From the Radio Free Michigan archives ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu. ------------------------------------------------ This was printed in the June 1994 issue of the Blue Press (The Dillion mail-order catalog). Enjoy! (unmarked typos are mine) Words We SHOULD Live By... by David B. Kopel This issue, I'd like to share some of my favorite quotes on the right to bear arms, and the suties of free people to pass that freedom on to their successors. "Though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found to be generally true: that in ages in which the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people will have a chance..." George Orwell, Essays, Volume IV "Both ogliarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." Aristotle "Certainly one of the chief gaurantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and beear arms.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one gaurantee against arbitrary government, one more safegaurd against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be possible." Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (1960) "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." Ronald Regan "The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are constitutional rights secure." Albert Einstein "Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive." Sidney Hook "Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice in the act." The Talmud "If you are thinking a year ahead, sow seed. IF you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people." Chinese Proverb "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 "If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may abuse that power by wronging his adversary, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; not does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for htese reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them." Alexis de Tocqueville "Those who hate you can't harm you, unless you hate them back, and then you destroy yourself." Richard M. Nixon, farewell speech to White House Staff "You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go around repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence." Charles M. Beard "Experience should teach us to be most on our gaurd to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liverty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well- meaning but without understanding." Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 227 U.S. 438 "In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew... Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up then because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up." Reverend Martin Niemoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the gestapo in 1937 "They tell us we are weak--unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on out backs and hugging the delusive (sic) phantom of hope, until out enemies have bound us hand and foot? "We are not weak if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature has placed in out power. Millions of people armed in the hold cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible. Besides, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. "Many cry 'Peace, peace'--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! Why stand we here idle? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me Liberty or give me death!" Patrick Henry "It was two by the village clock, when he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, and the twitter of the birds among the trees, and felt the breath of the morning breeze blowing over the meadow brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed who at that bridge would be the first to fall, who that day would be lying dead, pierced by the British musket ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read how the British regulars fired and fled, how the farmers gave them ball for ball, from behind each fence and farmyard wall, chasing the redcoats down the land, then crossing the fields to emerge again under the trees at the turn of the road, and only pausing to fire and load." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" "For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time." Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland -- Ross Bagley bagley@eli.hc.ti.com If I spoke for TI, they'd fire me. I don't and they don't. -- "Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge sucessfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four ------------------------------------------------ (This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Radio Free Michigan site by the archive maintainer. All files are ZIP archives for fast download. E-mail bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu)