The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
Thomas Jefferson

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
Thomas Jefferson

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
Thomas Jefferson

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Thomas Jefferson

Money won't make you happy... but everybody wants to find out for themselves.
Zig Ziglar

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
Albert Einstein

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
Wayne Dyer

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
Mark Twain

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
Abraham Lincoln

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.
Abraham Lincoln

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill

Most people stumble over the truth, now and then, but they usually manage to pick themselves up and go on, anyway.
Winston Churchill

Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.
Napoleon Hill

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.
George Carlin