Something to read, to think and to think it over again ....welcome to ad more, if you have other favourites, I have hundreds as I frequently save lines if they capture my interest.

In the future when the historian sifts through the debris of our era, oversaturated with information, once the dross has been cast aside, more than a few of the things that remain will be bound in the covers of The Edwin Mellen Press.

- Charles S. Kraszewski
King's College


Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
- Benjamin Franklin

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

Freedom of Press is limited to those who own one. - H.L. Menken (pls read my bloggs refering to Italy's political system)

If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't even begun to pull out the knife. - El Hajj Malik El Shabazz

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more. - John Adams

The Aim of an Argument ... should not be victory, but progress. - Joseph Joubert

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. - M. Planck

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt. - John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), Irish lawyer and politician. Speech, July 10, 1790, Dublin. (I would suggest you to googel for the speech!)

You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one. - Rush Limbaugh

Children younger than 5 are twice as likely to die from ingesting household poisons than by gunfire - So the question for the Legislature should be: Is a parent criminally responsible for leaving an unlocked container of bleach below the sink? - Don Kates, civil rights lawyer, quoted from "Trigger locks may not be solution to gun problems," Detroit Free Press, March 29, 2000

When innocent citizens are wrongfully denied their right to obtain a firearm in a timely fashion, the results are sometimes tragic. For example, when Phillip Coleman of Shreveport, Louisiana, attempted in 1995 to purchase a handgun for self-defense, the sale was mistakenly rejected. Coleman appealed the decision, pointing out the error. Unfortunately, he was shot to death outside of his work while his application was still pending. Three days after his murder, the approval arrived by fax. - H. Sterling Burnett, "Brady Bill Will Soon Be Dead-Do Not Resuscitate!"... how paradox

There already are 20,000 federal gun laws and regulations on the books. If those laws haven't made America safe by now, why should we think 20,001 laws will suffice?- Harry Brown

All revolutions have failed?... Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying--a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.- Edward Abbey

Most revolutionaries are potential Tories, because they imagine that everything can be put right by altering the shape of society; once that change is effected, as it sometimes is, they see no need for any other. - George Orwell, 1940


If today I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the Revolution. - Adolf Hitler, While on trial for involvement in the unsuccessful putsch against the Republican government in Munich, Germany, which had itself overthrown the Bavarian monarchy in 1918

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are. - H. L. Mencken

I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supranational organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?" - Quote from "WHY SOCIALISM?", By Albert Einstein, Monthly Review, New York, May, 1949.

America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the [first] World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these "isms" wouldn't today be sweeping the continent in Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives. - Winston Churchill, 1937, speaking with an American reporter

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Hermann Wilhelm Göring, during his trial in Nuremberg

My fellow Americans: I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. - Ronald Reagan, 40th US President - A joke made while testing a microphone before a broadcast 11 Aug 84

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. - Senior Pentagon official, explaining why the U.S. military censored footage showing Iraqi soldiers sliced in two by U.S. helicopter fire.

When people settle in a foreign country with little or no intention of abandoning their native culture, or, increasingly, no intention of abandoning their native language and native political allegiance, the correct word for the process isn't "reverse assimilation." And it isn't immigration. The correct word in the English language is "colonization." Because that's exactly what it is." - KC McAlpin, Executive Director

Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed. - David Brower, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club

We didn't cross the borders, the borders crossed us. - A T-Shirt worn by a Hispanic-American 'Raza' protestor, in reference to the US's conquest of northern Mexico in the late 1840's.

In 1980, there were 315,974 [inmates in American state and federal prisons]; in 1981, there were 353,674, an increase of 10 percent; and in 1982, there were 396,072, another 11 percent. Suppose this same growth curve continues, so that we add 12 percent the next year, 13 percent the following, and so on. In the year 2012, 415,389,484 Americans will be in state and federal prisons. Now that is a frightening prospect, particularly granted that the total U.S. population projected for that year is only about 315,000,000. Apparently we're going to have to find an extra hundred million people just to fill our prisons; and that doesn't even address the question of who will guard us all. - Population Growth as Blessing or Blight, E. Calvin Beisner, attempting to point out a statistical absurdity, but also demonstrating just how quickly the war on drugs has expanded our prison population.

see that you, too, put up monuments to your great dead. - An Unknown Frenchman, on viewing the Statue of Liberty during Prohibition

Bush wants to grant a tax cut of $1.3 trillion over 10 years -- which, as he noted, would amount to 5% of the $25 trillion the federal government expects to collect in revenue over the next decade. Gore, by contrast, wants to dole out a tax cut of $500 billion. That amounts to 2% of the federal government's revenue over 10 years. And there you have it -- their so-called difference. Gore wants to make sure the government gets 98% of its expected revenue; Bush wants the government to pocket 95% of its expected revenue. That isn't a debate; that's a profound agreement, with some quibbling over a few minor details. - Libertarian Party Press Release, October 4,