Christopher Gore Quotes

This system of military conscription … is not only inconsistent with the provisions and spirit of the Constitution, but also with all the principles of civil liberty.

Conscription is the cemetery where every vestige of your liberty is to be buried.

You dare not—at least I hope you dare not—attempt a conscription to fill the ranks of your regular army.

I should like to be remembered as the man who raised a voice against... placing limitations on the freedom of the individual.

Every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty.

Congress have a right by the Constitution to raise regular armies, and no restraint is imposed on the exercise of it …. It would be absurd to suppose that Congress could not carry this power into effect otherwise than be accepting the voluntary service of individuals.

There can be no army without men. Men can be had voluntarily or involuntarily. We have ceased to obtain them voluntarily: and to obtain them involuntarily, is the draft—the conscription.

In America, conscription is unknown; men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know.

Setting people to spy on one another is not the way to protect freedom.

One doesn't want one's identity coerced.

Personal liberty is not personal license.

Justifying conscription to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man! Forced servitude, with the risk of death and serious injury as a price to live free, makes no sense.

When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state.

The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

Conscription may have been good for the country, but it damned near killed the country.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground.

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.

If your sons must be torn from you by conscription, consign them to the care of God; but let there be no volunteers except for defensive war.

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor ... Each of the things is, by the respective party, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

Wherever there is repression of the individual, wherever there are acts contrary to the nature of the individual, there can be no greater crime.

Would you rather lead an army of slaves?

Martial law ... destroys every guarantee of the Constitution.