The More Things Change...

It is comforting to know that the problems that we are having today in this country are not new. It seems that folks throughout history have been dispensing words of wisdom that speak to the world situation as it exists today.

When I found the quotes in my last post, there were dozens more...so here are a few of my faovorites - as they relate to life, liberty and the American Way:

• True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.
  -Clarence Darrow
• If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
  -James Madison
• You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.
  -Malcolm X
• The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.
  -James Madison
• We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
  -Dwight D. Eisenhower
• The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
  -Louis D. Brandeis
• This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
  -Plato
• What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise.
  -Barbara Jordan
• Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't.
  -Mark Twain
• Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
  -Voltaire
• Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.
  -Ronald Reagan
• Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
  -William Penn
• Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.
  -Davy Crockett
• To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes, would bring terrible retribution.
  -Louis D. Brandeis
• It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.
  -John C. Calhoun
• The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
  -James Madison
• How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
  -Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
  -William Pitt

And my favorites...

• A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
  -John F. Kennedy
• What a cruel thing war is...to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.
  -Robert E. Lee
• The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
  -Albert Einstein
• Power always thinks...that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
  -John Adams
• Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
  -Albert Einstein
• If God is just, I tremble for my country.
  -Thomas Jefferson

Drum roll please....the best for last:

• Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
  -Mark Twain