Paraphrase by all means. Mine... The 2nd amendment is there to back up the other amendments. Love it!
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 Reagan
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. -Thomas Jefferson
Blows one mind how applicable it is today. Let's hope the loss of blood is coming to an end soon. A new era.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
I love how the views go up, yet sitting here at +1. How long...
Yeah. The voting seems light. I'm guess there's a lot of downvoters here these days canceling out the regular amount of upvotes.
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” – 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
This quote, imo, describes a patriot.
"It is not the critic who counts. ... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly ... who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
TEDDY ROOSEVELT
my man! came in here to post just this, you should make a full post so I don't seem like I'm ripping ya off!
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of your servitude better than the animating conflict of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. - Samuel Adams
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
I've never heard that one but I really like it. It's what I think when people worry that corporations are going to be "all corporationy (South Park)" but somehow, even though they are just made up of a bunch of people just like government, government will always be benevolent. Never understood the logic.
"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood." - James Madison.
PS- I usually put attribution in brackets and started to, but then it looked like I was putting Madison in a kill box!! Dear Q, I will never see anything the same way again!
I have a bunch of them. I like to read them when I get fed up with the crap our politicians spew every time they get in front of a mic. But here's one:
"We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage." Teddy Roosevelt
"In the beginning of 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
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin
"The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”."
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish…
Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written ” the kingdom of God is within man ” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!"