The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

— Frank Zappa 

Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts.

— Frank Zappa 

Asked random questions about the First Amendment and how they would like to have it applied, if you believe in polls at all, the average American wants no part of it. But if you ask, 'What if we threw the Constitution away tomorrow?' the answer is 'No, that would be bad!' But living under the Constitution is another story altogether.

— Frank Zappa 

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

— Malcolm X 

A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

— Frank Lloyd Wright 

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.

— Alexander Woollcott 

Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

— Virginia Woolf 

It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don't put psychotics in high places and we've got the problem solved.

— Thomas Wolfe 

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

— Woodrow Wilson 

The wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to air.

— Woodrow Wilson 

The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.

— Walter E. Williams 

Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?

— Walter E. Williams 

Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.

— Walter E. Williams 

Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

— Wendell L. Wilkie 

Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.

— Wendell L. Wilkie 

Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.

— William Allen White 

Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.

— Daniel Webster 

Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.

— Daniel Webster 

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

— Daniel Webster 

The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government.

— Daniel Webster 

No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country.

— Daniel Webster 

Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind.

— Henry Grady Weaver 

The government taxes you when you bring home a paycheck. It taxes you when you make a phone call. It taxes you when you turn on a light. It taxes you when you sell a stock. It taxes you when you fill your car with gas. It taxes you when you ride a plane. It taxes you when you get married. Then it taxes you when you die. This is taxual insanity and it must end.

— J. C. Watts, Jr. 

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

— George Washington 

If we are wise, let us prepare for the worst.

— George Washington 

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force, and like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

— George Washington 

Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence.

— George Washington 

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of Liberty abused to licentiousness.

— George Washington 

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well.

— Booker T. Washington 

From the utopian viewpoint, the United States constitution is a singularly hard-bitten and cautious document, for it breathes the spirit of skepticism about human altruism and incorporates a complex system of checks, balances and restrictions, so that everybody is holding the reins on everybody else.

— Chad Walsh 

In some ways, certain books are more powerful by far than any battle.

— Henry Wallace 

Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession -- their ignorance.

— Hendrick Van Loon 

Anyone who tells you that "It Can't Happen Here" is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no "house rule" that bars tyranny coming to America. History is replete with republics whose people grew complacent and descended into imperial butchery and chaos.

— Mike Vanderboegh 

Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly.

— Virgil 

I may not agree with what you say, but to the death I will defend your right to say it.

— Voltaire 

Let the laws be clear, uniform and precise; to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them.

— Voltaire 

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

— Voltaire 

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

— Voltaire 

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

— Voltaire 

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.

— Ludwig von Mises 

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

— Johann von Schiller 

Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many Citizens, because of their respect for what appears to be law, are cunningly coerced into waiving their rights due to ignorance.

— United States Supreme Court 

The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now.

— United States Supreme Court 

To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals... is none the less robbery because it is... called taxation.

— United States Supreme Court 

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of the liberties … which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.

— United States v. Rebel 

There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country we punish men for the crimes they commit but never for the opinions they have.

— Harry S. Truman 

Secrecy and a free, democratic government don’t mix.

— Harry S. Truman 

I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.

— Harry S. Truman 

When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.

— Harry S. Truman 

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

— Mao Tse-Tung