Preparedness/Self-Reliance
“Preparation for tomorrow is hard work today.” – Bruce Lee
Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.~George Patton
—————-
Quotes directly below were taken from Self-Reliant Info. Atticus Freeman writes an excellent blog on self-reliance and preparedness. Check it out here.
Preparation through education is less costly than learning through tragedy. – Max Mayfield, Director of National Hurricane Center.
…anyone who believes he has turned his self-defense over to government is living in a dream world. Self-defense remains the right and responsibility of the individual. That is an unalterable fact of life. There is no choice in the matter. – Sheldon Richman
Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands. – Seneca the Younger
In business or in football, it takes a lot of unspectacular preparation to produce spectacular results. – Roger Staubach
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. – William Shedd
To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together — humble dependence and manly independence; humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self. – William Wordsworth
Malo Periculosam Libertatem Quam Quietum Servitium
(English: I PREFER LIBERTY WITH DANGER TO PEACE WITH SLAVERY)
“If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”
–Samuel Adams
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.”
–Thomas Jefferson
“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
–Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds…[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”
“It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts…For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.”
–Patrick Henry
“If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”
–Thomas Jefferson
The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. … whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society, and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty.
–John Locke
“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.”
–Thomas Jefferson
“It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.”
–Thomas Paine
“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
–Samuel Adams
“Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”
–Thomas Paine
“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.”
–General John Stark
“When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover that check, but when the Federal Reserve
writes a check, it is creating money.”
– Boston Federal Reserve Bank
These statements were made during hearings of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 30, 1941. Members of the Federal Reserve Board call themselves “Governors.” Governor Marriner Eccles was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board at the time of these hearings:
Congressman Patman: “How did you get the money to buy those two billion dollars worth of Government securities in 1933?”
Governor Eccles: “Out of the right to issue credit money.”
Patman: “And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our Government’s credit?”
Eccles: “That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”
Congressman Fletcher: “Chairman Eccles, when do you think there is a possibility of returning to a free and open market, instead of this pegged and artificially controlled financial market we now have?”
Governor Eccles: “Never, not in your lifetime or mine.”
– Marriner Stoddard Eccles
(1890-1977) US banker, economist, and Chairman of the Federal Reserve (1934-48)
Source: during hearings of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 30, 1941.
“The power to determine the quantity of money… is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power… Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes – excusable or not – can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic – this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.”
– Milton Friedman
(1912-2006) Nobel Prize-winning economist, economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan, “ultimate guru of the free-market system”
“The bold effort the present bank had made to control the government… are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people
should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.”
– Andrew Jackson
(1767-1845) 7th US President
“The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements…. The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking system of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States…. The United States under present conditions will be transformed from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and importing nation with a balance of trade against it.”
– Louis McFadden
(1876-1936) US Congressman (R-PA) (1915-1935), Chairman of House Banking and Currency Committee. Poisoned in 1936.
“I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.”
– Reginald McKenna
Education (101 quotes)
1. “We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. “My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but it prevented from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.” – George Bernard Shaw
3. “I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like to be taught.” – Winston Churchill
4. “I was happy at home with my toys in my nursery. I’ve been happier every year since I’ve become a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the heart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that then did not seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction, and purposeless monotony.” – Winston Churchill
5. “School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unimaginable tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn’t take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.” – H.L. Mencken
6. “Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.” Madeleine L’Engle
7. “You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” – Galileo
8. “It is… nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” – Albert Einstein
9. “My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.” – Margaret Mead
10. “We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive for you. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us Good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss if our Ideas of this kind of Education happen to not be the same with yours. We have had some Experience with it. Several of our young People were formally brought up in the colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences, but, when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, …neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Councellors, they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less oblig’d by your kind Offer, tho’ we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men out of them.” –A letter from Native American to settlers in 1774.
11. “As far as I have seen, at school…they aimed at blotting out one’s individuality.” – Franz Kafka
12. “I was undisciplined by birth, never would I bend, even in my tender youth, to a rule. It was at home I learned the little I know. Schools always appeared to me like a prison, and never could I make up my mind to stay there, not even for four hours a day, when the sunshine was inviting, the sea smooth, and when it was joy to run about the cliffs in the free air, or to paddle in the water.” – Claude Monet
13. “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” – Oscar Wilde
14. “How is it that little children are so intelligent while men are so stupid? It must be education that does it.” – Alexandre Dumas
15. “Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” – Plato
16. “Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.” – Mark Twain
17. “How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?” – Henry D. Thoreau
18. “Self education is, I believe, the only education there is.” – Issac Asimov
19. “Children do not need to be made to learn about the world or shown how. They want to, and they know how.” – John Holt
20. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein
21. “There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.” – William Glasser
22. “None of the world’s problems will have a solution until the world’s individuals become thoroughly self-educated.” – Buckminster Fuller
23. ““Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” – Leonardo da Vinci
24. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso
25. “School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” – Ivan Illich
26. “Schools have not necessarily much to do with education…they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be inculcatec in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.” – Winston Churchill
27. “It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.” – Alec Bourne
28. “If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.” – Carl Rogers
29. “Children are born passionately eager to make as much sense as they can of things around them. If we attempt to control, manipulate, or divert this process, the independent scientist in the child disappears.” – John Holt
30. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain
31. “I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.” – Agatha Christie
32. “Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” – Beatrix Potter
33. “What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch out of a free, meandering brook.” – Henry David Thoreau
34. “Education: free and compulsory – what a way to learn logic!” – Frank van Dun
35. “Education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.” – John Dewey
36. “When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.” – Bertrand Russell
37. “Today for Show and Tell, I’ve brought a tiny marvel of nature: a single snowflake. I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water, just like every other one, when you bring it in the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I’ll be leaving you drips and going outside.” – Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes comic
38. “Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.” – Leo Tolstoy
39. “I believe that school makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there.” – Petronius, Satyricon
40. “From my grandfather’s father, [I learned] to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.” – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman Emperor
41. “Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends upon knowing that secret; that secrets can only be known in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.” – Ivan Illich
42. “I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in school. I like to be taught to read and write and add and then be left alone.” – Woody Allen
43. “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” – Gertrude Stein
44. “Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.” – Ernest Dimnet
45. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – William Butler Yeats
46. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle
47. “Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.” – John W. Gardner
48. “To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion.” – Muriel Spark
49. “When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.” – Peter Drucker
50. “I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for one’s self. – George Washington Carver
51. “Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” – Bertrand Russell
52. “Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.” – Annie Sullivan
53. “When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
54. “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task does him little good.” – Samuel Johnson
55. “I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.” – Thomas A. Edison
56. “Where my reason, imagination, or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.” – Winston Churchill
57. “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” – Marcus Cicero
58. “All men who have turned out worth anything have had a chief hand in their own education.” – Sir Walter Scott
59. “What a great advantage for leaders that the people do not think.” – Adolph Hitler (Yikes!)
60. “All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.” – Martin H. Fischer
61. “You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.” – Albert Camus
62. “Anything, everything, can be learned if you can just get yourself in a little patch of real ground, real nature, real wood, real anything … and just sit still and watch.” – Lauren Hutton
63. “Do not train children in learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” –Plato
64. “It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.” – Frank Herbert
65. “Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.” – Chinese Proverb
66. “The true order of learning should be: first, what is necessary; second, what is useful; and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the edifice.” – Lydia H. Sigourney
67. “Formal education will earn you a living, self-education will earn you a fortune.” – John Patterson
68. “Much of the material presented in schools strikes students as alien, if not pointless.” – Howard Gardner
69. “The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot a wrong question.” – Anthony Jay
70. “You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.” – Howard Gardner
71. “To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.’ – Leonardo da Vinci
72. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
73. “We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.” – Malcolm Gladwell
74. “Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
75. “In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.” – Johann Von Goethe
76. “I’ve known countless people who were reservoirs of learning, yet never had a thought.” – Wilson Mizner
76. “It has been said that the primary function of schools is to impart enough facts to make children stop asking questions. Some, with whom the schools do not succeed, become scientists.” – Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
77. “Great cycles of history began with vigorous cultures awakening to the needs of children, but collapsing with frayed family ties. Have we failed to learn lessons which Ancient China, Greece and Rome learned too late – about day care and death houses for old folks? Do we without protest accept accelerating preschool and nursing home cultures which warn ominously that the earlier you institutionalize your child, the earlier he will institutionalize you!” – Raymond S. Moore
78. “Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy – these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, in one context or another.” – John Taylor Gatto
79. “Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control.” – Jack Hugh
80. “I believe school makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there.” – Petronius
81. “What’s the difference between a bright, inquisitive five-year-old, and a dull, stupid nineteen-year-old? Fourteen years of the British educational system.” – Bertrand Russell
82. “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being could fight; and keep fighting.” E.E. Cummings (Procrustes’ Iron Bed)
83. “School is established, not in order that it should be convenient for the children to study, but that teachers should be able to teach in comfort. The children’s conversations, motion, merriment are not convenient for the teacher, and so in the schools, which are built on the plan of prisons, … are prohibited.” - Count Leo Tolstoy
84. “It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.” – Jacob Brownowski
85. “Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” – E.M. Forster
86. “The newer and broader picture suggests that the child emerges into literacy by actively speaking, reading, and writing in the context of real life, not through filling out phonics worksheets or memorizing words.” - Thomas Armstrong
87. “Who does not recall school at least in part as endless dreary hours of boredom punctuated by moments of high anxiety?” – Daniel Goleman
88.” I learned most, not from those who taught me but from those who talked with me.” – St. Augustine
89. “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him stop to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau
90. “It is tempting to impose our goals on other people, particularly on children or our subordinates. It is tempting for society to try to impose its priorities on everybody. The strategy will however be self-defeating if our goals, or society’s goals, do not fit the goals of the others. We may get our way but we don’t get their learning. They may have to comply but they will not change. We have pushed out their goals with ours and stolen their purposes. It is a pernicious form of theft which kills the will to learn.” -Charles Handy
91. “Often it was not in school, but outside of it – in extracurricular activities or during time spent altogether away from school – that calling appeared. It is as if the image in the heart in so many cases is hampered by the program of tuition and its time bound regularity.” – James Hillman
92. “School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.” – E.M. Forester
93. “The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”- Tom Bodett
94. “Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society.” - Bertrand Russell
95. “I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less slowly. Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggest that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of colored paper, or plant straw trees in flower pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.” – Anne Sullivan
96. “I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.” – Albert Einstein
97. “What is essential is to realize that children learn independently, not in bunches; that they learn out of interest and curiosity, not to please or appease the adults in power; and that they ought to be in control of their own learning, deciding for themselves what they want to learn and how they want to learn it.” – John Holt
98. “Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world.” – Maria Montessori
99. “It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible aspiration and education of the infant against the will of the father.”- Thomas Jefferson
100. “Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them.” – Baruch Spinoza
101. “All that is necessary for the triumph of waste and destruction is for good men and women to attempt to do good through the power and authority of government.” – Michael Cloud
More Education Quotes by John Holt
We need more John Holt types in what we call ‘education’ today.
“Education… now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of
all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the
modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but
producers, consumers, spectators, and ‘fans,’ driven more and more, in all
parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve
‘education’ but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of
people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves.”
– John Holt
(1923-1985) American author and educator, proponent of homeschooling, and pioneer in youth rights theory
Source: Holt, J. (1967). How Children Learn. New York: Pitman Publishing Corporation
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/John.Holt.Quote.1C40
“I believe that we learn best when we, not others are deciding what we are
going to learn, and when we are choosing the people, materials, and experiences
from which we will be learning.”
– John Holt
(1923-1985) American author and educator, proponent of homeschooling, and pioneer in youth rights theory
Source: Holt, J. (1967). How Children Learn. New York: Pitman Publishing Corporation
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/John.Holt.Quote.59BD
“The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any
school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning
is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of
learners.”
– John Holt
(1923-1985) American author and educator, proponent of homeschooling, and pioneer in youth rights theory
Source: Holt, J. (1967). How Children Learn. New York: Pitman Publishing Corporation
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/John.Holt.Quote.5804
Ron Paul
THE TEN PRINCIPLES OF A FREE SOCIETY, by Ron Paul
1. Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government.
2. All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order.
3. Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments.
4. Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group.
5. Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves.
6. Government may not claim the monopoly over a people’s money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability.
7. Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden.
8. Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm.
9. All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.
10. Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.
Taken from LewRockwell.com
——————————————-
Below are quotes from Congressman Ron Paul:
“The founders wanted to set a high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty,” Paul, the libertarian congressman, said Monday in a weekly phone message to supporters. “To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured. The Patriot Act, as bad as its violations against the Fourth Amendment was, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act continues that slip into tyranny, and in fact, accelerates it significantly.” – Congressman Ron Paul
“Ideas are very important to the shaping of society. In fact, they are more powerful than bombings or armies or guns. And this is because ideas are capable of spreading without limit. They are behind all the choices we make. They can transform the world in a way that governments and armies cannot. Fighting for liberty with ideas makes more sense to me than fighting with guns or politics or political power. With ideas, we can make real change that lasts.”
~ Ron Paul, Liberty Defined: The 50 Urgent Issues That Affect Our Freedom
“Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states “accountable” for their education performance…In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable to parents, not federal bureaucrats.”
~ Ron Paul
“I’m convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you’re less safe when you give up your liberties.”
~ Ron Paul
“Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.”
~ Ron Paul
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”
~ Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto
“Mr. Speaker, I once again find myself compelled to vote against the annual budget resolution for a very simple reason: it makes government bigger.”
~ Ron Paul
“The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free.”
~ Ron Paul
“Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.”
~ Ron Paul
“Failure of government programs prompts more determined effort, while the loss of liberty is ignored or rationalized away…whether is it is the war on poverty, drugs, terrorism…or the current Hitler of the day, an appeal to patriotism is used to convince the people that a little sacrifice of liberty, here or there, is a small price to pay…The results, though, are frightening and will soon become even more so.”
~ Ron Paul
“When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.”
~ Ron Paul
“A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.”
~ Ron Paul
“Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it’s realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy.”
~ Ron Paul
“The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George…Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security.”
~ Ron Paul
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.”
~ Ron Paul
“It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”
~ Ron Paul, End the Fed
“A citizen walking through the airport today is bombarded with 1984-style propaganda messages that are designed to make us fear some amorphous threat and also be suspicious of others. The government designs these messages to make us feel dependent and heavily lorded over in every aspect of our lives. These messages are becoming ever more pervasive, hitting us even in grocery stores when we are shopping.”
~ Ron Paul, Liberty Defined: The 50 Urgent Issues That Affect Our Freedom
Top Libertarian Websites
Hat tip to The Capital Free Press for putting the list together!
This is a ranking of the top libertarian websites based on the number of unique visitors in the most recent month according to the data compiled by Compete. They only compile data for domains and subdomains, so perhaps this list is more accurately described as the most visited libertarian domains rather than websites. It is compiled through calls to Compete’s API, so it will automatically update when they release new data each month. For more information on this list, see the blog post introducing it.
Automating everything means that adding a new website is as simple as plugging a new url into my list, so you have any suggestions for a website to add, please email me at patrick@capitalfreepress.com.
[SS Note: Due to recent endorsement of Romney, #114 is debatable.]
