"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.  To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." - Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906.

"No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it.  Obedience to the law is demanded as a right, not asked as a favor." - Theodore Roosevelt, Message to Congress, January, 1904.

"Power tends to corrupt,  and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men...  There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it." - Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg  Acton, 1st Baron, April 5, 1887.

"Unless something can be done to restore to the practice in bankruptcy a more universal regard for professional standards, changes in law and changes in procedure will accomplish little.  Judicial process works well enough with good men on the bench and at the bar, under almost any system.  But it will not work at all with incompetent or untrustworthy men either at the bar or on the bench, however perfect the laws may be". - Judge Thomas Thatcher, 1929.

"Crime is contagious.  If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy." - Judge Brandies in Olmstead v. U.S. (1928) 277 U.S. 438.

"No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it.  Obedience to the law is demanded as a right, not asked for as a favor." - Theodore Roosevelt, Message to Congress, January, 1904

"Irresponsible power is inconsistent with liberty, and must corrupt those who exercise it." - John C. Calhoun.

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent or sudden usurpation." - James Madison.

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority.  It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.  There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern.  They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." - Daniel Webster

"Treason doth never prosper:  what's the reason?  For if it prosper, none dare call it treason." - Sir John Harington.

"Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist." - Edmund Burke, April 3, 1777.

"France fell because there was corruption without indignation." - Romain Rolland, 1940.

"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken." - Benjamin Disraeli:  Contanini Fleming.

"He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself." - Philip Massinger.

"Study the past, if you would divine the future." - Confucius.

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain.

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen, but by him who resists it. - John Hay, 1872.

ERROR:

"Error of opinion may be tolerated when reason is left free to combat it." - Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801.

"Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia.

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part 2.

EQUAL PROTECTION:

"No State shall... Deny to any person within the jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." - 14th Amendment, U.S. Constitution

FREEDOM:

"The only difference between today's slavery and the slavery of the old South is that at least the plantation owners paid for the chains." - Alan Keyes, Presidential Candidate.

(Yikes!) "We are freeing men from the responsibilities of freedom, which only a few men can bear." - Adolph Hitler.

GOVERNMENT:

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in the worst state an intolerable one; for then we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense, February 1776.

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence.  It is force, and like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington.

"The local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject... to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them... " - James Madison.

To read more quotes on Government, Click HERE.

JUDGES:

"If we fail to check the power of the judiciary, I predict that we will eventually live under judicial tyranny." - Patrick Henry

"We're not looking for good lawyers anymore. The most important thing we look for are judges who will read into the Constitution the rights that we like, and read out of the Constitution the rights that we don't like." - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, lamenting the politicization of the federal judicial selection process, quote in LV RJ 02-17-03.

"Take all the robes of all the good judges that have ever lived on the face of the earth, and they would not be large enough to cover the iniquities of one corrupt judge." - Henry Ward Beecher (1887)

"A form of lawlessness lies in the strained and illogical construction of statutes and constitutions for the public of reading into them the social, economic or political views of the judges.  Mental gymnastics to effect such results reveal a deplorable disrespect for law as previously decided." - Goldenberg, Lawless Judges (Rand Sch. Pr., 1935, P. 9)

"We have long suffered under base prostitution of law to party passions in one judge, and the imbecility of another." - Thomas Jefferson (To Governor Tyler, May 26, 1810).

"Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so.  They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps." - Thomas Jefferson (To William Charles Jarvis, 1820).

"The germ of destruction is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body - 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 render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." - Thomas Jefferson.

"Every time they (judges) interpret contract, property, vested right...they necessarily enact into laws parts of a system of social philosophy... The decisions of the courts on economic and social questions depend on their economic and social philosophy." - Theodore Roosevelt, Message to Congress, December 8, 1908.

"Judges are but men, and in all ages have shown a fair share of frailty.  Alas! Alas!  The worst crimes of history have been perpetrated under their sanction, the blood of martyrs and patriots, crying from the ground, summons them to judgment." - Charles Sumner, Address, Massachusetts Republic Convention, September 7, 1854.

"I have had my fill of judicial opinions that falsify the facts of the case, and that disingenuously use or omit the legal precedents." - Monroe Freedman, Ethics Professor, Hofstra University Law School.

Click HERE to see Judges quotes, continued.

JURISDICTION:

"We have held, however, that state legislatures are not subject to federal direction." - New York v. U.S., 505 U.S. 144 (1992).

"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." - U.S. Constitution, Tenth Amendment.

JURY:  Click HERE.

JUSTICE:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King

"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." - Montesquieu, 1742

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary". - Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 1944.

"To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice." - Magna Carta

"Justice discards party, friendship and kindred, and is therefore represented as blind." - Joseph Addison:  The Spectator.

"Justice is truth in action." - Benjamin Disraeli:  Commons, February 11, 1851.

"Justice is the sum of all moral duty." - William Godwin:  An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 1793.

"Justice without power is inefficient; power without justice is tyranny.  Justice without power is opposed, because there are always wicked men.  Power without justice is soon questioned.  Justice and power must therefore be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just." - Blaise Pascal:  Pensees.

"The place of of justice is an hallowed place." - Francis Bacon, 1st Baron Verulam, Of Judicature.

LAW/LAWYERS:

"The law is reason free from passion." - Aristotle:  Politics, book 3.

"75 to 90% of all American trial lawyers are incompetent, dishonest, or both." - Chief Justice Warren Burger.

"How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law." - Sir Edward Coke.

"Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it." - Ibid.

"The safety of the people shall be the highest law." - Cicero:  Laws (De Legibus).

"The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends.  It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right."  - William J. Brennan, Jr.:  Opinion, Roth v. U.S., 354 U.S. 476 (1957).

"The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.  It is not the realization of a political ideal; it is the discharge of a moral obligation." - Lord Action, April 24, 1881. 

"Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation." - Brooks Adams:  The Law of Civilization and Decay.

"When the state is corrupt then the laws are most multiplied." - Tacitus.

LIBERTY/LIBERTIES:

"Fanaticism in defense of liberty is no vice." - Senator Barry Goldwater.

"Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety will have neither liberty nor safety." - "Benjamin Franklin.

"I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast." - Victor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire, Essay on Tolerance.

"Civil liberties are always safe as long as their exercise doesn't bother anyone." - Anonymous:  NY Times editorial, January 3, 1941.

"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others." - Thomas Jefferson, 1803.

"Law enforcement, however, in defeating the criminal, must maintain inviolate the historic liberties of the individual." - Ibid.

"The fight must go on.  The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats." - Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1858.

"Liberty's chief foe is theology." - Charles Bradlaugh.

POLITICS:

"No man should be in politics unless he would honestly rather not be there." - Henry Brook Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907.

POWER:

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress.  Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are (the ones) who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.  They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... Power concedes nothing without a demand... the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglas, 1857

"When all government... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided... and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."  - Thomas Jefferson, August 1821. 

"But the Constitution protects us from our own best intentions.  It divides power among sovereigns and among branches of government precisely so that we may resist the temptation to concentrate power in one location as an expedient solution to the crises of the day." - Justice Antonin Scalia, in Mack v. U.S., Supreme Court Ruling.

"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted." - James Madison:  Tribune, London.

"The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse." - Speech, House of Commons, February 7, 1771.

"The people are the masters." - Speech on the Economical Reform, February 11, 1780.

"Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue." - Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society.

"The law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power; laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power." - Thomas Cooper, Liberty of the Press, 1830.

"Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads.  No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power." - Charles Caleb Colton.

"The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while." - Albert Einstein.

"The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness." - Erich Fromm:  Escape from Freedom, 1941.

"Power is not sufficient evidence of truth." - Samuel Johnson:  Works, viii, p. 155.

"Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent." - Samuel Johnson:  The Adventurer. 

RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS 

"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... " - Thomas Jefferson, 1764.

"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Samuel Adams.

"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, and include all men capable of bearing arms." - Richard Henry Lee, 1788.

"These Sarah Brady types must be educated to understand that because we have an armed citizenry, a dictatorship has not yet happened in America.  These anti-gun fools are more dangerous to liberty than street criminals or foreign spies." - Aaron Zelman, founder of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

"Millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us." - Patrick Henry.

"I ask, sir, what is the militia?  It is the whole people, except for a few public officials... To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason.

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself.  They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence.  To secure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable.  The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that is good." - George Washington.

"...Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.  ... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." - Thomas Paine, 1775.

WORKING TOGETHER TO ATTAIN FAIRNESS