Al Lock > Al's Quotes

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#1

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: freedom, law, morality, rules

2221 likes

#2

“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.”
― Mark Twain

tags: inspirational, philosophical

9 likes

#3

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
― Thomas Jefferson

tags: atheism, philosophy, religion

1342 likes

#4

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson

tags: liberty, political-philosophy, politics

698 likes

#5

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

tags: church, creed, enslave, greek, human-invention, jewish, monopolize, power, profit, protestant, religion, roman, turkish

294 likes

#6

“There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.”
― Pierre Dos Utt, Tanstaafl: A Plan for a New Economic World Order

tags: misattributed-milton-friedman, misattributed-robert-a-heinlein, tanstaafl, tanstafl

558 likes

#7

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams

tags: liberty, tyranny

347 likes

#8

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: rah

2046 likes

#9

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
― Thomas Paine

237 likes

#10

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
― Patrick Henry

tags: freedom, liberty, revolution, slavery

419 likes

#11

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

tags: essential, happiness, love

30818 likes

#12

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: choice, freedom, peace, war

1047 likes

#13

“[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”
― Samuel Adams

tags: america, american-revolution, citizenship, freedom, state

34 likes

#14

“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth

tags: hanlon-s-razor, malice, stupidity

783 likes

#15

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

tags: condescending, income-tax, pay, taxes, tyranny

659 likes

#16

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”
― James Madison

tags: 10th-amendment, government

56 likes

#17

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
― Bruce Lee

tags: expectations, individuality, peer-pressure, wisdom

2715 likes

#18

“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson

tags: books

7340 likes

#19

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
― Thomas Jefferson

tags: freedom, government, politics

1902 likes

#20

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
― Thomas Jefferson

tags: banks, debt, deficit-spending, government, loans, political-science, politics

1023 likes

#21

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin

tags: freedom, jefferson, security, thomas, thomas-jefferson

1095 likes

#22

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”
― Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

tags: civil-rights, geometry, opinions, physics, science

606 likes

#23

“I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

[Letter to Thomas Law, 13 June 1814]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

tags: atheism, baron-d-holbach, condorcet, d-alembert, d-holbach, deism, denis-diderot, diderot, jean-le-rond-d-alembert, marquis-de-condorcet, paul-henri-d-holbach, platonic, platonic-christianity, protestant

491 likes

#24

“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”
― Thomas Paine, A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America

tags: education, experience, wisdom

3195 likes

#25

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
― thomas paine, Rights of Man

796 likes

#26

“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
― thomas paine, Rights of Man

tags: equality, ethics, morality, rights, secular-ethics, secular-morality

526 likes

#27

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
― Thomas Paine

tags: blessings, freedom, liberty

513 likes

#28

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

tags: belief, bible, cruel, cruelty, murder, rapine, the-bible

393 likes

#29

“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

tags: government, liberty, patriotism

230 likes

#30

“It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
― Samuel Adams

tags: activism, minority

171 likes

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