Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -- Abraham Lincoln

Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want? -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, trans. R. J. Hollingdale

To lead people, you must follow behind. -- Lao Tsu

Everybody wants to see justice done, to somebody else. -- Bruce Cockburn

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. -- Thomas Jefferson

Who does not trust enough will not be trusted. -- Lao Tsu

Love your country, but never trust its government. --Robert A. Heinlein.

When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty. -- Thomas Paine

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. -- H.L. Mencken

All bad precedents began as justifiable measures. -- Julius Caesar, quoted in Sallust's Conspiracy of Catiline (1st c. B.C.)

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power. -- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

What oily concern the pigs show for the welfare of the other animals, a concern that disguises their contempt for those they are manipulating. -- Margaret Atwood, Orwell and Me (re: Orwell's Animal Farm)

The more you have to define freedom the less freedom you have. -- Alexander Bickel (?)

No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large. -- Mark Twain

A conservative is a fellow who thinks a rich man should have a fair deal. -- Frank Dane

The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it. -- U.S. Senator James Exon (?)

Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. -- U.S. General William Westmoreland

The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it. -- John Perry Barlow

The consumer is going to eat what he's given. -- David Farber, former chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission (WSJ article)

... what the public wants is called 'politically unrealistic.' -- Noam Chomsky (?)

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. -- George Washington, January 7, 1790

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. -- Thomas Jefferson

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. --Benjamin Franklin, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

I go to die, and you to live, but which of us goes to the better lot is known to none but God. -- Socrates, as quoted by I.F. Stone in a self-interview (a precursor to his book, The Trial of Socrates)

It was a narrow escape. If the sheep had been created first, man would have been a plagiarism. -- Mark Twain