David Hume Quotes

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

When man lives under government, he is fallen, his worth is gone, and his nature tarnished.

Unless something drastic is done very soon, then bloodshed and violence are going to happen…almost inevitably… A people made desperate by despair and injustice and oppression will use desperate means.

The justice of our cause and not the greatness of our race makes us confident. But we are not ruthless enough, not vicious, not aggressive, therein lies a weakness. Children of a free and sheltered people who have lived the generous life, we have not the poor nations’ disposition of those oppressed beasts, our enemies who must fight or starve

Government is the common enemy. All weapons are justifiable in the noble struggle against this terrible curse.

Our democracy has been marred by imperialism.

Scotland has long groaned under the chains of England and knows that its connection there has been the source of its greatest misfortunes …. We bartered our liberty, and with it our morals, for a little wealth.

We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree; We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty.

The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

We have lived six centuries in six years. Let not this costly experience be lost on you. It is time to profit by the crimes of the monarchy, the errors of the Constituent Assembly, the vacillations and eccentricities of the Legislative Assembly, the misdeeds of the decemviral tyranny, the calamities of anarchy, and the misfortunes of civil war.

Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force.

Our vengeance shall rival Spanish ferocity. Our goodwill is at last exhausted; and, since our oppressors compel us to mortal warfare, they shall disappear from America and our land shall be purged of the monsters that infest it. Our hate shall be inexorable and our war shall be to the death.

Agitated by revolutionary movements, these grow in proportion to the force that resists them.

… the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.

People almost never give up their freedoms — including, at times, the right to kill and impoverish one another — unless forced to do so; and virtually the only force strong enough to bring this about has been defeat in war or fear that such a defeat is imminent.

The spectacle which confronts all Europe today is a great conflict between democracy and dictatorship.

We all want prosperity, but not at the expense of liberty. Poverty is not as great a danger to liberty as is wealth, with its corrupting, demoralizing influences. Let us never have a Government at Washington owing its retention to the power of the millionaires rather than to the will of millions.

The whites have resolved to destroy our liberty and have therefore brought a force commensurate to their intentions. The Cape, after a proper resistance, has fallen into their hands, but the enemy found only a town and plain in ashes; the forts were blown up, and all was burnt.

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?

Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.

Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth.

Having proceeded to this length, for which they are now ripe, we shall have a formidable rebellion against reason, the principle of all government, and against the very name of liberty.

And we know that once we have a majority that are dependent upon the government, we will lose our freedom; it says we go into bondage. That's the next stage.

A peace that depends on fear is nothing but a suppressed war.