“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”—Founding Father James Madison

“There can be no 50-50 Americanism in this county. There is room here only for 100 percent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.”—Theodore Roosevelt

“A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.”—Woodrow Wilson

“I believe there are more instances of abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations...”—James Madison, in letter to Thomas Jefferson.

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”—Winston Churchill

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”—Ayn Rand

“We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.”—E. M. Forster

“Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to historians— ...how such a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and through them, the events of history.”—John Maynard Keynes

“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The most tyrannical governments are those which make crimes of opinion, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.”—Spinoza

“Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.”—Thomas Hardy

“All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.”—Adlai Stevenson

“We always tend to think of historical tragedy as failing to get what we want, but if we study history we find that the worst tragedies occurred when people got what they wanted... and it turned out to be the wrong objective.”—Henry Kissinger

“One man’s larceny is another’s just distribution of goods.”—Robert H. Bork

“There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates.”—Henry David Thoreau

“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from each other.”—Oscar Ameringer

“If you have superior abilities and superior determination, what you need most of all is a level playing field. What is deadening to the soul is not to lose, but to be forbidden to win. Until relatively recently in American history, such logic was taken for granted.”—Charles Murray

“Maybe it’s not over. It’s not over until the fat lady sings, and we don’t allow fat ladies on the premises.”—Hugh Hefner

“Sure, it’s going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway.”—Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane.

“Democrats are ... the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller and get the weeds out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected to prove it.”—P. J. O’ Rourke

“Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is just too much fraternizing with the enemy.”—Henry Kissinger

“All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.”—Alexander Woollcott

“A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.”—Communist V.I. Lenin.

“Smile, your mom was pro-life.”—A cool new bumper sticker.

“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?”—Joseph Stalin, on thought policing.

“I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down... Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on the downward path.”—Ronald Reagan