Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson
The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments. ~William E. Borah
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. ~Jonathan Swift, The Drapier’s Letter
In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? ~St. Augustine
“Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim – when he defends himself – as a criminal.”
– Frederic Bastiat
The last quote by Augustine is interesting: Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God. Really, what is government except raw force backed up by laws. Without the consent of the governed, it is tyranny. Tony Soprano becomes, not a thief, but a government in waiting.
“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
官逼民反 —- misgovernment drives the people to revolt
脱裤子放屁 —- FBAR for expats
“I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.”
― Albert Einstein
“There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.”
– Nelson Mandela
“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”
– Charles de Montesquieu
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
‘One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority’ Hitchens
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
– Voltaire
“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.”
– Thomas Jefferson
The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.
America is just the country that how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society
Peter Kropotkin
To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is it’s justice; that is it’s morality.
Quote from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.
~ V is for Vendetta
“It’s the Law,”
(Steven Mopsick)
“Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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
Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.
Hannah Arendt
• Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.
Hannah Arendt
“Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
– Lord Acton
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
– Thomas Paine
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren’t, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.”
– Gloria Steinem
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson
“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”
– Jonathan Swift