Pollywogs!

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

&

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. 

Thomas Jefferson

To announce there must be no criticism of the President, and to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, it is morally treasonous to the American public.

Theodore Roosevelt

^(my personal favorite)

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

Benjamin Franklin 

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Edward R. Murrow

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Eleanor Holmes Norton

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.

&

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.

Franklin Roosevelt

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

Goethe

^(reminds me of that 'Proud to be an American' song) 

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Henry David Thoreau

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

&

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

John F. Kennedy

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

Molly Ivins

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

Voltaire

Patriotism does not oblige us to acquiesce in the destruction of liberty. Patriotism obliges us to question it, at least.

Wendy Kaminer