“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his palace, his possessions are safe.”
Jesus Christ, Luke 11:21
“Hammer the Americans hard enough and you will forge the best weapon in the world.”
British Capt. Simeon Ecuyer during the siege of Fort Pitt
“The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men.”
Plato, Greek philosopher
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarms only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…”
Thomas Jefferson
“Let us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
H.L. Mencken
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom … go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Samuel Adams
“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone”
Frederic Bastiat
“The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. Horrible mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them… the weak will become a prey to the strong.”
Thomas Paine
“Americans [have] the right and advantage of being armed – unlike citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
James Madison
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.”
Patrick Henry
“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
Winston Churchill
“…if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one”
Jesus Christ, Luke 22:36
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
Mahatma Ghandi, 1927
“It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.”
Thomas Jefferson
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
H.L. Mencken
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!”
George Orwell, author
“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”
Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, 1941
“It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satisfied; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C.S. Lewis, author/theologian
“The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proven to be always possible.”
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”
Sigmund Freud, psychologist
“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
“The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Gun bans don’t disarm criminals, gun bans attract them.”
Walter Mondale
“When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was Governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually.”. . . I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
George Mason, Virginia’s U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 1788
“As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free.”
Julia Ward Howe, lyricist to Battle Hymn of the Republic
“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
Thomas Jefferson
“A free people ought… to be armed…”
George Washington, speech to Congress on Jan. 7, 1790 (in Boston Independent Chronicle)
“..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds…”
Samuel Adams
“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”
Edmund Burke
“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.”
Col. Jeff Cooper, Firearms Pioneer
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
William Pitt, speech to the House of Commons
“I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.”
John Locke, philosopher
“A man who gets the reputation of rising at dawn can sleep to noon.”
Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister
“I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.”
Frank Lloyd Wright, architect
“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”
John F. Kennedy, former U.S. President
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“For those who have fought for it, freedom has a special flavor the protected will never know.”
Unknown soldier (but too good to pass up)
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
Frederick Douglass, abolitionist
“That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”
George Orwell, author
“The unarmed man is not just defenseless — he is also contemptible.”
Machiavelli
“Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons.”
Col. Jeff Cooper, Firearms Pioneer
“An angry ex-girlfriend or wife is the best person in the world, the greatest source of information.”
Tim Sloan, BATFE Agent
“Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another – too often ending in the loss of both.”
Tryon Edwards, American Theologian
“The ‘morality of compromise’ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.”
Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist/Philanthropist
“You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.”
John Ruskin, English poet and art critic
“Those without swords may still die upon them.”
Eowyn, female character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy
“Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.”
John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States
“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”
Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and crafter of the Second Amendment
