• Thomas Jefferson
    • Of liberty I would say that…it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
    • I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground; That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.
    • To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
    • Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
    • A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
    • The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.
    • If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power of money should be taken from banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.
    • If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. –to C. Yancey, 1816
    • I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
    • I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
    • Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. –Commonplace Book, 1774-1776
    • The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
    • When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny.
    • Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interests to go to war.
    • I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. –to James Madison, 1787
    • Experience hath shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
    • Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration. –1st Inaugural Address, 1801
  • James Madison
    • The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
    • 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. –Speech in the Virginia Convention
    • If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
    • 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.
    • The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
    • The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. –Speech, House of Representatives, during the debate “On the Memorial of the Relief Committee of Baltimore, for the Relief of St. Domingo Refugees”
    • This Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them. –Virginia Resolution of 1798
    • With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. –Letter to James Robertson
  • Benjamin Franklin
    • The refusal of King George III to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution.
    • Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
  • John Stuart Mill
    • If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
    • War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and the degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
  • Thomas Paine
    • It can only be by binding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of government; a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes. –Rights of Man, Chapter 3
    • [A]rms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves. –Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775
    • Government is nothing more than a national association; and the object of this association is the good of all, as well individually as collectively. Every man wishes to pursue his occupation, and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered. –Rights of Man, Chapter 4
    • Laws difficult to be executed cannot be generally good. –Rights of Man, Chapter 4
    • But whatever apology may be made for oaths at the first establishment of a government, they ought not to be permitted afterwards. If a government requires the support of oaths, it is a sign that it is not worth supporting, and ought not to be supported.Make government what it ought ot be, and it will support itself. –Rights of Man, Chapter 4
    • Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ouht to have no other object than the general happiness. When instead of this, it operates to create and encrease wretchedness in any of the parts of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessity. –Rights of Man, Chapter 5
    • Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. –The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
  • George Mason
    • Every Husbandman will be quickly converted into a Soldier, when he knows and feels that he is to fight not in defence of the Rights of a particular Family, or a Prince; but for his own.
    • Under their own construction of the general clause, at the end of the enumerated powers, the Congress may grant monopolies in trade and commerce, constitute new crimes, inflict unusual and severe punishments, and extend their powers as far as they shall think proper; so that State legislatures have no security for the powers now presumed to remain to them, or the people for their rights. –Sept. 15th, 1787, Objections to This Constitution of Government
  • Andrew Jackson
    • The bold effort the present bank had made to control the government, the distress it had wantonly produced… are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.
  • Alexander Hamilton
    • For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution. –Federalist No. 1
  • Louis McFadden, Congressman, House Committee on Banking and Currency Chairman (1920-1931)
    • When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists… acting together to enslave the world… Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is — the Fed has usurped the government.
  • Robert Yates (Brutus)
    • The different parts of so extensive a country could not possibly be made acquainted with the conduct of their representatives, nor be informed of the reasons upon which measures were founded. The consequence will be, they will have no confidence in their legislature, suspect them of ambitious views, be jealous of every measure they adopt, and will not support the laws they pass. Hence the government will be nerveless and inefficient, and no way will be left to render it otherwise, but by establishing an armed force to execute the laws at the point of bayonet — a government of all others the most to be dreaded. –”Brutus” Essay I, Oct. 18th, 1787
    • If the people of America will submit to a constitution that will vest in the hands of any body of men a right to deprive them by law of the privilege of a fair election, they will submit to almost any thing. Reasoning with them will be in vain, they must be left until they are brought to reflection by feeling oppression–they will then have to wrest from their oppressors, by a strong hand, that which they now possess, and which they may retain if they will exercise but a moderate share of prudence and firmness. –”Brutus” Essay 4, November 29th, 1787
  • Ed Howdershelt
    • There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
  • Woodrow Wilson
    • A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated (in the Federal Reserve System). The growth of the Nation and an our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world — no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.
    • Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
  • Abraham Lincoln
    • Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, and most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much territory as they inhabit. –1848
    • The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, (and) more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe…corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.
    • America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
    • My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union. –letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley
    • I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. — September 18, 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas
  • Alan Greenspan
    • In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the “hidden” confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard. –Gold and Economic Freedom
  • C.S. Lewis
    • Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    • Nothing is worse than active ignorance.
    • None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
  • Jacques Chirac
    • For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance, one that should find a place within the World Environmental Organisation which France and the European Union would like to see established.
  • Samuel Adams
    • If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
    • The said Constitution [shall] be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms. –Massachusetts’ U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 1788
    • How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
    • It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.
  • St. George Tucker
    • The bill of rights, 1 W. and M, says Mr. Blackstone, (Vol. 1 p. 143), secures to the subjects of England the right of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree. In the construction of these game laws it seems to be held, that no person who is not qualified according to law to kill game, hath any right to keep a gun in his house. Now, as no person, (except the game-keeper of a lord or lady of a manor) is admitted to be qualified to kill game, unless he has 100l. per annum, &c. it follows that no others can keep a gun for their defence; so that the whole nation are completely disarmed, and left at the mercy of the government, under the pretext of preserving the breed of hares and partridges, for the exclusive use of the independent country gentlemen. In America we may reasonably hope that the people will never cease to regard the right of keeping and bearing arms as the surest pledge of their liberty.
  • Joseph Story
    • The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights.
  • Orrin G. Hatch
    • They argue that the Second Amendment’s words “right of the people” mean “a right of the state”, apparently overlooking the impact of those same words when used in the First and Fourth Amendments. The “right of the people” to assemble or to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is not contested as an individual guarantee. Still they ignore consistency and claim that the right to “bear arms” relates only to military uses. This not only violates a consistent constitutional reading of “right of the people” but also ignores that the second amendment protects a right to “keep” arms.
    • When our ancestors forged a land “conceived in liberty”, they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against governmental interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.
  • United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (2001)
    • There are numerous instances of the phrase “bear arms” being used to describe a civilian’s carrying of arms. Early constitutional provisions or declarations of rights in at least some ten different states speak of the right of the “people” [or “citizen” or “citizens”] “to bear arms in defense of themselves [or “himself”] and the state”, or equivalent words, thus indisputably reflecting that under common usage “bear arms” was in no sense restricted to bearing arms in military service.
  • Patrick Henry
    • Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitabley ruined. –Virginia’s U.S. Constitution ratification convention, June 5,1788
    • [W]here and when did freedom exist when the power of the sword and purse were given up from the people? –Virginia’s U.S. Constitution ratification convention, June 9,1788. Elliot, Debates of the Several State Conventions, 3:169
  • Tench Coxe
    • The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large, will render many troops quite unnecessary. They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops, and will generally be sufficient to over-awe them. –Oct. 21, 1787
    • Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms. –Federal Gazette, June 18,1789, writing in support of Madison’s first draft of the Bill of Rights
  • Alex Kozinski
    • The majority falls prey to the delusion — popular in some circles — that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth — born of experience — is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people… A revolt by Nat Turner and a few dozen other armed blacks could be put down without much difficulty; one by four million armed blacks would have meant big trouble. All too many of the other great tragedies of history — Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. … If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.” –dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc in Silveira v. Lockyer
  • Robert A. Heinlein
    • Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and — thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.
  • Henry Grady Weaver
    • Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the log of mankind in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others — with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means. This message is one we should all ponder.
  • 1790 Pennsylvania Constitution
    • Section 21: That the right of citizens to bear arms, in defence of themselves and the State, shall not be questioned.
  • Justice Sutherland
    • [W]hether the legislation under review is wise or unwise is a matter with which we have nothing o do. Whether it is likely to work well or work ill presents a question entirely irrelevant to the issue. The only legitimate inquiry we can make is whether it is constitutional. If it is not, its virtues, if it has any, cannot save it; if it is, its faults cannot be invoked to accomplish its destruction. If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned. –dissenting in Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell (1934)
  • Norman Thomas
    • I have no need to run for president anymore, the Democratic Party has adopted my platform!
  • Rexford G. Tugwell
    • To the extent that these [New Deal] policies developed, they were the tortured interpretations of a document (i.e. the Constitution) intended to prevent them.
  • Justice Clarence Thomas
    • Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything — and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited andenumerated powers…. By holding that Congress may regulate activity that is neither interstate nor commerce under the Comemerce Claus, the Court abandons any attempt to enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power. — Gonzalez v. Raich (2004)
  • Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (A.D. 39-65)
    • Ignorantque datos, ne quisquam serviat, enses. => And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man from slavery.
  • Ron Paul
    • When a foreign war comes to our shores in the form of terrorism, we can be sure that our government will explain the need for further sacrifice of personal liberties to win this war against terrorism as well. –April 21st, 1999
  • Danial Webster
    • Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.
  • Graeme K. Howard, GM’s European director
    • PASSAGE BILL WOULD SPELL ECONOMIC ISOLATION UNITED STATES AND MOST SEVERE DEPRESSION EVER EXPERIENCED –Telegram to Washington in regards to Smoot-Hawley tariff, 1930
  • Odette Keun, European journalist studying the American labor movement of the 1930’s
    • Labor in America is conservative. It is one of the most flabbergasting discoveries I have made. [This was] due to the temper of the American workingman himself. In general his sense of solidarity was for a very long time nonexistent; it is not at all effective yet. [The] workingman en bloc is still no revolutionist. He still has not the fanatical hatred of the capitalist. He still has no essential feeling that the system is essentially unjust, infamous, execrable, and must be wiped off the face of the earth.
  • Unknown author of a Muncie paper editorial
    • Who is the forgotten man in Muncie? I know him as intimately as my own undershirt. He is the fellow that is trying to get along without public relief…. In the meantime the taxpayers go on supporting many that would not work if they had jobs.
  • John Maynard Keynes
    • [There is no use] in chasing utilities around the lot every other week. It is a mistake to think businessmen are more immoral than politicians. –letter to FDR, 1937
  • John Quincy Adams
    • Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [the United States’] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. … She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. … She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.
  • George Washington
    • My ardent desire is, and my aim has been…to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home. –letter to Patrick Henry, Oct. 9th 1775
  • Murray N. Rothbard
    • It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt
    • Anyone who has traveled to the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. . . . The argument works both ways. I know a great many cultivated, highly educated and delightful Japanese. They have all told me that they would feel the same repugnance and objection to have thousands of Americans settle in Japan and intermarry with the Japanese as I would feel in having large numbers of Japanese coming over here and intermarry with the American population. In this question, then, of Japanese exclusion from the United States it is necessary only to advance the true reason–the undesirability of mixing the blood of the two peoples. . . . The Japanese people and the American people are both opposed to intermarriage of the two races–there can be no quarrel there. –1925
  • Education subcommittee of the Massachusetts legislature: 1852
    • The establishment of the Board of Education seems to be the commencement of a system of centralization and monopoly of power in a few hands, contrary, in every respect, to the tree spirit of democratic institutions; and which, unless speedily checked, may lead to unlooked-for and dangerous results.
  • Pastor Martin Niemöller
    • Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
      habe ich geschwiegen;
      ich war ja kein Kommunist.Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
      habe ich geschwiegen;
      ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
      habe ich nicht protestiert;
      ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.Als sie die Juden holten,
      habe ich geschwiegen;
      ich war ja kein Jude.Als sie mich holten,
      gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.
    • When the Nazis came for the communists,
      I remained silent;
      I was not a communist.When they locked up the social democrats,
      I remained silent;
      I was not a social democrat.When they came for the trade unionists,
      I did not speak out;
      I was not a trade unionist.When they came for the Jews,
      I remained silent;
      I wasn’t a Jew.
      When they came for me,
      there was no one left to speak out.