QUOTES
This page has just begun, but in time it will be filled with quotes to inspire Democrats. Look at this page now and again.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
"We will not walk in fear of one another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular."
-- Edward R. Murrow, March 9, 1954
"It is easier to hate than to love...
It is easier to represent the influential than the disenfranchised...
It is easier to be a pessimist than an optimist...
It's hard to be a Democrat."
-Wayne Spencer, January 3, 2002
"Liberalism is the only mature political philosophy of our time. That is, it is the only philosophy suited both to humanity’s virtues and to its inevitable flaws, to its aspirations and its desires."
— Kevin Baker, in “A Buried Life”, Harper’s Magazine, May 2001
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis preserve their neutrality." -- Dante
"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."
-James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798
"It is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered from
thinking whatever he chooses so long as he conceals what he thinks. The
working of his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the
power of his imagination.
But this natural liberty of private thinking is of
little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker himself,
if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts to others, and it is
obviously of no value to his neighbors.
Moreover it is extremely difficult
to hide thoughts that have any power over the mind. If a man's thinking leads
him to call in question ideas and customs which regulate the behaviour of
those about him, to reject the beliefs which they hold, to see better ways of
life than those they follow, it is almost impossible for him, if he is
convinced of the truth of his own reasoning, not to betray by silence, chance
words, or general attitude that he is different from them and does not share
their opinions.
Some have preferred, like Socrates, some would prefer today,
to face death rather than conceal their thoughts. Thus
freedom of thought,
in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech."
-J.B. Bury, "A History of Freedom of Thought", 1913