"We say in this nation that we are looking for people with honesty, integrity, drive and dedication, and then when we find such people, we take them out and whip them." -anonymous whistleblower
"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government." James Madison
“Fear is the foundation of most governments.” -John Adams
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.” -John Adams
“All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.” -John Quincy Adams
“Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.” -John Quincy Adams
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” -John Quincy Adams
"Why do you always have to try to do something about things?" -Dan Athern
“To see a wrong and not to expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.” -Dr. John Raymond Baker
“America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.” -George H.W. Bush
“Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.” –Julius Caesar
“It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.” -Jimmy Carter
"If you are going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill
“A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.” Grover Cleveland
“Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made” -Grover Cleveland
“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” -William J. Clinton
“I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.” -Calvin Coolidge
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." -Albert Einstein
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
“You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Action expresses priorities.” -Mohandas Gandhi
“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” -James A. Garfield
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” -Mohandas Gandhi
“There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.” William Henry Harrison
“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.” -Rutherford B. Hayes
“A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.” -Herbert Hoover
“Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.” -Herbert Hoover
“It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.” -Herbert Hoover
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad." -Aldous Huxley
“All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.” -Andrew Jackson
“Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.” -Andrew Jackson
“I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office.” -Andrew Jackson
“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.” -Andrew Jackson
“The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.” -Andrew Jackson
“The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough.” -Andrew Jackson
“To the victors belong the spoils.” -Andrew Jackson
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” -Thomas Jefferson
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Thomas Jefferson
“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” -Thomas Jefferson
“When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.” -Andrew Johnson
“Legislation can neither be wise nor just which seeks the welfare of a single interest at the expense and to the injury of many and varied interests.” -Andrew Johnson
“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” -John F. Kennedy
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” -John F. Kennedy
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” -John F. Kennedy
” The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.” -John F. Kennedy
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Abraham Lincoln
“The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.” -Abraham Lincoln
“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” -Abraham Lincoln
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.” -Abraham Lincoln
“To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men.” -Abraham Lincoln
“Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.” -Abraham Lincoln
"Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied." -Arthur Miller, Playwrite
"The great mass of people ... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one." -Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German dictator. Mein Kampf, vol. 1, ch. 10 (1925)
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." -Steven Biko
"It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realize that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality." -Steven Biko
"Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict." -Saul Alinsky
"We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it." -Saul Alinsky
"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations... can never effect a reform." -Susan B. Anthony
"No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way is without enemies." -Daisy Bates
"The last struggle for our rights, the battle for our civilization, is entirely with ourselves." -William Wells Brown
"We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure." -Cesar Chavez
"You are never strong enough that you don't need help." -Cesar Chavez
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." -Noam Chomsky
"Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy." -Jim Hightower
"If you do not speak up when it matters, when would it matter that you speak? The opposite of courage is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow." -Jim Hightower
"So now is the time, more than ever, for those who truly value all the principles of democracy, especially including dissent, to be the most forceful in speaking up, standing up and speaking out." -Jim Hightower
"The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government." -Jim Hightower
“I am tired of talk that comes to nothing.” -Chief Joseph
“It does not require many words to speak the truth.” -Chief Joseph
“Treat all men alike. Give them the same law. Give them an even chance to live and grow.” -Chief Joseph
"Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law." -Abbie Hoffman
"I believe that no man who holds a leader's position should ever accept favors from either side. He is then committed to show favors. A leader must stand alone." -Mother Jones
"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." -Mother Jones
"Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others." -Coretta Scott King
“A right delayed is a right denied.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.” -Dalai Lama
"It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees." -Wangari Maathai
"All I was doing was trying to get home from work." -Rosa Parks
“Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.” -William Penn
"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship." -A. Philip Randolph
“A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong.” -Tecumseh
“Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.” -Tecumseh
“Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.” Tecumseh
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.” -Margaret Thatcher
“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” -Margaret Thatcher
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." -Pancho Villa
"We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless." -Lech Walesa