Independence Day: Liberty, Truth, Justice

(Fascism is a radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, extreme nationalism, militarism, anti-rationalism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism. ~Wikipedia)

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. ~Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. ~Abraham Lincoln

Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader. ~Aristotle

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either rods or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ~Frederick Douglass

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed persons can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead

Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past, while we silence the rebels of the present. ~Henry Steele Commager

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality. ~George Washington

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.  ~William Faulkner

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation ~Jimmy Carter

Where liberty is, there is my country. ~Benjamin Franklin

Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. ~Cesar Chavez

... 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. ~Voltairine de Cleyre

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers - and before it can be his, it is hers alone.  ~Margaret Sanger

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. ~James Madison

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness. ~H.L. Mencken

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation. ~Coretta Scott King

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means – to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retributions. ~Justice Louis Brandeis

America's adventure in free government [is threatened by a] military industrial complex. . . We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. ~ Susan B. Anthony

... it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds ... ~Samuel Adams

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. ~Thomas Jefferson

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. ~Katherine Hepburn