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Valkyrie Arms Quotes Page
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Thomas Jefferson Quotes"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
"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."
"... God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
"No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against the tyranny in government."
"You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all contitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy... The Contitution has erected no such single tribunal."
"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 and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press."
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walk."
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity."
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all"
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills."
"I wish to preserve the line drawn by the federal Constitution between the [federal and state] governments as it stands at present, and to take every prudent means of preventing either from stepping over it."
"I place economy among the first and important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
"In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock."
"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that men can be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effective hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook."
"Information is the currency of democracy."
"It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead."
"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object."
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
"It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all."
"It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end."
"Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one."
"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plentitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But 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 right of an individual."
"I never told my religion nor scrutinize that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor wished to change another's creed. I have judged of others' religion by their lives, for it is from our lives and not from our words that our religion must be read. By the same test must the world judge me."
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."
"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."
"A subject comes into my head... The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another... I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident: The earth belongs always to the living generation."
"I sincerely believe 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 on a large scale."
"If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be... if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
"To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing; to improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains, to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgement; and in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed."
"Resistence to tyrants is obedience to God."
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
"I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government,I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter."
"When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property."
"If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none."
"My idea is that we should be made one nation in every case concerning foreign affairs, and separate ones in whatever is merely domestic; that the Federal government should be organized into Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, as are the State governments, and some peaceable means of enforcement devised for the Federal head over the States."
"The capital and leading object of the constitution was to leave with the States all authorities which respected their own citizens only, and to transfer to the United States those which respected citizens of foreign or other States; to make us several as to ourselves, but one as to all others."
"With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations are correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. To the State governments are reserved all legislative and administration, in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of the other States; these functions alone being made federal. The one is domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control over the other, but within its own department."
"... the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,' therefore the act of Congress, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, and entitled 'An Act in addition to the act entitled An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States,' as also the act passed by them on the -- day of June, 1798, entitled 'An Act to punish frauds committed on the bank of the United States,' (and all their other acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory."
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion."
"Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their powers; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him; every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him; and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and *the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right.* The trial of every law by one of these texts, would would lessen much labors of our legislators, and lighten equally our municipal codes."
"All, too will bear in mind this sacred principal, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority posses their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate which would be oppression."
"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
"Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may AGAIN rally and recall the people; they fix to for the people the principals of their political creed."
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
"The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it."
"The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country when ever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so."
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
"The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between church and state, but that wall is a one directional wall; it keeps the government from running the church, but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government."
"The new Constitution has secured these [individual rights] in the Executive and Legislative departments: but not in the Judiciary. It should have established trials by the people themselves, that is to say, by jury."
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
"You seem... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy... The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal."
"...the Federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one... when all government... in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
"At home, fellow citizens, you best know whether we have done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These covering our land with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of produce and property."
"No Freeman shall be debarred the use of arms in his own lands or tenements."
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
"...judges should be withdrawn from the bench whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may, indeed, injure them in fame or fortune; but it saves the Republic..."
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."
"Above all I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to so they won't forget the basic principles of freedom."
"As for the right to suicide... if this is a "Christian Nation", then only God theoretically has the right to take a life. It's a touchy issue. I personally believe you have every right to suicide, but only if you succeed. Failures should be punished."
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
"I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else a legal tender."
"I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude... The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the disposition of public money. We are endeavoring to reduce the government to the practice of rigid economy to avoid burdening the people..."
"If the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied."
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want bread."
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, He must approve the homage of Reason rather than that of blindfolded Fear."
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
"The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not,... would make the judiciary a despotic branch."
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical."
"We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
"If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."
"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not" |
