 First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
“There is no sin greater than ignorance”
– Rudyard Kipling
“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.”
– Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials
"Bad things happen when good people stand by and do nothing"
- Edmund Burke
“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of such laws."
– Lysander Spooner
"Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression, for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach even unto himself."
- Thomas Paine
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution”
– Thomas Jefferson
“My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don’t get right”
– Thomas Henry Huxley
“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer” – Will Rogers |
