Joseph Bredesen

“Breaking free of our desire for consistency and certainty is not always easy to do-and that goes for anyone, so it's helpful to break things down. Shake off your sense of surety. It may be uncomfortable at first, but you will adjust and actually find yourself more uncomfortable with those who profess certainty at all times. Listen to the views and argument of the other side with patience. Ask questions. Take time to find and understand evidence from reliable sources. Be wary of certainty, but let those who are open about the (and better yet, quantity) their uncertainties earn your confidence. Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." Voltaire once said. And remember: if you are wrong be brave, be noble and admit it-and value others who have courage and integrity to do the same.”
― Jim Al-Khalili

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
― John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy

“The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.”
― Albert Einstein

“The idea [passing the 17th amendment] benefited from a unique political and cultural atmosphere that consumed a nation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries-a progressive populism promoting simultaneously radical egalitarianism and centralized authoritarianism.”
― Mark Levin