Thursday, August 05, 2004

protest and civil disobedience

"The government is best which governs least."

Thomas Jefferson, or Thomas Paine, or John Adams but i digress

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which he will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
Henry David Thoreau




I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
Thomas Paine 1737-1809, Anglo-American Political Theorist, Writer

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, ''Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!''
Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968, American Black Leader, Nobel Prize Winner, 1964

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