Granted

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."
--Voltaire

Drifting

"... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the new world order ... and will die protesting it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people."
--H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
Source: in his book, The New World Order, 1939

Pays

"Another major reason why crime is increasing is that crime pays, and in our tax-ridden, regulation crushed economy, many people cannot economically survive through low-end jobs. ... 'The income that offenders can earn in the world of crime, as compared with the world of work, all too often makes crime appear to be the better choice.' In Washington, D.C., it costs $7,000 in city fees to open a pushcart. In California, up to eighty federal and state licenses are required to open a small business. In New York, a medallion to operate a taxicab costs $150,000. More than 700 occupations in the United States require a government license. Throughout the country, church soup kitchens are being closed by departments of health. No wonder so many people turn to crime and violence to survive."
--Jacob G. Hornberger
American author, journalist, politician, founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation
Source: Will You be Safer if Guns are Banned?, The Tyranny of Gun Control, 9-10 (1997).

Task

"[The task is to] covertly lower the standard of living, the whole social structure, of America so that we can be merged with all other nations."
--Rowan Gaither [Horace Rowan Gaither, Jr.] (1909-1961)
Attorney, investment banker, President of the Ford Foundation (1953-1956)
1954
Source: stated to Congressional Reese Commission investigator Norman Dodd

Thousand

"If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible."
--Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)

Glory II

"The greatest Glory of a free-born People, Is to transmit that Freedom to their Children."

--William Havard

Piled

"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like."

--Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980),
U. S. Supreme Court Justice
Source: Points of Rebellion, 1969

Hunted

"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."
--Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Blinders

"Those who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness."

--John Milton

DHS

"Militia: The body of citizens in a state, enrolled for discipline as a military force, but not engaged in actual service except in emergencies, as distinguished from regular troops or a standing army."
--Black's Law Dictionary, 3rd Edition, published in 1933.
See Ex parte McCants, 39 Ala. 112; Worth v. Craven County, 118 N.C. 112, 24 S.E. 778; Brown v. Newark, 29 N.J. Law, 238; Story v. Perkins (D.C.) 243 F. 997, 999.

Nets

"Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth!
They are spider webs for the rich and mighty,
steel chains for the poor and weak,
fishing nets in the hands of the government."
--Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(1809-1865) French mutualist political philosopher

Few II

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
--George Washington
(1732-1799) Founding Father, 1st US President, 'Father of the Country'

Slavish

"Some lawyers and judges may have forgotten it, but the purpose of the court system is to produce justice, not slavish obedience to the law."
--Charlie Reese (1937-) Columnist
Source: Don’t sacrifice justice to law, Conservative Chronicle, May 1, 1996

Mass II

"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check."
--Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Duane, 1811)
Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, 13:29

Virtual

"You know, by the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions. … You may find you can get away with virtual presidents, virtual prime ministers, virtual everything."
--Bill Clinton [William Jefferson Blythe III] (1946- ), 42nd US President
Source: 9/5/98, Dublin, Ireland

Either III

"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune."
--Noam Chomsky, US educator and linguist

Things

"The things that will destroy us are:
politics without principle;
pleasure without conscience;
wealth without work;
knowledge without character;
business without morality;
science without humanity;
and worship without sacrifice."

--Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi
(1869-1948)

Drove

"We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics."

--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910)

Disinclination

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
--Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See"

Freedom VII

Freedom is a great thing until you come upon someone who makes the wrong choices. Then the true test of your belief begins.
--TLC

Prepare

"We dissidents could ready ourselves psychologically for a life of risk, arrest, and imprisonment. But we could never fully prepare ourselves for the disappointment that came from seeing the free world abandon its own values."
--Natan Sharansky and Ron Dermer
"The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror"

Obligations II

"We feel that we are acting under obligations not confined to the limits of our own society. It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind; that circumstances denied to others but indulged to us have imposed on us the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Priestley, 1802.

Abridging

"The First Amendment does not say "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to assemble, provided that the people have obtained a permit in advance, or half a permit if they can't get a complete one; and if they have paid for registration fees and fines and they don't obstruct the sidewalk, and as long as they stay away from entrances and traffic, and by the way, they should be prepared to duck the Tasers or face possibly lethal rubber bullets, or subject themselves to microwave technology used by the state."

--Naomi Wolf, "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries"
Page 120

Assemblage

"It is easy for us to look at the diminishing of our common space to assemble and protest as a minor inconvenience; we are overcommitted and protesting doesn't sound like much fun anyway, and, hey, in the Internet era, isn't it beside the point? Can't I do just as well staying safely in my study, clicking a mouse?


No, we cannot do just as well staying in our private rooms and going online; that is how private space becomes the isolation of citizens and in turn eventually becomes a comfortable personal cage. At times we must amass ourselves; this action is not expendable. Its benefit to us is not just stylistic or a matter of nostalgia. Mass disruptive protest is history's time-honored tactic against the suppression of citizens' rights; the assembling of citizens in defiance of wrongdoing also feeds a psychological space that we need to fill if we are to live truly as free men and women. Amassing in the thousands helps us to grasp the power we have unleashed. It heartens us. Because the founders meant for you to be sovereign and to have your own nonviolent but disruptive army; and we are supposed to be your army".

--Naomi Wolf, "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries", pages 118-119

Traffic

"In 1989, thousands of East German citizens marched with incredible courage, facing down guns, to assault the Berlin wall. They brought it down. They defied bans on such marching. That protest, which helped bring about an end to the Cold War? If it were held just about anywhere in the U.S. today, it would be illegal because it stopped traffic."
--Naomi Wolf, "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries"
Page 111

Nutshell

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war.


The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell.

--Eugene Debs, June 16, 1918

Degenerates

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."
--Thomas Jefferson

Duty V

"[W]hen 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."
--U.S. Declaration Of Independence

Republics

"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."
--Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845)
US Supreme Court Justice
1833

Want

"To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle."

--Confucius

Settled

"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little."
--George Carlin