

This was printed in the June 1994 issue of the Blue Press (The Dillion
mail-order catalog). Enjoy! (unmarked typos are mine)


Words We SHOULD Live By...
by David B. Kopel

This issue, I'd like to share some of my favorite quotes on the right
to bear arms, and the suties of free people to pass that freedom on
to their successors.

"Though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the
following rule would be found to be generally true: that in ages in
which the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people will
have a chance..."
	George Orwell, Essays, Volume IV

"Both ogliarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive
them of arms."
	Aristotle

"Certainly one of the chief gaurantees of freedom under any government,
no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and
beear arms.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one gaurantee
against arbitrary government, one more safegaurd against the tyranny which
now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be
possible."
	Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (1960)

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."
	Ronald Regan

"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of
each citizen to defend it. Only if every citizen feels duty bound to do his
share in this defense are constitutional rights secure."
	Albert Einstein

"Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written
for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person
that they will not betray to stay alive."
	Sidney Hook

"Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice in the act."
	The Talmud

"If you are thinking a year ahead, sow seed. IF you are thinking ten years
ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate
the people."
	Chinese Proverb

"To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always
possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
	Richard Henry Lee

"If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may abuse that
power by wronging his adversary, why should a majority not be liable to the
same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration;
not does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the
consciousness of their strength. And for htese reasons I can never willingly
invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which
I should refuse to any one of them."
	Alexis de Tocqueville

"Those who hate you can't harm you, unless you hate them back, and then you
destroy yourself."
	Richard M. Nixon, farewell speech to White House Staff

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation
as a dangerous citizen these days is to go around repeating the very phrases
which our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence."
	Charles M. Beard

"Experience should teach us to be most on our gaurd to protect liberty when
the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally
alert to repel invasion of their liverty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-
meaning but without understanding."
	Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 227 U.S. 438

"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because
I wasn't a communist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew... Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up
then because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one
left to speak up."
	Reverend Martin Niemoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the
		gestapo in 1937

	"They tell us we are weak--unable to cope with so formidable an
adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week, or the next
year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed? Shall we acquire the means
of effectual resistance by lying supinely on out backs and hugging the
delusive (sic) phantom of hope, until out enemies have bound us hand and
foot?
	"We are not weak if we make a proper use of the means which the God
of nature has placed in out power. Millions of people armed in the hold
cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are
invincible. Besides, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just
God who presides over the destinies of nations, who will raise up friends to
fight our battles for us. The battle, is not to the strong alone; it is to
the vigilant, the active, the brave.
	"Many cry 'Peace, peace'--but there is no peace. The war is actually
begun! Why stand we here idle? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be
purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God! I know
not what course others may take; but as for me, give me Liberty or give me
death!"
	Patrick Henry

"It was two by the village clock,
when he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
and the twitter of the birds among the trees,
and felt the breath of the morning breeze
blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
who at that bridge would be the first to fall,
who that day would be lying dead,
pierced by the British musket ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read
how the British regulars fired and fled,
how the farmers gave them ball for ball,
from behind each fence and farmyard wall,
chasing the redcoats down the land,
then crossing the fields to emerge again
under the trees at the turn of the road,
and only pausing to fire and load."
	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
	"The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere"

"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished
freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth
a saving hand while there was still time."
	Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland

--
Ross Bagley	bagley@eli.hc.ti.com
If I spoke for TI, they'd fire me. I don't and they don't.


--
"Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might
dodge sucessfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they
were bound to get you."
                                 -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
------------------------------------------------
(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the
Patriot FTP site by S.P.I.R.A.L., the Society for the Protection of Individual Rights and Liberties. E-mail alex@spiral.org)
