Category: Thought

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent.  Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.  The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

“I’m not trying to change the world. I’m trying to stop the world from changing me.”

“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.”

“The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.”

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

“Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.”

“I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.”

“Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.”