Quotable Quotations

Quotations are important for many reasons, but most importantly, to reveal the thinking behind the people being quoted. Therefore it is important to study the quotes from both heros and villians. (And hopefully, to start thinking like the heros!)

"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military. The hired servants of our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."

  -- Edward Abbey, Author
"The Right to Arms [New York]", 1979

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."

  -- Mahatma Ghandi

"We must get rid of all the guns."

  -- Sarah Brady, 09/1994
(Does HCI care about children? Or safety? Their objective is clearly stated above.)

"Firearms have been around for over 400 years, yet it is only in the last 20 years that people have begun shouting 'gun control'."

  -- Kevin Langston, 10/29/1991

"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."

  -- Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

  -- Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

"Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possesion and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"

  -- Patrick Henry

"While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of nobilie spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny."

  -- Nicholas Collin, Reverand
"Fayetteville North Carolina Gazette", 10/12/1789

"I mean, a 30-06 deer rifle with a scope is the kind of weapon that's in use [by gangs] and the kind of weapon that was confiscated the other night."

  -- Henry Cisneros, U.S. HUD Secretary under Bill Clinton

"If we accept the view that the American people cannot be trusted with the material objects necessary to defend their liberty, we will surely accept as well the view that the American people cannot be trusted with liberty itself. Why should a man who can't be trusted to refrain from murder be trusted with the much more difficult and morally subtle task of choosing his leaders responsibly?"

  -- Alan Keyes

"Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming its not an individual right or that its too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."

  -- Alan Dershowitz, Professor, Harvard Law School

"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."

  -- Samuel Adams, Founding Father and Governor of Massachusetts (1793 - 1797)

"The most effective means of fighting crime in the United States is to outlaw the possession of any type of firearm by the civilian populace."

  -- Janet Reno, U.S. Attorney General under President Bill Clinton, 1991

"It [the Brady Bill] is not a panacea. It's not going to stop crimes of passion or drug-related crime."

  -- Sarah Brady
"Washingtonian Magazine", 03/1991

"...Of course, we hope that's true because, as you know, our campaign to enact a National Gun Policy to combat gun violence doesn't end with the Brady Bill - it just begins."

  -- Sarah Brady
"Handgun Control, Inc. Newsletter", 1993

"I don't believe gun owners have rights."

  -- Sarah Brady
"Hearst Newspapers Special Report, Handguns in America", 10/1997

"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They 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; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

  -- Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President
"Jefferson's Commonplace Book, written 1774-1776, quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in 'On Crimes and Punishment', 1764."

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government."

  -- Alexander Hamilton, U.S. Treasury Secretary under President George Washington
"The Federalist (#28)."

"To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them..."

  -- George Mason, U.S. Patriot, Statesman, and author of "The Virginia Declaration of Rights"
"3 Elliot, Debates at 380."

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

  -- Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President
"1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C. J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)", 06/1776
(On the Proposed Virginia Constitution)

"The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

  -- James Madison, U.S. President, Author of the Second Amendment
"Federalist Paper No. 46"

"The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty ... Who are the militia? are they not ourselves? Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth right of an American. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."

  -- Tench Coxe, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President George Washington
"Pennsylvania Gazette", 02/20/1788

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA. Ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."

  -- Heinrich Himmler, Nazi Reichsführer-SS, Chief of the German Police
(In July, 1938, the Nazi SS swept through the country confiscating registered arms. In November "Kristallnacht", the night of broken glass, followed.)

"To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm ... is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege."

  --
"Arkansas Supreme Court", 1878

"I ask what is the purpose of the militia? To offset the need of large standing armies, the bane of liberty."

  -- Elbridge Gerry, Founding Father of the United States of America

"What is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."

  -- George Mason, U.S. Patriot, Statesman, and author of "The Virginia Declaration of Rights"

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."

  -- Alexander Hamilton, U.S. Treasury Secretary under President George Washington

"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, Founding Father and Governor of Massachusetts (1793 - 1797)

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed."

  -- James Madison, U.S. President, Author of the Second Amendment

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined ... The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun."

  -- Patrick Henry

"A well regulated population being necessary to the security of a police state, the right of the Government to keep and destroy arms shall not be infringed."

  --
(The Statist's Second Amendment.)

"Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe."

  -- Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator (D-CA)
"Associated Press", 11/18/1993
(The "good" Senator doesn't seem to realize that there is no Constitutional Right to "feel safe". However, there is a Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms.)

"It is the distinctive mark of all tyrants that they do not want their "subjects" to be armed. Free men are armed, slaves are not."

  -- William B. Zimmerly

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall."

  -- Adolf Hitler, Dictator of Germany (1933 - 1945), 03/18/1938
(Yet another tyrant who enslaved people by first disarming them. How stupid can people be???)

"What we certainly do not need is more gun control. Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon the government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that defines what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure government governs only with the consent of the people."

  -- Jeffery R. Snyder, Author
"A Nation of Cowards", 1993

(Quotes are stored and displayed using Zimmerly Knowledge Base technology - patent pending.)