Quotes to think about

As the Summer Violence Season (SVS) is apparently upon us for 2025, here are some quotes to think about. Lovers of liberty generally tend to be lovers of peace and prosperity. We want to treat others as we want to be treated; we eschew aggression, both physical, moral, and implied, against others because we don’t want to be aggressed against!

But as a certain science fiction writer once said, lovers of liberty are “small-mouthed pacificists.” We don’t start “rumbles” or “riots” but we see the need to end such things. To defend ourselves and others against aggression. And against tyranny, which can be characterized as “organized” or “official” aggression.

We also recognize that rhetoric is often more palatable than the actions of the persons making the speeches. And that it is easy to succumb to temptation to justify our own aggression (and that of others) as being defensive and moral in nature.

 “We fight not for glory, nor for riches, nor for honour, but only and alone for Freedom, which no good man lays down but with his life.” –Declaration of Arbroath, Scotland, 1320

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” –British philosopher John Stuart Mill

“Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.” –Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, 1788

“[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.” –Benjamin Rush, On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1806

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