"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
USA President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the State of the Union address on 6th January 1941.
"We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms:
1. Freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world
2. Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way - everywhere in the world
3. Freedom from want which means economic understandings which secure for every nation, a healthy peacetime life for it's citizens - everywhere in the world
4. Freedom from fear which means a worldwide reduction in armaments - anywhere in the world."
USA President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
"Without recognition of human rights, we shall never have peace."
...
"In fact, the work for peace is basically a work for the most elementary of human rights - The right of everyone to security and freedom of fear."
Dag Hammarskjöld Secretary-General of the United Nations 10th April 1957.
"When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw."
Nelson Mandela - President of South Africa 1994 - 1999.
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."
Ronald Reagan - President of the United States 1981 - 1989.
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, and no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law and no court to save it."
Billings Learned Hand - Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit - 1944.
"Whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - rough translation of the french "Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste." from the work 'Questions sur les miracles.'
Voltaire (1765) - French philosopher (born François-Marie Arouet).
"Let us uphold the liberty of the press, it is the basis of all other liberties; through it we enlighten each other."
Voltaire.
"Independence is my happiness and I view things as they are without regard to place or person - my country is the world and my religion is to do good. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess."
Thomas Paine - Rights of Man (1791).
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."
Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations (1776).
"Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims."
Ayn Rand - Man's Rights (1964).
"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end."
George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
"If you want peace, prepare for war." - rough translation of the Latin "si vis pacem, para bellum."
Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus - Latin author - Epitoma rei militaris (5th century).
"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."
Ayn Rand - Objectivism from A to Z (1988).
"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it."
Leo Tolstoy - A Confession (1884).
"If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged "good" can justify it, there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations."
Ayn Rand - The Roots of War (1966).
"If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it."
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (published after his death 180 AD)
"We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country. "
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - exposing the Soviet Union's totalitarian regime and its use of propaganda and deception.
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."
George Orwell
"I have fought against white and black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
Nelson Mandela - Delivered during the Rivonia Treason Trial 20 April 1964.
"The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts, the less you know the hotter you get."
Bertrand Russell - Distilled Wisdom (1964).
"Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past."
Marc Bloch - The Historian's Craft (1949).
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton - Written in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton (1887).
"Socialism is the worst enemy freedom has ever had to encounter."
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton.
"The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand."
Gaston Bachelard - La Formation de l'esprit scientifique (1938).
"We are going to have a world government. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent."
James Paul Warburg - advocate for international cooperation and governance while speaking in front of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1950).
"The only way to make man ethical is to make him rational."
Brock Chisholm - The first Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).
"Do to others as you would have them do to you."
Christianity - Golden Rule - Luke 6:31 (NIV).
"An eye for an eye." - the principle of reciprocal justice measure for measure.
Book of Exodus 21:23-27.
"Democracy and Human Rights are inseparable."
Nelson Mandela - President of South Africa 1994 - 1999.
"Every socialist is a disguised dictator."
Ludwig von Mises - Austrian economist.
"Truth never damages a cause that is just."
Mahatma Gandhi - prominent leader of the Indian independence movement against British rule - from his philosophy of truth (Satya) and nonviolent activism (Ahimsa) to achieve justice and social change.
"A hungry stomach has no ears."
African Proverb - implying that hunger can preoccupy a person's mind, making it difficult to pay attention to other matters.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Voltaire.
"Organised Force can be opposed only by Organised Force, there is no other way."
Albert Einstein - 1933.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer - (commonly associated) .
"The fate of mankind hinges entirely upon man's moral development, for it is our values and Ethics that shape the course of history and determine our collective destiny."
Albert Einstein, German physicist - (commonly associated).
"I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labour, so far as it in no way interferes with any other man's rights."
Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States - (commonly associated).
"Fools multiply when wise men stay silent."
Nelson Mandela - (commonly associated)
"An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle."
Vladimir Lenin(September 1916 - 'The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution')
"We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us."
Vladimir Lenin
"Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely crushed, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes. Only then, the state ceases to exist and it becomes possible to speak of freedom."
Vladimir Lenin - The State and Revolution (1917).
"Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government, which is doing what it believes to be right, allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?"
Vladimir Lenin - (commonly associated).
"In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell.
.. more to come