“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”  — Glenn Greenwald, reporter

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/09/freedom-myth-prisoners-police-states-panopticon-village.html

“The military-industrial-complex desires all of our emails,
phone records, web searches and location data in real time―
the whole planet’s as a matter of fact―but when they actually
have a terrorism suspect handed to them in a ribbon they find
better things to do than to continue watching what he does.”
– Joe Giambrone (on Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter)

From:  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/06/unwatched.html

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet devised by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
—Thomas Jefferson

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
– Robert F . Kennedy

We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before; and it changed for the better; so I trust it will again. If difficulties arise; we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigencies of the times.
– George Washington

We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history.
-Sonia Johnson

Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
– Margaret Mead

Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up.
– Studs Terkel

At certain points in history, the energy level of people, the indignation level of people rises. And at that point it becomes possible for people to organize and to agitate and to educate one another, and to create an atmosphere in which the government must do something.
– Howard Zinn, historian

There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.
– Howard Zinn

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
– Bruce Lee

In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.
-Helen Keller

From:  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/how-to-change-the-world-overnight.html

Edward Snowden

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”  — Edward Snowden

Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/arguing-that-you-dont-care-about-the-right-to-privacy-because-you-have-nothing-to-hide-is-no-different-than-saying-you-dont-care-about-free-speech-because-you-have-nothing-to-say.html

Gun Quotes

What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.
– Thomas Jefferson

A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.
– George Washington

(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
–James Madison.

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government…
– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist (#28) .

To disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave them.
– George Mason

The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.
–Noah Webster, “An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (1787) in Pamplets on the Constitution of the United States (P.Ford, 1888)

The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.
–Samuel Adams, debates & Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87.

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.
–Patrick Henry.

Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn’t.
– Ben Franklin

Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.
–Thomas Paine

Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?
– Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot, Debates at 386.

The right of the people to keep and bear…arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country…
–James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.
–Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-B.

[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or the state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People.
– Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

From:  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/04/first-time-many-decades-americans-support-gun-ownership-gun-control.html

Albert Einstein

our attitude toward things is conditioned by opinions and emotions which we unconsciously absorb as children  — Albert Einstein

http://www.onbeing.org/program/albert-einstein-the-negro-question-1946

Larry Summers explains Washington to Elizabeth Warren

Larry Summers explains Washington to Elizabeth Warren in one sentence:

“In the spring of 2009, after the panel issued its third report, critical of the bailout, Larry Summers took Warren out to dinner in Washington and, she recalls, told her that she had a choice to make. She could be an insider or an outsider, but if she was going to be an insider she needed to understand one unbreakable rule about insiders: ‘They don’t criticize other insiders.'”

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/04/21/140421crbo_books_lepore?currentPage=all

‘Scary’ NSA will spy on you – every which way they can

the NSA gets to do something like intercepting 7 billion people all day long with no problems, and the rest of us are not even allowed to experiment for improving the security of own our lives without being put in prison or under threat of serious indictment.  This is what [Thomas] Jefferson talked about when he talked about tyranny”

— Jacob Appelbaum

http://rt.com/usa/appelbaum-30c3-nsa-snowden-986/

We now live in a nation where …

We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.

—Chris Hedges

http://integrallife.com/integral-post/fears-leaders-never-speak-and-how-aqal-zen-and-chinese-new-year-can-help

The ego pretends it’s who we are and uses fear to keep its game going. The more we chop into our fears by facing them, becoming them, the bigger we become. But the ego will still morph around this new bigness and claim it for itself. For this is what ego does: it is our internal integrator in the world of form. And we absolutely need the ego to do its job in order for us to play the game of life. As Ken Wilber aptly observed, “We’d be psychotic without one.” But to mistake the ego for who we are is to miss our boundless nature: the absolute stillness in which our movement arises, which is also us; the absolute emptiness in which our form manifests, which is also us. Once we sense our self in this boundlessness and this boundlessness in our self, we can help our ego face its fears — one at a time as they arise in the game of life — trusting that as we merge with each scary, mini-death-like fear, we create space for greater life. Like a snake shedding its skin to grow larger, we shed old fears that no longer serve, expanding our capacity as each one falls away.
— Dr. Ginny Whitelaw

http://www.integralworld.net/odoherty7.html

“Corporations are legal fictions created by the State to shield executives from liability… It’s like if I had a little hand-puppet, and I went to rob a bank, and the hand-puppet held the little gun and told people to hand over all the money, and then the hand-puppet grabbed the money and ran out, and then I got caught and I handed the hand-puppet over the police and then the police tried the hand-puppet, put the hand-puppet in jail, and I get to keep all the money.”
–Stefan Molyneux

http://www.integralworld.net/odoherty7.html

“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
–Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913)