Some relevant :
In order that evil should triumph it is sufficient that good men do nothing.
EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797)
Irish Statesman and orator, who championed many human rights causes
The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865)
16th President of the USA
The lunatics have taken charge of the asylum.
RICHARD ROWLAND (c1881-1947)
American film producer
The condition on which God hath given Liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
Often quoted as : The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN (1750-1817)
I was not afraid of the words of the violent, but of the silence of the honest.
MARTIN LUTHER KING (in the 1960s)
The germ of destruction of our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body - working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing it's noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we seperated.
THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743 - 1826)
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.
THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743 - 1826)
Oliver Cromwell to the Rump Parliament, 20 April 1653 (oral tradition; quoted by Leo Amery, Hansard 7 May 1940, col. 1150) :
You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
and
It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue and defiled by your every vice. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches and like ESAU sell your country for a mess of pottage and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you has not bartered your conscience with bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the commonwealth? Ye furdid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here to get grievances redressed; are not yourselves become the greatest grievance? Your country therefore calls upon me to to cleanse the Augean stable by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this house and which by God's help and the strength he has given me I am now come to do. I command ye therefore upon the peril of your lives to depart immediately out of this place... Go and get out, make haste ye venal slaves be gone - so take away that shining bauble there and lock up the doors.
OLIVER CROMWELL (1599-1658)
Not since the overthrow of the Weimar Republic have the leaders of a major democracy used their offices and the mass media to disseminate invective against millions of their own citizens. In fact it was Adolf Hitler who urged that “the state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people” and who explained, in the words of Rabbi Daniel Lapin, that “as long as government is perceived as working for the benefit of children, the people happily will endure almost any curtailment of liberty.” Using children to tug on our heartstrings may be not only a weakness of the sentimental. It also may be a ploy by those cynical and unscrupulous enough to exploit children for their own purposes. This is likely to be remembered as one of the most diabolical perversions of governmental power in our history, a time when we allowed children to be used and abused by fast-talking government officials and paid for it with our families, our social order and our constitutional rights.
STEPHEN BASKERVILLE (in about 2000)
And some classic howlers :
The law should provide a remedy for the abuse or misuse of power, else the oppressed will get to the point when they will stand it no longer. They will find their own remedy. There will be anarchy.
LORD DENNING (in about 1960) - considered by many to be the finest British judge ever.
But we know he was one of those responsible for no-fault divorce.
Why didn't he provide remedies then ? Was he just the best of an appalling lot ?
His Majesty's judges are satisfied with the almost universal admiration in which they are held.
LORD CHIEF JUSTICE HEWART (in 1936)
British, but which planet did he come from ?