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The Right to Keep and Bear Arms | 
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J.R.R. Tolkien
“ ‘There are no tidings,’ said the Warden [head physician of Gondor], ‘...for long years we healers have only sought to patch the rents made by the men of swords. Though we should still have enough to do without them: the world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.’
“ ‘It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden,’ answered Éowyn. ‘And those who have not swords can still die upon them. Would you have the folk of Gondor gather you herbs only, when the Dark Lord gathers armies?’ ” (Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King p. 236.)
Martin Luther
“Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit wine and abolish women?”
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey
“The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proven to be always possible.”
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.”
H.L. Mencken
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
Samuel Adams
“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 nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Frédéric Bastiat, French Philosopher
“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.”
Thomas Paine
“The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. Horrible mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them. the weak will become a prey to the strong.”
James Madison
“Americans [have] the right and advantage of being armed - unlike citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
Patrick Henry
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.”
Benjamin Franklin
“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Winston Churchill
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
Thomas Jefferson
“It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.”
H.L. Mencken
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
George Orwell
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!”
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander Japanese Fleet in
World War II
“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind
each blade of grass.”
“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”
C.S. Lewis
“It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satisfied; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Sigmund Freud
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”
Heinrich Himmler, author of Germany’s Final Solution
for the extermination of Jews
“Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA—ordinary
citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the state.”
“Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA—ordinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the state.”
Thomas Jefferson
“The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.”
Walter Mondale
“Gun bans don’t disarm criminals, gun bans attract them.”
George Mason, Virginia’s U.S. Constitution ratification
convention
“[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the
British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was Governor of
Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual
way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them,
and let them sink gradually. [...] I ask, who are the militia? They consist
now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
“[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was Governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually. [...] I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“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.”
Thomas Jefferson
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
George Washington, speech to Congress on 7 January
1790
“A free people ought... to be armed.”
“A free people ought... to be armed.”
Samuel Adams
“[I]t does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
Edmund Burke
“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”
William Pitt, speech to the House of Commons
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
John Locke
“I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.”
Winston Churchill
“A man who gets the reputation of rising at dawn can sleep to noon.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
“I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.”