Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.
Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.
If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.
The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded.
Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them.
The ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms.
The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority’s ability to harm a minority.
We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.
We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A Republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when the day comes when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nations to the changed conditions.
If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?
Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned.
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
All power in human hands is liable to be abused.
A people armed and free, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.
A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
Our Constitution represents the work of the finger of Almighty God.
The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.
No error is more certain than the one proceeding from a hasty and superficial view of the subject.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.