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Pres. Abraham Lincoln:
"Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." [Guns & Ammo, August 1993]
Pres. Abraham Lincoln:
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
Pres. Abraham Lincoln:
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Pres. Theodore Roosevelt:
"In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen."
Pres. Theodore Roosevelt:
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else..."
Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower:
"If all Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government." Dec.9, 1949
Pres. Ronald Reagan:
"Mightn't it be better in those areas of high crime to arm the homeowner and the shopkeeper, teach him how to use his weapons and put the word out to the underworld that it is no longer totally safe to rob and murder? One wonders indeed if the rising crime rate isn't due as much as anything to the criminal's instinctive knowledge that the average victim no longer has any means of protection. No one knows how many crimes are committed because the criminal knows he has a soft touch. No one knows how many stores have been left alone because the criminals knew them to be guarded by a man with a gun." Letter to the Editor, Gun & Ammo, 1975
Pres. Ronald Reagan:
"My belief has always been . . . that wherever in this land any individual's constitutional rights are being unjustly denied, it is the obligation of the federal government -- at point of bayonet if necessary -- to restore that individual's constitutional rights." Press Conference, May 17, 1983
Sen. Barry Goldwater:
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" Speech at the Republican National Convention, July 16, 1964
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey:
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." in "Know Your Lawmakers," Guns, February 1960, p.6
U.S. Rep. John Dingell:
"The consequences of the behavior of the BATF in these kinds of cases is that they are not trusted. They are detested, and I have described them properly as jackbooted American fascists. They have shown no concern over the rights of ordinary citizens or their property. They intrude without the slightest regard or concern." Congressional Record, page H1382, February 8th, 1995
U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich:
"With that single line the President proved to everyone who cares about the Second Amendment that he did not have a clue about what concerns them. The Second Amendment to the Constitution has nothing to do with duck or deer hunting. It has nothing to do with target practice or owning collector's weapons. The Second Amendment is a political right written into our Constitution for the purpose of protecting individual citizens from their government. The lesson of the English Civil War and the American Revolution was that political freedom is ultimately based upon the courage and preparedness of those who would remain free. If the Lexington and Concord minutemen had not kept weapons, they could not have fired the shot heard 'round the world. If the American colonists had not been trained in how to shoot and fight, they could not have become American citizens." Speaking on President Clinton's State of the Union Address, in his book "To Renew America", HarperCollins, 1995, pp.201-202
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ousted Haiti president:
"We had all the people on our side, but they had all the guns." [American Rifleman, December 1991, pg. 10]
Winston Churchill:
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory can be sure and not too costly, you may come to a moment when you have to fight with all the odds against you, and only a precarious chance to survive. There may even be a worse case - You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, and it will be better to perish than to live in slavery." 1937.
Roman Orator Cicero:
"And indeed, gentlemen, there exists a law, not written down anywhere but born in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorbtion and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right." Selected Political Speeches (M. Grant translation, pg. 222, 1969)
Mahatma Gandhi:
""Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." Mohandis K. Gandhi Autobiography, Translated from the Gujarati by Mahadev Desai. Public Affairs Press, Washington, D.C. 1948. (Republication by Unabridged Dover, 1983. page 403.)
William Pitt (Earl of Chatham):
"If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms,--never! never! never!" You cannot conquer America." Address to the House of Lords, Nov. 18, 1777
William Pitt (Earl of Chatham):
"The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter,--but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!" Speech on the Excise Bill
William Pitt (Earl of Chatham):
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." Speech in the House of Lords, November 18, 1783
Sir Walter Raleigh:
the cunning tyrant plans "To unarm his people, and store up their weapons, under pretense of keeping them safe..." 8 W. Raleigh, The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, Kt., Now Collected 22, Oxford, 1829
Sir Walter Raleigh:
"Whoso taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be." The Cabinet Council, Chapter 26, Maxims of State, reprised in The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, Volume 1, 1751
Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the Younger":
"Quemadmoeum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." ("A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands.") -- (ca. 4 BC-65 AD)
Mao Zedong:
"Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' Our principle is that the Party commands the gun and the gun will never be allowed to command the Party." Problems of War and Strategy, (6 Nov. 1938); published in Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 2, 1961
Mao Zedong:
"War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun." Problems of War and Strategy, (6 Nov. 1938); published in Selected Works, Volume 2, 1961
Other Famous Politicians / Revised August 1998