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Previous Essays:
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Links I Like
Book Review:
“The Man Who
Hated Work and Loved Labor — The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi”
This is a fascinating book about a labor leader who has had tremendous
influence on our lives, but whose name is not even known by millions of
Americans. Please read my review.
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Great Quotations
Read what the founders of this country and other thinking persons have
had to say about liberty and the right to keep and bear arms:
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.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors
is sinful and tyrannical.
When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the
government, there is tyranny.
On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
— (Letter to William Johnson,
June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322)
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. — (Jefferson’s “Commonplace
Book,” 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare
Beccaria,
1764; see below)
Benjamin Franklin
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety.
Cesare Beccaria, 18th Century Italian Criminologist
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms … serve rather to encourage than to prevent
homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Samuel Adams
Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
— (Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87)
Patrick Henry
The Constitution shall never be construed…to prevent the people of the
United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. — (Patrick
Henry, J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed.
Philadelphia, 1836)
Thomas Hobbes
A covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For … no man
can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from death.
Noah Webster
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.
Albert Gallatin
The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as
individuals.… It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.
— (Albert Gallatin at the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789)
Niccolo Machiavelli
Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their
citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost
their liberties in less than forty years.
Mohandas Gandhi
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act
depriving the whole nation of arms as the blackest.
I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would
advise violence.
George Mason
To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them.
I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for few public officials.
— (George Mason, Elliot, Debates at 425-426)
Adolf Hitler
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people
to carry arms ...
Cicero, 1st Century BC
[I]f our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and
every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.
Thomas Paine
It is the violence which is done and threatened to our persons, the destruction of our
property by armed force, the invasion of our country by fire and sword which
conscientiously qualifies the use of arms.
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.
The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned
while they neglect the means of self-defense … [Weakness] allures the ruffian [but]
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.
The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them
aside … Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of
them. … — (I Writings of Thomas Paine at 56 [1894])
Hubert H. Humphrey
Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how
popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. … [T]he 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.
Wendell Phillips
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)
Malcolm X
It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of
brutal attacks.
Eugene V. Debs
The protection the government owes you and fails to provide, you are morally bound to
provide for yourselves …
Robert F. Williams
The principle of self defense is an American tradition that began at Lexington and
Concord.
St. George Tucker, in his edition of Blackstone's “Commentaries”
The right of self-defense is the first law of nature … and 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.
Mark Twain
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Justice Louis D. Brandeis
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. —
(Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 [1928])
Lyndon Johnson
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly
administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if
improperly administered.
Adlai Stevenson
A free society is a place where it’s safe to be unpopular.
William J.H. Boetcker
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing
what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.
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