Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.
– Ben Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the 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.
— Tench Coxe, “Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution,” under the pseudonym “A Pennsylvanian” in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.
What stops a man who can laugh from speaking the truth?
– Horace, cited in P.J. O’Rourke’s book Parliament of Whores
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.
I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
— William S. Burroughs, Grand Street, no. 37 (1992). The War Universe