Wednesday, November 5, 2008

when in doubt, return to thomas jefferson

A PUMA site that frequent has a wonderful writing from Thomas Jefferson. Seems apt words of surety for a party in exile.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Information is the currency of democracy.

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