Algernon Sidney Quotes

To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.

Free men have arms; slaves do not.

When a people consider themselves compelled by circumstances or by oppression, to appeal to arms and resort to their natural rights, they necessarily submit their cause to the great tribunal of public opinion.

This gun is liberty; hold for certain that the day when you no more have it, you will be returned to slavery.

Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered.

Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

I trained in combat, sword fighting, horse riding... It's empowering knowing that I can a break man's nose with my elbow.

The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?

Let twelve good black men get armed for battle and they will kill and put to flight fifty whites.... Kill or be killed. Had you rather not be killed than be a slave to a tyrant who takes the life of your wife and children? It is no more harm to kill a man who is trying to kill you than to take a drink of water when you are thirsty.

No one will have mercy on those who cannot defend themselves in the Middle East.

Neither God, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical, that promise success .... Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties.... Let your motto be resistance, resistance, resistance!

They transact no public or private business without being armed.

It was agreed that we should commence at home, on that night, and, until we had armed and equipped ourselves and gained sufficient force, neither age nor sex was to be spared: which was invariably adhered to.

Nobody should be forced to face evil with empty hands.

Arms are instruments of ill omen, not the instruments of the gentleman. When one is compelled to use them, it is best to do so without relish.

A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free.

We were not designed to be dominated.

For the laws are dumb in the midst of arms.

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.

Weapons compound man's power to achieve; they amplify the capabilities of both the good man and the bad, and to exactly the same degree, having no will of their own. Thus we must regard them as servants, not masters - and good servants to good men. Without them, man is diminished, and his opportunities to fulfill his destiny are lessened. An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.

Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.

Force is the only language the imperialists can hear, and no country became free without some sort of violence.

Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jiabao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent—as strong, as talented, as inteligent in every way—to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man's hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.