"(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison.

"Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual discretion...in private self defense..."
John Adams, A defense of the Constitutions of the Government of the USA, 471 (1788).

"To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them..."
George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380.

"A pistol defends your property and your person from unanticipated and barely anticipated threats from thieves and robbers. With it, you can control your immediate environment. A rifle defends your freedom from oppressors and tyrants. With it, you can enforce your will. Buy as you see fit."
Gabe Suarez

"I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth."
William F. Buckley Jr.

I don't carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed.
I don't carry a gun to scare people. I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.
I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid. I carry a gun because there are real threats in this world.
I don't carry a gun because I am evil. I carry a gun because I've lived long enough to see the evil in the world.
I don't carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.
I don't carry a gun because I'm angry. I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.
I don't carry a gun because my sex organs are too small. I carry a gun because I want to continue to use those sex organs for the purpose they were intended for a good long time to come.
I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone. I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.
I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man. I carry a gun because a real man knows how to take care and protect their property, themselves and the ones they love.
I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate. I carry a gun because unarmed and facing armed thugs I am inadequate.
I don't carry a gun because I love it. I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.
I don't carry a gun to shoot to kill someone. I carry a gun and would shoot as necessary to stay alive. If the assailant dies as a result of a desire to harm me, it's no loss to society.
Anonymous

"Anti-gun politicians don't want women to have a gun and to use that gun to protect themselves from an ex boyfriend or husband who beats the hell out of her. They say "An order of protection will protect you" That is the most asinine statement anyone could say to a bruised woman with black eyes, broken nose and teeth knocked out."
PackinMama

"Americans have been too thoroughly conditioned to serf-mindedness to care two straws about freedom, whereas economic security exactly suits them, and they will cheerfully sacrifice all their other prospects in this world and all their hopes for the next, in their determination to get it."
Albert Jay Nock

"The present state of public affairs shows clearly enough that the State is the poorest instrument imaginable for improving human society, and that confidence in political institutions and political nostrums is ludicrously misplaced. Social philosophers in every age have been strenuously insisting that all this sort of fatuity is simply putting the cart before the horse; that society cannot be moralized and improved unless and until the individual is moralized and improved. Jesus insisted on this; it is the fundamental principle of Christian social philosophy. Pagan sages, ancient sages, modern sages, a whole apostolic succession running all the way from Confucius and Epictetus down to Nietzsche, Ibsen William Penn, and Herbert Spencer--all these have insisted on it."
Albert Jay Nock

"The Second Amendment isn't about hunting deer, it's about hunting politicians."
Congressman "B1" Bob Dornan

"Our Founding Fathers, having endured the tyranny of the British Empire, wanted to guarantee our God-given liberties. They devised our three branches of government and our system of checks and balances. But they were still concerned that the system could fail, and that we might someday face a new tyranny from our own government. They wanted us to be able to defend ourselves, and that's why they gave us the Second Amendment."
Mike Huckabee

"We believe that if you knock on our front door and you're hungry, we'll ask you to go sign the guest book and try to feed you. But if you break through the window in the middle of the night, then God help you."
Mike Huckabee

"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 their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."
Barry Goldwater

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist."
John Adams

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.
Carlos Castaneda

"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
George Washington

"When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave Them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 'Stick to the Devil you know.' "
Rudyard Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, 1919

"These are my true riches. A man's worth is counted in the number of his rifles."
- Mulay Achmed Mohammed Raisuli the Magnificent(Sean Connery), The Wind and the Lion, John Milius(Warner Brothers, 1975)

Often, for undaunted courage, fate spares the man it has not already marked.
Beowulf

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Victor Frankl

A fight itself is the antithesis of civilization, and should remain so. A fight is savage, brutal and barbaric. It should tweak the reptilian hindbrain and draw out your inner Viking.
Lawdog

"To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic."
Ted Nugent

"Whoever said the pen wass mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons."--General Douglas MacArthur

"A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him."
General MacArthur

"I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."
General MacArthur

"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."
General MacArthur

"Last, but by no means least, courage - moral courage, the courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle - the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other."
General MacArthur

"One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda."
General MacArthur

"The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war."
General MacArthur

"There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity."
General MacArthur

"We continue to be annoyed by commentators who insist that a certain type of firearm - a 1911 auto, for example - is designed only "to kill people." If we overlook the capacity of the defensive handgun to intimidate an attacker, that idea may be true, but we could respond by saying that a scalpel is only designed "to cut people." But we can hardly expect the logical approach from our entrenched hoplophobes. I cannot believe that all these people are essentially stupid. What they are, I propose, is simply envious. The man who cannot cope automatically envies the man who can."
Jeff Cooper

"Statistically, fighting back is safer than giving in."
Curt Rich

"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes, and the other is the Bill of Rights."
Major General Smedley Butler, US Marine Corps 1930

"I would add another reason - practice. Anyone who has ever been deeply involved in warfare knows that the only way to learn to fight is to fight. This may not be a popular view with the grass eaters, but I defy them to disprove it."
Jeff Cooper

"If you look like a rabbit, and act like a rabbit, you will be treated like a rabbit - prey for all predators."
Stony Loft

"Crime and insecurity are both aspects of the crisis of Western society at the close of the millennium. This sense of helplessness, itself fueled by the government's monopolization of the means of force, is then used by the central state to justify suppressing still more personal liberties and the right to self-defense. The state presents this process as natural and logical, as the only solution to the problems that plague us. But it is nothing of the sort. It is simply government doing what government does best: monopolizing power."
Jeremy Black, in Chronicles, January 1998

"The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among these departments, to save the people from autocracy."
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the 1922 case Myers v. United States

"I think it would be a nifty idea to remit all taxes to holders of the Congressional Medal of Honor. This would cost the government practically nothing, and it would show that at least some of us are serious about our salutes on Veteran's Day."
Jeff Cooper

"The dead take with them to the grave only that which they have given away."
Anonymous

"I hear that small arms ammunition in South Africa has practically disappeared from the store shelves. Either people are wisely stocking up, or some arm of the government has decided to cut off the supply. In that regard, I advise you to keep your own stocks in good shape. Our enemies may not be able to abrogate the constitution just yet, but there are economic and political means by which they may dry up our ammunition supply."
Jeff Cooper

"When two opposing sides of an argument are presented, one by an honest man and the other by a liar, the liar usually wins, simply because he is not inhibited by the truth."

"It is interesting to hear certain kinds of people insist that the citizen cannot fight the government. This would have been news to the men of Lexington and Concord, as well as the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The citizen most certainly can fight the government, and usually wins when he tries. Organized national armies are useful primarily for fighting against other organized national armies. When they try to fight against the people, they find themselves at a very serious disadvantage. If you will just look around at the state of the world today, you will see that the guerillero has the upper hand. Irregulars usually defeat regulars, providing they have the will. Such fighting is horrible to contemplate, but will continue to dominate brute strength."
Jeff Cooper

"A cooling-off period for handgun purchases requires a number of unlikely assumptions in order to work. First, the potential murderer - denied a handgun immediately - must then decide not to buy a rifle or a shotgun, which the Brady Bill will allow him to do. Then he must not know how to buy a handgun on the black market, or how to obtain one from friends, relatives or acquaintances. In addition, the type of murder he intends must not be one for which readily available alternative weapons, such as knives, automobiles, or bare hands, will work. Finally, the person who was literally ready to commit a murder on Day One of the waiting period must calm down by Day Seven and stay calm from that day forward."
David B. Kopel, in Policy Review

"George F. Will opines in Newsweek that Americans are a nation of cowards and shirkers, observing that we have surrendered our streets - as well as our dignity - to the goblins. He points out that, concerned with street crime, we choose to throw money at it rather than to fight. Money is not the answer. More cops cannot help. They can't be everywhere at once. More prisons cannot help. Modern prisons don't scare the bad guy. The only thing that can help is will - the will to fight back. If we have truly lost that, there is little hope for our civilization."
Jeff Cooper

"Nineteen ninety-four is the centennial of the great Winchester lever-action 30-30, one of the outstanding artifacts of modern times One correspondent has suggested that it should be replaced in its tactical niche by the Russian SKS in caliber 7.62x39, but somehow we tend to resist this notion. Among other things the SKS is clumsy, and its appearance aggravates the hoplophobes. I do not wish to sound chicken in this matter, but one of the nice things about the Model 94 is its innocent "Old West" appearance. If John Wayne loved it, it's got to be good."
Jeff Cooper

"Because the state can no longer protect us from crime, it wants to take away from us the means of protecting ourselves. This is the logic of gun control."
Joe Sobran

"In short, we - or our rulers, at any rate - now make law lawlessly. Bill Clinton wants to license all handguns in the United States. He affects not to know that the Second Amendment forbids the federal government to infringe our right to keep and bear arms. He doesn't ask, because he doesn't care, where the federal government gets the lawful power to require the licensing of guns. He thinks it has the actual political power to do it, and for him that is all that counts."
Joe Sobran

"So law-abiding citizens are left at a disadvantage - caught between a criminal class that disdains the law and a ruling class that disdains the Constitution."
Joe Sobran

"I have long preached that one should never be caught short in his personal armament, either in regard to the weapons or the ammunition. Keep up your supply, and do not neglect the 22 rimfire, which may well turn into the "ballistic wampum" I have spoken of the past. If you have any loading equipment, stock primers, which may constitute the weakest link in the chain."
Jeff Cooper

Note this from the Sixteenth American Jurisprudence, Second Edition, Section 177:

"The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having formed in nature of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void and ineffective for any purpose, since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment and not merely from the date of decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law in legal contemplation is as inoperative as if it had never been passed. Such a statute leaves the question that it purports to settle just as it would be had the statute not been enacted."

"Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principles follow that it imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection and justifies no acts performed under it."

"No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it."

"Slavery in the modern world implies the absolute deprivation of the individual's liberty, while possession of weapons and mastery of their use are means to the individual's liberation. We do not perceive how a man may be armed and at the same time bereft of his freedom."
John Keegan, in "The Face of Battle"

"There are no victims, only volunteers. You volunteer by looking uncertain and afraid. You volunteer by being, as grass-eaters invariably are, unprepared to confront the hazards of life."

"Anyone who claims that popular struggles are doomed to defeat by modern military technology must find it literally incredible that France and the United States suffered defeat in Vietnam; that the Shah no longer rules Iran; Somosa in Nicaragua; that Portugal was expelled from Angola and Mozambique; England from Palestine and Ireland; and France from Algeria."
Allan Goetlieb

"Since we are informed that these black ninja helicopters do not in fact exist, we may infer that if you shoot one down it does not count."
Jeff Cooper

"I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence I would advise violence."
Mohandas Gandhi

"The subject of personal defense is far more psychological than technical. As soon as you decide and insist that you will not be victimized, you have done more than any weapon can to provide for your safety."
Jeff Cooper

"There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!"
Patrick Henry, 1775

When the enemy is within range...so are you.

Tracers work in both directions.

"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it."
Jeff Cooper

"Anyone worth shooting is worth shooting more than once!"

"It is better to live one day as a lion, then one hundred years as a sheep"
Old Roman Proverb.

The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Dante

Hero's aren't born, they're cornered - According to Jim

"The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank GOD for the United States Marine Corps."
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1945

There is nothing that evil men fear so much as a good man who knows what is right and is willing to fight and die to see it done.

"My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country."
Nathan Hale

"Give me liberty, or give me death."
Patric Henry

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
Thomas Sowell

There are no substitutes for violence of action and volume of fire. Move forward and shoot, always forward and shooting. The enemy will choose to fight and die or live and run either way move forward and shoot and he will fear you absolutely.
Otto Skoernzy

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)

"There are many things more horrible than bloodshed; and slavery is one of them."
Padraig Pearse, 1913

"Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright. Speak the truth, even if it should mean your death. Safeguard the Helpless."
Oath of Knighthood from "Kingdom of Heaven"

9. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
10. Be still, and know that I am G-d: I wii be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
11. The lord of hosts is with us; the G-d of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
Psalm 46, verses 9-11 KJV.

"Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbour."
Leviticus 19,16.

If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
Thomas paine

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others, at whatever cost."
Arthur Ashe

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
Edmund Burke,

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear."
Ambrose Redmoon

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
John F. Kennedy

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
Sir Winston Churchill

"Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est."
Latin: "A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand."
Seneca

Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy.
Helvetius

Now I recall the Recon Marines: ragged, filthy cammie shirted young men in green paint who move silent like the fog with deadly purpose in their eyes. Swift, Silent, Deadly. I smile.
GYSGT Correll, USMC, Retired-- Recon Marine

"Come home with your shield or on it." Spartan mothers to their sons

"So much the better, we shall fight in the shade."
Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that Persian arrows blotted out the sun,

A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.
Edward W. Howe

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.

Psalm 91
"Though a thousand fall at my side, though ten thousand are dying around me, the evil will not touch me. I will see how the wicked are punished, but I will not share it."

Psalm 18:34-39...
"He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms...I have pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them: neither did I turn again till they were consumed. I have wounded them that they were not able to rise: they are fallen under my feet. For thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle..."

Psalm 144:1
Blessed be the LORD, my rock, Who trains my hands for war, {And} my fingers for battle

Deu 32:41-42
If I sharpen My flashing sword, And My hand takes hold on justice, I will render vengeance on My adversaries, And I will repay those who hate Me. I will make My arrows drunk with blood, And My sword will devour flesh, With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the long-haired leaders of the enemy.'

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.
From Julius Ceaser by William Shakespeare"

I firmly belive that any man's finest hour --- his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle --- victorious"
Vince Lombardi

"The fighter is to be always single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that is necessary for him."

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
Bruce Lee

The warrior's intention should be simply to grasp his sword and to die.
Kiyomasa Kato (1562-1611)

To fight and conquer in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy with no fight at all, that's the highest skill.
Sun Tsu

Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.
Miyamoto Musashi

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
General George Washington

"Given enough time, any man may master the physical. With enough knowledge, any man may become wise. It is the true warrior who can master both....and surpass the result."
Tien T'ai

When the World is at Peace, a gentleman keeps his Sword by his side.
Wu Tsu

The more you sweat in training, the less you will bleed in battle.

"Don't hit at all if it can be avoided, but never hit softly."
Theodore Roosevelt

The Spartans do not enquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.
Agis II, 427 B.C.

"And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,"
Shakespeare

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

Warriors compress time; this is the sixth principle of the art of stalking. Even an instant counts. In a battle for your life, a second is an eternity, an eternity that may decide the outcome. Warriors aim at succeeding, therefore they compress time. Warriors don't waste an instant.

A warrior acknowledges his pain but he doesn't indulge in it. The mood of the warrior who enters into the unknown is not one of sadness; on the contrary, he's joyful because he feels humbled by his great fortune, confident that his spirit is impeccable, and above all, fully aware of his efficiency. A warrior's joyfulness comes from having accepted his fate, and from having truthfully assessed what lies ahead of him.

It is much easier for warriors to fare well under conditions of maximum stress than to be impeccable under normal circumstances.

A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him, no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.

Acts have power. Especially when the warrior acting knows that those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever he is doing may very well be his last act on earth.

We make war that we may live in peace.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Nichomachean Ethics

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
Flavius Vegetius Renatus (~375 AD), De Rei Militari V

ictorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Sun-tzu (~400 BC), The Art of War. Strategic Assessments

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)

"Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely - lay your life before him."
Bruce Lee

"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil"
Thomas Mann

"We are what we repeatedly do. EXCELLENCE then is not an act but a habit"
Aristotle, 384-322 BC

"If you have a strong enough why you can bear almost any how"
Nietzshe

This is the law: The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental.
John Steinbeck

Good karateka I have known were intelligent, original, capable, unpredictable, aggressive, brave, and dangerous. Most had a dark side. Daily practice for decades at hurting other people does not make liberals.

"If you are unwilling to defend even your own lives, then you are like mice trying to 'negotiate' with owls. You regard their ways as 'wrong.' They regard you as dinner."-- John Farnam

"You better understand something about warfare, lad: Active war is going to be a continuous part of world landscape for the remainder of your lifetime. On behalf of my generation, I apologize to you and your colleagues for the hash you've inherited from us. With that said, you better get used to a pitilessly indifferent world, and YOU BETTER DECIDE RIGHT NOW TO BE A SERIOUS, DANGEROUS, HARMFUL HEAVY-HITTER, and that you're going to be in a high state of readiness, all the time, no matter were you are, regardless of "rules." I pray you make that decision while you still can!"

You're only beaten when you allow yourself to believe it. – John Farnam

When asked to summarize a recent gunfight, Bill Hickock (known for his short answers) was quoted at saying simply, "He missed. I didn't." Bill correctly concluded that his point was made and that additional details would be superfluous. There is no substitute for surgical accuracy, no matter how exciting the situation. "Lots of shooting" doesn't end fights. Hits do!
John Farnam

Don't go stupid places. Don't hang out with stupid people. Don't do stupid things.
John Farnam

Old Chinese Proverb: "Stupid friends are dangerous."

As with sharks, humans usually bump before they bite.
John Farnam

"Keep a goverment poor and weak and it's your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master."
H. Beam Piper, "Lone Star Planet"

"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, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004)

"When you were born you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die you are smiling and everyone around you is crying."

"There is a fine line between prepared and paranoid and we all probably cross it on occasion."
Mike

"There is an old saying. There are only 2 times when you have too much ammo.
1. When you are drowning
2. When you are on fire

"No State shall convert a liberty into a privilege, license it, and charge a fee therefor."
Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 US 105

"If the State converts a right (liberty) into a privilege, the citizen can ignore the license and fee and engage in the right (liberty) with impunity."
Shuttleworth v. City of Birmingham Alabama, 373 US 262

"An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation as though it had never been passed."
Norton v. Shelby County, 118 US 425

"Every man dies, not every man really lives. So Get busy living, or get busy dying."
From "The Shawshank Redemption" movie

"It's not always being fast or even accurate that counts, it's being willing. I found out early that most men, regardless of cause or need, aren't willing. They blink an eye or draw a breath before they pull the trigger-and I won't."
spoken by John Wayne's character, J.B. Books, in his last film, The Shootist

"We must always remember that, as Americans, we all have a common enemy -- an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government."
Dave Barry

"When we teach our children that personal accountability doesn't matter, self-fulfillment is the goal and that the only person fit to judge you is yourself we allow and condone all sorts of anti-social and evil behavior. That coupled with over-medication, a lack of a moral compass replaced by moral relativity and the absence of God is obviously going to render undesirable results."
"Stevil" on the USRange.org

"To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form."
Roy Innis, National Chairman of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it."
William Burroughs

"Today's liberals wish to disarm us so they can run their evil and oppressive agenda on us. The fight against crime is just a convenient excuse to further their agenda. I don't know about you, but if you hear that Williams' guns have been taken, you'll know Williams is dead."
Walter Williams, Professor of Economics, George Mason University.

"If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government --and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."
Edward Abbey

"Live your life so that the fear of death can never enter your heart. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light. Give thanks for your life and your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. And if perchance you see no reason for giving thanks, rest assured the fault is in yourself."
The Real Tecumseh.

"A man should carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed the phrase, 'I am but dust and ashes.' On the other, 'For my sake the world was created.' And he should use each stone as he needs it."

"Drugs are for fools. I told (rock legends) Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon and Jerry Garcia what was going to happen to them if they kept taking drugs. Well, look what happened. They took drugs, and they’re dead. I went hunting, and I’m still Ted."
Ted Nugent

"One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that 'violence begets violence.' I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure (and in some cases I have) that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy."
Jeff Cooper, "Cooper vs. Terrorism", Guns & Ammo Annual, 1975

"It is the duty of the courts to be watchful for the Constitutional rights of the citizen and against any stealthy encroachments thereon."
- Boyd vs. United States, 116 US 616
**********
"It is well settled that the Constitutional Rights protected from invasion by the police power, include Rights safeguarded both by express and implied prohibitions in the Constitutions."
- Tiche vs. Osborne, 131 A. 60
**********
"Disobedience or evasion of a Constitutional Mandate cannot be tolerated, even though such disobedience may, at least temporarily, promote in some respects the best interests of the public."
- Slote vs. Examination, 112 ALR 660
**********
"As a rule, fundamental limitations of regulations under the police power are found in the spirit of the Constitutions, not in the letter, although they are just as efficient as if expressed in the clearest language."
- Mehlos vs. Milwaukee, 146 NW 882
**********
"The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime." - Miller v. U.S. 230 F 2nd 486, 489.
**********
"Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them."
- Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436, 491
**********
"There should be no arbitrary deprivation of Life or Liberty..."
- Barbour vs. Connolly, 113 US 27, 31; Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, 118 US 356
**********
"There can be no sanction or penalty imposed upon one because of this exercise of constitutional Rights."
- Snerer vs. Cullen, 481 F. 946
**********
"With regard particularly to the U.S. Constitution, it is elementary that a Right secured or protected by that document cannot be overthrown or impaired by any state police authority."
- Connolly vs. Union Sewer Pipe Co., 184 US 540; Lafarier vs. Grand Trunk R.R. Co., 24 A. 848; - O'Neil vs. Providence Amusement Co., 108 A. 887
**********
"Constitutional Rights cannot be denied simply because of hostility to their assertions and exercise; vindication of conceded Constitutional Rights cannot be made dependent upon any theory that it is less expensive to deny them than to afford them."
- Watson vs. Memphis, 375 US 526
**********
"The police power of the state must be exercised in subordination to the provisions of the U.S. Constitution."
- Bacahanan vs. Wanley, 245 US 60; Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Co. vs. State Highway Commission, 294 US 613
**********
"We find it intolerable that one Constitutional Right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another."
- Simons vs. United States, 390 US 389
**********
"The state cannot diminish Rights of the people."
- Hurtado vs. California, 110 US 516
**********
"No public policy of a state can be allowed to override the positive guarantees of the U.S. Constitution."
- 16 Am.Jur. (2nd), Const. Law, Sect. 70
**********
"The courts are not bound by mere form, nor are they to be misled by mere pretenses. They are at liberty -- indeed they are under a solemn duty -- to look at the substance of things, whenever they enter upon the inquiry whether the legislature has transcended the limits of its authority. If, therefore, a statute purported to have been enacted to protect ... the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects or is a palpable invasion of Rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of the courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution."
- Mulger vs. Kansas, 123 US 623, 661

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for re-election and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."
Justice Alex Kozinski, US 9th Circuit Court, 2003 ( minority dissent in which the majority has "lost the courage to oppose")

"As the 20th century proved, guns in the hands of governments kill vastly more people than guns in the hands of civilians."
Lou Boyd

"There is no doubt in my mind that millions of lives could have been saved if the [German] people were not brainwashed about gun ownership and had been well armed. ... Gun haters always want to forget the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which is a perfect example of how a ragtag, half-starved group of Jews took 10 handguns and made asses out of the Nazis."
Theodore Haas, Dachau Survivor

"Free men have arms; slaves do not."
William Blackstone (1723-1780), English jurist and professor of common law at Oxford

"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
George Washington

"It was a basic principle of a tyrant...to unarm his people of weapons, money, and all means whereby they resist his power."
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554 - 1618)

"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms."
Aristotle

"Taking a long view of history, we may safely say that anyone who lays down his arms deserves what he gets."
COL Jeff Cooper

"Arguing over which .22LR round is best for self defense is like 2 Marine recruits arguing over who has more rank."
Vafish on "Glock Talk"

"Dawn has broke, the time has come
Move your feet to the marching drum
We’ll win the war and pay the toll
Fight as one in heart and soul
Midnight mare and blood red roan
Fight to keep this land your own
Sound the horn and call the cry
How many of them can we make die?"
[March of the Clambreadth by Heather Alexander]

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
James Bovard (1994)

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
George Bernard Shaw

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
P.J. O'Rourke

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."
Will Rogers

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
Pericles (430 B.C.)

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session."
Mark Twain (1866)

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
Herbert Spencer (1891)

"Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons."
General Macarthur

"The true rifleman is an enthusiast, an artist, an aficionado. He loves his weapon, he loves to shoot, and he usually learns to shoot long before he puts on an uniform. For a rifleman to go to war therefore, is not for a young man to be called from the pursuits of happiness, thrown into the military establishment, handed a weapon, trained to use it, and then sent reluctantly into the fearful crucible of battle; it is rather for a dedicated practitioner gladly to set forth in search of his chosen practice."
Col. Jeff Cooper

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
Dante

"The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely upon the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized.

"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle

"Duty is Ours, Consequences are Gods."
Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I should do and, with the help of God, I WILL DO!"
Everett Hale

"If you are aware, ready to do battle if it insists on coming to you and proficient with the gun you carry, even if its design dates from the previous turn of the century, you probably won't be seriously handicapped because you don't have the gun on the cover of this month's gun magazine."
Stephen Wenger

"Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys."
Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
Dante

"Ammunition beats persuasion when you are looking for freedom."
Will Rogers

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
Attributed to General George Patton Jr.

"Most governments are designed to protect the government from the people, whereas the United States government was organized to protect the people from the government."
Jeff Cooper

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356

"Man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."
Ronald Reagan

"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can."
Samuel Adams

"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it."
Col. Jeff Cooper

"The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."
John F. Kennedy

"Government's function is to obey orders, not orginate them."
Mark Twain

"Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered."
Patrick Henry

"A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares about more than he does his own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
John Stuart Mill

"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
Thomas Jefferson

"The will to survive is not as important as the will to prevail... the answer to criminal aggression is retaliation."
Jeff Cooper

"I much prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery."
Thomas Jefferson

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."
Hubert H. Humphrey

"When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
Benjamin Franklin

"The more corrupt the government, the more numerous its laws."
Edward Abbey

"Your email demands that wealthy people, wealthy employers and wealthy corporations pay their fair share. I was thinking that I had heard this somewhere before. Then I recalled Norman Thomas, perennial Socialist Party presidential candidate and one of the founders of the ACLU, once proclaimed, 'The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.'"
Representative Chris Clem in a letter to a constituent

"Beware the greedy hand of government, thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry."
Thomas Paine

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated."
Thomas Jefferson

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."
Alexander Fraser Tytler

"The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom."
"Beyond This Horizon" by Robert Heinlein, 1942

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."

"Aye, fight - and you may die. Run and you will live - at least for a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance - just one chance - to come back here and tell our enemies that - they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!" Braveheart

"It's not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually try to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checked by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in a gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." President Theoldore Roosevelt (cf. Hamilton Club speech on the strenuous life, Chicago, 10 Apr. 1899)

"Those who beat their swords into plowshares NOW will plow for those who don't. World peace in our time is just a dream. When the Prince of Peace returns, then will be the time to beat swords into plowshares."

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."
Gerald Ford

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
T. Roosevelt

"Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't."

"If every Jewish and anti-nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic."
Aaron Zelman

"The Second Amendment is a political issue today only because of the military reality that underlies it. Politicians who fear the people seek to disarm them. People who fear their government's intentions refuse to be disarmed. The Founders understood this. So, too, does every tyrant who ever lived. Liberty-loving Americans forget it at their peril. Until they do, American gunowners in the aggregate represent a strategic military fact and an impediment to foreign tyranny. They also represent the greatest political challenge to home-grown would-be tyrants. If the people cannot be forcibly disarmed against their will, then they must be persuaded to give up their arms voluntarily. This is the siren song of gun control, which is to say "government control of all guns."
Mike Vanderboegh

"FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD
TRADING POST & RESTAURANT BAR
American Vodka
Corn Liquor
Applejack
Pure Spring Water
Grade "A" Milk
Corned Beef & Potatoes
Steak & Fried Potatoes
Butter & some days Bread
Smoked Bear Meat
Jerked Quisling (by the neck)
Crepes Suzettes to order.
!!!Any BOOK Accepted as Cash!!!!
DAY NURSERY
!!FREE KITTENS!!
Blacksmithing, Machine Shop,
Sheet Metal Work-You Supply the Metal
FARNHAM SCHOOL OF CONTRACT BRIDGE
Lessons by Arrangement
Social Evening Every Wednesday
WARNING!!!
Ring bell. Wait. Advance with your Hands Up.
Stay on path, avoid mines. We lost three
customers last week. We can't afford to lose YOU.
No sales tax.
Hugh & Barbara Farnham & Family
Freeholders"
Hugh Farnham (R. Heinlein)

"The real reason for gun ownership is to protect the individual from the State, whether it be an invading State from across the seas or a domestic State grown tyrannical and oppressive."
The Company of Free Men

"Gun bans don't disarm criminals, gun bans attract them."
Walter Mondale

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the weaponry to make the difference." Patriot's prayer

"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance."
Woodrow Wilson, May 9, 1912, Address, New York Press Club.

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978, D-MN), in "Know Your Lawmakers," Guns magazine, February 1960, p.6

The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves." Plato

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be . . . The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe."
Thomas Jefferson

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! Give me liberty, or give me death!"
Patrick Henry

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
Tacitus

"The Second Amendment does not exist to protect the guns you like. It exists to protect the guns you hate."

"You have rights atecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe."
John Adams

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong"
Tom Robbins

THE MINUTE MENS OATH
"We will to the utmost of our power and abilities,defend all and every one of our charter rights, liberties and priviledges; and will hold ourselves in readiness at a minutes warning, with arms and ammunition thus to do."
-Bancrofts History.

"Any caliber may fail to expand but a .45 never shrinks."

"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
Sir John Harrington

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition: and gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it."
Woodrow Wilson

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
Sun Tzu

"Liberals share a philosophy of 'no fault' living, premised upon the nihilistic belief that we are helpless pawns in this life -- that the forces of nature and society around us are overwhelming -- that we are essentially victims. ...Since there is no grand design or purpose to the universe, since life itself is nothing more than an accident, sin and guilt are burdens we don't have to carry. In effect, the rules governing man's behavior can be whatever we want them to be. This vision is inconsistent with religious faith, that is why liberals work assiduously to censor religious expression and substitute the laws of the State for those of the Creator of the Universe."
Linda Bowles

"Gun registration is not enough. Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal."
Janet Reno

"Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed."
Sara Brady, Chairman, Handgun Control, The National Educator, January 1994, Page 3.

"Life is truly like a roll of toilet paper, the closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes."
Anonymous Genius

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson

"Greek Tragedy is the tragedy of necessity; i.e., the feeling aroused in the spectator is ‘What a pity it had to be this way’; Christian tragedy is the tragedy of possibility, ‘What a pity it was this way when it might have been otherwise.’"
W. H. Auden

"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."
John Adams

"As my father used to say, Son, don't ever beg anybody to take your money."
Stoky

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose."
Ronald Reagan

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Ronald Reagan

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment's would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."
Ronald Reagan

"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
Ronald Reagan

"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."
Ronald Reagan

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

"Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law."
Henry David Thoreau

"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong, which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass, Aug. 4, 1857

"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

"There's a clear cause-and-effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."
Ronald Reagan

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of government power, not the increase of it."
Woodrow Wilson - from a speech in New York City, September 9, 1912

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are benificient....The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-mening but without understanding."
Justice Brandeis in Olmstead v. U.S., 277 US 438, 479 (1927)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
The Declaration of Independence (1776)

"A man's got to know his limitations."
Harry Callahan

"You just fulfilled the first rule of law enforcement: make sure when your shift is over you go home alive. Here endeth the lesson."
Jim Malone in The Untouchables

"There are no dangerous weapons, there are only dangerous people."
Heinlein

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."
Will Rogers

"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Han Solo

"Though defensive violence will always be a sad necessity in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men."
St. Augustine

"Gun control, the theory that 110lb. women should have to fistfight with 210lb. rapists."
Chris Morton

"Socialism needs two legs on which to stand; a right and a left. While appearing to be in complete opposition to one another, they both march in the same direction."
Paul Proctor

"Nobody has to put up with aggression and surrender his right of self-defense for fear of hurting somebody else, guilty or innocent. When someone comes at you with a gun, if you have one ounce of self-esteem, you will answer him by force, never mind who he is or who is behind him. If he is out to destroy you, that is what you owe to the sanctity of your own life."
Ayn Rand

"We all know that at the end of the day, Blue Helmets on American Soil are fair game."
Geekwitha45

"To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."
Ted Nugent

"There are no good guns. There are no bad guns. Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody -- except bad people."
Charlton Heston

"I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless. But not men."
Vito Corleone

"Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun."
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, gangster

"Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty."
John Joseph Bonforte, in "Double Star" (Heinlein)

"No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law."
Robert Heinlein

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."
Robert Heinlein

"The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom."
Robert Heinlein

"There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men."
R.A.Heinlein

"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you cannot make him think."
Robert Heinlein (Colonel Dubois in Starship Troopers)

"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine 'that violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom."
Robert Heinlein (Colonel Dubois in Starship Troopers)

"One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way -- prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs."
Robert Heinlein

"That a free citizen should have to go before a committee, hat in hand, and pray for permission to bear arms - fantastic! Arm your daughter, sir, and pay no attention to petty bureaucrats."
Robert Heinlein ("Doc" in Red Planet)

"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of."
Suzanna Gratia Hupp, Texas State Rep.

"I could, literally, die any second. When you live with the idea a while, it isn't scary, anymore. How you draw your last breath is more important than when."
Anonymous

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

"Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills."
Gunnery Sargeant Hartman, R. Lee Ermey, Full Metal Jacket

"A master is one who, after studying a thousand techniques, finds three he can use any time, and to perfection."
Shaolin adage.

"The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."
John F. Kennedy

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States

"If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children."
Confucius

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
Dante

"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."
Theodore Roosevelt

"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The winner of gunplay was the one who took his time. I would shun flashy trick-shooting, grandstand play, as I would poison. In all my life as a frontier peace officer, I did not know a single proficient gunfighter who had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner or the man who shot from the hip."
Wyatt Earp

"Death before dishonor is a stupid, boastful vainglorious thing for people to say unless the people who say it really mean it, in which case you had better immediately get out of their way!"
Winston Churchill

"Free men do not ask permission to bear arms."
Anonymous

"I have yet to hear anyone afflicted with the gun control disability dial 9-1-1 and specify, Now please be sure to send the kind of cops who are disarmed. If you can't do that, we'd rather you not send anyone at all to stop the men who are holding my daughter at knifepoint, because in this household we don't believe that guns ever solve anything."
VIN SUPRYNOWICZ

"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."
Thomas Sowell

"If you are unwilling to defend even your own lives, then you are like mice trying to negotiate with owls. You regard their ways as wrong. They regard you as dinner."
John Farnam

"If you look like a rabbit, and act like a rabbit, you will be treated like a rabbit -- prey for all predators."
Stony Loft

"When you need to shoot, shoot; don't talk."
Eli Wallach as Tuco, in The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.

"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it."
William Burroughs

"The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose."
James Earl Jones, actor

"One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would very much like to ensure-and in some cases I have-that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy."
Col. Jeff Cooper, from "Cooper vs. Terrorism," Guns & Ammo Annual, 1975

"Though defensive violence will always be a sad necessity in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men."
St. Augustine (354-430 AD)

"Never part with your weapons when you are in the field. You never know when on some lengthy plain, you may suddenly need your spear."
Norse Saying from The Havamal

"The right to buy weapons is the right to be free."
A.E. Van Vogt

"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."
Yiddish proverb

"An idea is like a bullet...No one knows how far it will travel or what its effect will be..."
Louis L'Amour

"Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms."
Andrew Jackson, 7th USA President

"We're not going to let you do that."
"Who's WE?"
"Smith, Wesson and ME."
Harry Callahan

"A gun, is one of the few things in the world, that if you NEED one, nothing else will do. If you need one and dont have one you will probably never need one again."

"To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carry a war arm... is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege."
Arkansas Supreme Court-1878

"Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human liberty. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
William Pitt

"It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion."

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful."
C.S. Lewis

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."
Justice Alex Kozinski, US 9th Circuit Court, 2003

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Thomas Jefferson

"The legendary governor of Louisiana, Huey P. Long, when discussing the political risks inherent in communications, once said, "Never write what you can phone; never phone what you can say in person; never say what you can wink." The governor was describing a continuum of risk and security in communications. For the armed civilian, we could come up with a parallel list: "Never shoot what you can baton; never baton what you can spray; never spray what you can punch; never punch what you can walk away from." Less is best."
Syd

"The gun... insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed."
Ronald Reagan

"Now Ehud had made a double-edged sword about a foot and a half long, which he strapped to his right thigh under his clothing."
Judges 3:16 (Ehud was one of the "Judges" who delivered Israel from foreign oppressors.)

"I do not trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me victory; but You give us victory over our enemies, You put our adversaries to shame. In God we make our boast all day long, and we will praise Your name forever."
Psalm 44:6-8

"Government: A group of elected and unelected officials you pay to make decisions for you that you'd never make for yourself."
Mark Driver

"Serenity is when you are at home at night with doors locked, this is called Condition Green. Condition Yellow is when you are dodging 'incomings' --the annoyances of everyday life, background; these can not be prevented, only avoided-- Condition Red is when you are returning incomings. Problem with most people is that they walk around in Condition Green..."
John D. Taylor

"Christian parents should aim to raise their children with a warrior mindset in which they recognize the antithesis and seek not to accommodate the enemies of God but to win them by the proclamation of the word. 'For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ'
(2 Cor. 10:3-5)

"As the children learn to recognize falsehood, they will be less likely to succumb to it. As they are busy counteracting the lie, it will be more difficult for the lie to influence them. Children who are trained to be spiritual warriors are more likely to remain faithful as they become adults."
www.patriarch.com

"We are weapons -- rifles are mere tools."

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, writing for the Court, 1833

"My life is simple, my food is plain, and my quarters are uncluttered. In all things, I have sought clarity. I face the troubles and problems of life and death willingly. Virtue, integrity and courage are my priorities. I can be approached, but never pushed; befriended but never coerced; killed but never shamed."
Yi Sunshin, Last letter to an old friend.

"You can prevent your opponent from defeating you through defense, but you cannot defeat him without taking the offensive."
Sun Tzu

"From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked."
Nehemiah 4:16-18

"Protecting your home is not vigilantism."

"To fight and conquer in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy with no fight at all, that's the highest skill."
Sun Tsu

"So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword."
Exodus 17:13

"People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
George Orwell

"If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep. If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so that he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; but if it happens after sunrise, he is guilty of bloodshed. A thief must certainly make restitution, but if he has nothing, he must be sold to pay for his theft."
Exodus 22:1-3

"Those who seek power are not to be trusted with it."

"Chance favors the prepared mind....."

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."
J.R.R.Tolkien, The Two Towers

"Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds. May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double-edged sword in their hands, to inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with fetters, their nobles with shackles of iron, to carry out the sentence written against them. This is the glory of all his saints."
Psalm 149:5-9

"I did not venture down that dark alley - might have been a couple of dudes with a baseball bat."

"You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive."

"Look! It is Solomon's carriage, escorted by sixty warriors, the noblest of Israel, all of them wearing the sword, all experienced in battle, each with his sword at his side, prepared for the terrors of the night."
Song of Solomon 3:7-8

"Refuse to be a sheep....be a sheepdog!"

"I mean, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, why would ANY civilian want to carry a concealed firearm when the police are perfectly capable of protecting us?!?"

"No plan survives first contact with the enemy."

"For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."
Romans 13:4

"No tyrant should ever be allowed to die a natural death."

"You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you."
Leviticus 26:7-8

"A gun in the hand beats a cop on the phone!"

"They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them. If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be!"
Deuteronomy 32:28-29

"You can't argue logic with ignorance."

"(Jesus) said to them, But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one"
Luke 22:36

"Deception is a tactical weapon that is often ignored."

"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
Matthew 10:28

"Never bring a knife to a gun fight. Never bring a gun to a knife fight. Know the difference."

"Tomorrow's battle is won during today's practice."
Samurai maxim

"Trying to outdraw a man who already has pistol in hand is asking for him to put holes in your hide."

"I didn't do it, but I thought about it. Next time I might."

"Better to know what you don't know than to think you know what you don't know."

"All strangers are dangerous until proven otherwise."

"See what happens when a tax collection agency gets to decide what is taxable?"

"Foster and polish
The warrior spirit
While serving in the world;
Illuminate the path
According to your inner light"
Spring forth from the great earth;
Billow like great waves;
Stand like a tree, sit like a rock;
Use One to strike All.
Learn and forget!"
At the instant
A warrior confronts a foe,
All things come into focus."
Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969) Founder of Aikido

"Blessed be the LORD my strength which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight."
Psalm 144:1

"It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect. He maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and setteth me upon my high places. He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms."
Psalm 18:32-34

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."
Mark Twain

"A SUPERIOR SAILOR is one who uses his SUPERIOR JUDGEMENT to avoid situations requiring the use of his SUPERIOR SKILLS."

"With over 5000 years of history behind us there is no excuse, when fighting, not to fight well."

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispenable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
George Washington

"Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them."
James Madison

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it."
Thomas Paine

"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."
Daniel Webster

"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."

"He who dies with the most possessions is still dead."

"Don't you meddle with old unloaded firearms. They are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man...A youth who can't hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three-quarters of an hour can take up an old empty musket and bag his grandmother every time at a hundred."
Mark Twain "Advice to Youth" speech, 1882

"Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice."

"All skill is in vain when an Angel blows the powder from the flintlock of your musket."

"Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose."

"Never give a bad guy the first shot. Never give a bad guy a fair chance. Never turn your back on a bad guy."

"Always draw on a drawn gun, and do it quick. You may as well die fighting. And who knows, the bad guy may be a bad shot!"

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
Mark Twain

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
Benjamin Franklin

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
Thomas Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764

"Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." Latin: "A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand."
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius

"Every good communist should know that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Mao Tse Tung

"The best way to survive a gun fight is to avoid it to begin with."
Grayfox

"The right to bear arms is inherent in the right of self defense, defense of the family, and defense against tyranny, conferred on the individual and the community by our Creator to safeguard life, liberty, and property, as well as to help preserve the independence of the nation. The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution; it may not properly be infringed upon or denied. The Constitution Party upholds the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. We oppose attempts to prohibit ownership of guns by law-abiding citizens, and stand against all laws which would require the registration of guns or ammunition. We emphasize that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have them. In such circumstances, the peaceful citizen's protection against the criminal would be seriously jeopardized. We call for the repeal of all federal firearms legislation, beginning with Federal Firearms Act of 1968. We call for the rescinding of all executive orders, the prohibition of any future executive orders, and the prohibition of treaty ratification which would in any way limit the right to keep and bear arms."
The Constitution Party Platform

"We oppose all laws at any level of government restricting, regulating or requiring the ownership, manufacture, transfer or sale of firearms or ammunition. We oppose all laws requiring registration of firearms or ammunition. We support repeal of all gun control laws. We demand the immediate abolition of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."
Libertarian Party Platform

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed."
Noah Webster

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms."
Adolph Hitler

"Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world. Horrid mischief would ensue were the good deprived of the use of them."
Thomas Paine

"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

"The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."
Hubert H. Humphrey

"I think you can make better use of iron than forging it into chains. If you must have the metal, put it into Sharpe's rifles. It is a great deal better used that way than in fetters." (1859)
Wendell Phillips

"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature. When the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."
St. George Tucker, in his edition of Blackstone's "Commentaries"

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
Justice Louis D. Brandeis Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)

"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, VP of the United States 1813-1814, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789

"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson

"Gun Control is life insurance for those Government Officials scheming to steal the rest of your Bill of Rights."
SaveOurGuns.Com

"There is only one guarantee if you are disarmed - the Government, military, and criminals will have weapons and guns. They will be the exclusive holders of force. As such, they will control you (they will OWN you and your family). With force, at their whim, they will decide what is to be done with you."
SaveOurGuns.Com

"If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."
Thomas Paine

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791

"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world. It is God's gift to humanity."
George W. Bush

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."

"If nothing changes....nothing changes."

"Where law ends -- tyranny begins."

"Where tyranny begins, government ends."
Samuel West (1776, Boston)

"Today's mighty oak is just another nut that held its ground."

"No law of the civil magistrate can bind in opposition to the Divine Law."
J. Buckley (1773, Connecticut)

"As oppression makes a wise man mad, so it makes a righteous God angry."
J. Hancock (1772, Massachusetts)

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
Richard Henry Lee (a signer of the Declaration of Independence)

"There are more deadly weapons per person in Switzerland than any other nation, yet it is the freest, safest, most democratic country on earth. If guns were the problem, the Swiss should all be dead."
Patrick and John Henry

"If we are not governed by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants."
William Penn

"He that has no sword wherewith to defend himself against robbers and assassins will find a great want of it, and will wish that he had sold his garment and bought a sword."
Matthew Henry

"Give me liberty, or give me death."
Patrick Henry

"The bottom line is that at a certain point there is not only the right, but the duty, to disobey the State."
Francis Schaeffer in A Christian Manifesto

"The registration of all guns is ALWAYS a preparation for their confiscation."
Patrick and John Henry

"Cogito, ergo armatum sum."
"I think, therefore I am armed."
Chris Meissen

"Si vis Pacem, Para bellum - If you want Peace, prepare for War."

"Those who are skilled in combat do not become angered, those who are skilled at winning do not become afraid. Thus the wise win before they fight, while the ignorant fight to win."

"We would not allow our subjects to have guns, why would we let them have ideas of their own?"
Josef Stalin

"The inherent right of the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government."
Daniel Webster (1782-1852) US Senator

"There's only one principle of war, and that's this: hit the other fellow as quick as you can and as hard as you can, where it hurts him the most, when he ain't looking."

"Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed."
Bruce Springsteen

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Prime Minister Winston Churchill

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something sometime in your life."
Sir Winston Churchill

"If you can breathe, thank God! If you can read, thank a teacher! If you are reading this in English, thank a Veteran!"

"You can afford to have a temper or you can afford to carry a gun. You CAN'T afford both."
Goalie

"We have the right to defend ourselves from attackers but not to terrorize the tourists."

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
Albert Einstein

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

"If we could get everyone in the world to close their eyes and imagine world peace for an hour, think about how serene it would be until the looting started."

"Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised."
Niccolo Machiavelli

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined."
Patrick Henry, during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution (1788)

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man: brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
Mark Twain

"Never do an enemy a minor injury."

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

"If a bullet expands and penetrates 6" and another bullet does not expand, but penetrates 12", which one does more damage?"

"Three Fundamental Rules of Practical Firearms Safety-- The firearm is loaded until you personally have proved it is not. Aim the firearm at nothing you do not intend to kill. If you cannot accommodate rules 1 and 2, put the firearm down."

"Far better it is to dare mighty things than to take rank with those poor timid spirits who know neither victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt (1899)

"An armed society is a polite society."
Robert A. Heinlein

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Thomas Jefferson

"A government that outlaws guns is an outlaw government."

"Any government that fears arms in the hands of its citizens,SHOULD"

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed."

"Don't buy the lie! Gun control is PEOPLE control."

"Gun Control works, ask any Communist Country!"

"Gun control works. Ask Schindler's Jews."

"Trust no government that wants to disarm its citizens."

"Guns don't murder people, criminals murder people."

"Have you ever heard of an armed robbery at a gun show?"

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
Gandhi's Autobiography page 446

"All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity."
James Fenimore Cooper

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
Edmund Burke (1784)

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering

"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
General George S. Patton

"A shot never fired,is always a miss."

"There is no security, no safety, in the appeasement of evil. It must be the core of Western policy that there be no sanctuary for terror. Self-defense is not only our right, it is our duty."
Ronald Reagan 1986

"Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage."
Confucius

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and will preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and proclaiming...."WOW What a Ride!!"

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."
Benjamin Franklin

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams

For a brief review: Newton's Law states that for every force, there must exist an equal and opposite force.

"The energy necessary to "knock a man down" when delivered from a firearm would also knock down the person firing that round. Of course, good firing stance and "anticipation" of the discharge can help the shooter remain standing even if the round DOES have enough energy delivery to knock the opponent down. I'm reminded of the Dirty Harry scene in the diner (where Harry gets too much sugar in his coffee) when the bad guy is shot by Harry's S & W model 29. The BG flies backward through the window while Harry fires ONE-HANDED."
Lee A

vailability [You have to have it with you.]
Reliability [It has to 'go bang.']
Penetration [It has to reach important bits.]
Placement [You have to hit important bits.]

"The truth is that the greatest foes of our right to keep and bear arms are the masses of timid, soft, thoughtless, fearful citizens of whatever religion who wish to abdicate the responsibility of self-defense, wh' wish to remain children forever and to turn over all guns to the "adults' in positions of authority: politicians, the police, the military. If these sad creatures don't grow up, we are in for very bad times indeed."
Brian Puckett

"The good man has both right and need for arms; no law would dissuade the invader and the plunderer from having them. Since some will not, others dare not lay arms aside. Horrid mischief will ensue if the law-abiding are deprived of the use of arms. The weak will become a prey to the strong."
Thomas Paine

"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty - so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator - and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the quality alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree."
Cesare Beccaria

"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
Samuel Adams, Massachusetts’ U.S. Constitution ratification convention in 1788

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference—they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
George Washington, Jan. 7, 1790, speech to Congress

"The highest number to which a standing army can be carried in any country does not exceed one hundredth part of the souls, or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This portion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Besides the advantage of being armed, it forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would surely shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors."
James Madison

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion."
James Burgh, Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses [London, 1774-1775]

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
John Stuart Mill

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, polkers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur -- what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more -- we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ........... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956

"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
George Orwell

"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with Army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege."
Wilson vs. State, Ark. 1878

"A Golf Course is the willful and deliberate misuse of a Perfectly good Rifle Range!"

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine

"One may speak of peace only with those who are peaceful. To talk peace with he who holds a drawn sword is foolish, unless one is unarmed, and then one must talk very fast indeed."
Louis L'Amour

"Why would anyone believe that a person who would ignore laws against murder, would obey gun laws?"
Gary Conway

"If you don't understand weapons you don't understand fighting. If you don't nderstand fighting you don't understand war. If you don't understand war you don't understand history. And if you don't understand history you might as well live with your head in a sack."
Colonel Jeff Cooper

"As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost."
Robert Heinlein

"A reasonable working assumption is that the guy who comes to collect your guns on Monday will be back for your person on Tuesday."

"Four Laws of Firearm Safety
1) All firearms are loaded. - There are no exceptions. Don't pretend that this is true. Know that it is and handle all firearms accordingly. Do not believe it when someone says: "It isn't loaded."
2) Never let the muzzle of a firearm point at anything you are not willing to destroy. - If you would not want to see a bullet hole in it do not allow a firearm's muzzle to point at it.
3) Keep your finger off the trigger unless your sights are on the target. - Danger abounds if you keep your finger on the trigger when you are not about to shoot. Speed is not gained by prematurely placing your finger on the trigger as bringing a firearm to bear on a target takes more time than it takes to move your finger to the trigger.
4) Be sure of your target and what is behind it. - Never shoot at sounds or a target you cannot positively identify. Know what is in line with the target and what is behind it (bullets are designed to go through things). Be aware of your surroundings whether on a range, in the woods, or in a potentially lethal conflict."
Jeff Cooper

"Owning a handgun doesn't make you armed any more than owning a guitar makes you a musician."
Jeff Cooper

"Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is doing it. Right is right, even if nobody is doing it."
St. Augustine

"This is a free country: and I have the permits, licenses, stamps, tags, stickers, background checks and tax receipts to prove it."

"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go."

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."
Justice Alex Kozinski, US 9th Circuit Court, 2003

Molon Labe: "Come and Get them!" A Response to Tyranny-- Go and tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie."
In the 5th century BC, mankind was still living the way he had been since the dawn of history. Existing in either scattered tribal villages or in kingdoms and empires ruled by god-kings. All except for one rocky corner of the Mediterranean world where a new idea had taken root: the concept of free citizens who owed allegiance to their nation and not a king. They were imperfect, true; women’s rights were, well, a non-concept and although racism was largely unknown, equal-opportunity slavery was widespread. Still and all, though, they enjoyed a measure of freedom unknown in the stagnant empires of the Nile, Yangtze, Indus, and Tigris-Euphrates river valleys. They were not subjects, they were the world’s prototypical citizens. Unfortunately, just across the Aegean Sea the largest empire in the known world was looking Westward with greedy eyes. When word reached them that Emperor Xerxes of Persia was crossing the Dardanelles with an army of as many as 250,000 men, prospects for their continued freedom looked grim indeed. It would take time for the scattered city-states to raise their armies of citizen-soldiers, so those that could sent what contingents were available to serve in a ‘Multinational Field Force’ commanded by one of the two elected kings of Sparta, Leonidas. With its backbone provided by Leonidas’ bodyguard of 300 Spartan soldiers, the force numbered some 4,000. Leonidas positioned this group at the ‘Hot Gates’; Thermopylae, a narrow place on the coast road from the north, to hold back the Persian advance and buy time for the rest of the city-states to issue the call to arms. Manning a hastily-constructed wall across the narrow strip between mountains and sea, it was not long before the Greeks faced the massive Persian host assembled on the thin strip of coast ahead of them. When the defenders were not impressed into surrender by the sight of his army, Xerxes sent forth a herald offering simple terms “Lay down your weapons, and you will be allowed to live. Leonidas responded with the only answer a free citizen can give to that question: Molon Labe; ancient Greek for "Come and get them." To the brave men in that narrow pass so long ago, freedom was more important than anything; even their lives. May we ever remember that fact should we be issued the same degrading terms."

"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."
John F. Kennedy

"Never part with your weapons when you are in the field. You never know when on some lengthy plain, you may suddenly need your spear."
Norse Saying from The Havamal

"If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all."
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
John Stuart Mill

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Mao Tse-tung

"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
Samuel Adams

"Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American."
Tench Coxe 2/20/1788

"The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."
John F. Kennedy

"Only a coward supports gun control, you know how to stop car jacking? Shoot the carjacker. If someone is going to kill me for my Buick, I'm gonna shoot until I'm out of ammo, and then I'll call 911."
Ted Nugent, People Magazine, 1994

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Winston Churchill

"Turkey established gun control in 1911. From 1915 through 1917, 1.5 MILLION Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. The Soviet Union established gun control in 1929. From 1929 through 1953, 20 MILLION political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. Germany established gun control in 1938. From 1939 through 1945, 13 MILLION Jews, Gypsies, HOMOSEXUALS, the mentally ill, and other "mongrolized" people, were rounded up and exterminated. China established gun control in 1935. From 1949 through ???, 20 MILLION political dissidents and others, unable to defend themselves, have been rounded up and exterminated. Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 through 1977, 1 MILLION "educated people", unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 through 1981, 100,000 native Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated. Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 through 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated."

"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."

"Laws don't stop criminals. People do."

"Little boys need three things, a dog, a gun and a dad... Get him a gun. Not a play gun, but a real gun. Play guns are the most dangerous guns in the world."
Paige Patterson, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."
His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
Bertrand de Jouvenel

"The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom."
Robert Heinlein

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
Albert Einstien 1879-1955

"The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."
Marcus Aurelius

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

"There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand;
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand."
Herman Melville "The Martyr"

"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal in upon them by degrees and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes in order to be received."
David Hume,1742

"Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar."
Sir Winston Churchill

"This is the law. The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield, and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental."
John Steinbeck

"The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, anytime, and with utter recklessness."
Robert Heinlein

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."
John Adams

Excerpt from The Weapon Shops of Isher

Lucy Rall smiled and shook her head. "You don't understand," she said. "The Weapon Shops were founded more than two thousand years ago by a man who decided that the incessant struggle for power of different groups was insane and the civil and other wars must stop forever. It was a time when the world had just emerged from a war in which more than a billion people had died and he found thousands of people who agreed to follow him. His idea was nothing less than that whatever government was in power should not be overthrown. But that an organization should be set up which would have one principal purpose-to ensure that no government ever again obtained complete power over its people. A man who felt himself wronged should be able to go somewhere to buy a defensive gun. You cannot imagine what a great forward step that was. Under the old tyrannical governments it was frequently a capital offense to be found in possession of a blaster or a gun." Her voice was taking on emotional intensity now. It was clear that she believed what she was saying. She went on earnestly. "What gave the founder the idea was the invention of an electronic and atomic system of control which made it possible to build indestructible Weapon Shops and to manufacture weapons that could only be used for defense. That last ended all possibility of Weapon Shop guns being used by gangsters and other criminals and morally justified the entire enterprise. For defensive purposes a Weapon Shop gun is superior to an ordinary or government weapon. It works on mind control and leaps to the hand when wanted. It provides a defensive screen against other blasters, though not against bullets but since it is so much faster, that isn't important." She looked at Cayle and the intentness faded from her face. "Is that what you wanted to know?" she asked. "Suppose you're shot from ambush?" Cayle asked. She shrugged. "No defense." She shook her head, smiling faintly. "You really don't understand. We don't worry about individuals. What counts is that many millions of people have the knowledge that they can go to a Weapon Shop if they want to protect themselves and their families. And, even more important, the forces that would normally try to enslave them are restrained by the conviction that it is dangerous to press people too far. And so a great balance has been struck between those who govern and those who are governed." Cayle stared at her in bitter disappointment. "You mean that a person has to save himself? Even when you get a gun you have to nerve yourself to resist? Nobody is there to help you?" It struck him with a pang that she must have told him this in order to show him why she couldn't help him. Lucy spoke again. "I can see that what I've told you is a great disappointment to you. But that's the way it is. And I think you'll realize that's the way it has to be. When a people lose the courage to resist encroachment on their rights, then they can't be saved by an outside force. Our belief is that people always have the kind of government they want and that individuals must bear the risks of freedom, even to the extent of giving their lives."
A.E. Van Vogt

"The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come is to teach men to shoot!"
Theodore Roosevelt