"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins."
Benjamin Franklin
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." - Patrick Henry
“Men
occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry
off as if nothing had happened.”
-
Winston Churchill
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain
ground. Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it
away from themselves."
- Thomas Jefferson
"It is out of
character for a country that prides itself on intellectual freedom to put the
education of its young in the hands of the state." - David Kelley,
"Learning the Hard Way," p. 17, Barron's, February 17, 1986
"When the government fears the People, that is Liberty. When the People fear the
Government, that is tyranny."
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson by his contemporaries
'To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of
opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical''
- Thomas Jefferson -
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1789
"Miracles do
not cluster. Hold on to the Constitution of the United States of America and the
Republic for which it stands-- what has happened once in six thousand years may
never happen again. Hold on to your Constitution, for if the American
Constitution shall fail there will be anarchy throughout the world."
-
Daniel Webster
"To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject."
Ideas and Opinions- Albert Einstein
"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
-George Washington
"It is little short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not already completely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry…. I believe that one could even deprive a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness if one could force it with a whip to eat continuously whether it were hungry or not…"
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) U.S. physicist
”A politician thinks of the next election - a statesman, of the next generation.”
- James Freeman Clarke
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
–Thomas Jefferson
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
-Davy Crockett
“The state has no legitimate interest in
forcing children into its schools, unless
brainwashing future taxpayers and citizens
is a "legitimate interest".
--Lehi Sellers
"The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses."
- Albert Einstein
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
"The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn." --Alvin Toffler
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It is better to tolerate that rare instance of a parent's refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings by a forcible transportation and education of the infant against the will of his father."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"
"A general dissolution of principle and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of Americans then the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when they once lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."
- Samuel Adams
"How do you
tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you
tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
-- Ronald Reagan, Arlington, Virginia, September 25, 1987
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
–Thomas Jefferson
"In matters of
style, swim with the current; In matters of principle, stand like a rock."
-Thomas
Jefferson
“Nay, the
number of armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for as
Virgil saith, ‘It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.’
"
- Sir
Francis Bacon, Essays, 1625.
"But how is
this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from
some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does
not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by
doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."
-
Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"I think myself
that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites
living on the labor of the industrious."
-
Thomas Jefferson, 1824 (in 1824!!!)
"No government
ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched,
never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal
life we'll ever see on this earth."
-
Ronald Reagan
"He makes no
friend who never made a foe."
-
Tennyson
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread “
-Thomas Jefferson
"We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) U.S. essayist and poet.
"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master."
-Leonardo da Vinci. Notebooks.
“Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”
-Benjamin Franklin
"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
~~ George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
“Know your enemies!” This is an often quoted phrase. I think it has a powerful meaning to us who will be fighting The Educational Revolution. This is why I post these quotes from our enemies. –Debbi Edmonds
"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round".
–Adolf Hitler, from his book “Mein Kampf” page 376
“Give me your 4 years olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”
- Vladimir Lenin (founder of the Russian Communist Party)
"What luck for
rulers that, men do not think."
- Adolf
Hitler
"The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense."
– Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
"Education for international understanding involves the use of education as a force for conditioning the will of the people." - National Education Association (NEA), Education for International Understanding in American Schools, page 33 (1948)
”Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations." - John Dewey, 1896
"The NEA's ultimate goal is to tap the legal, political and economic powers of the U.S. Congress. We want leaders and staff with sufficient clout that they may roam the halls of Congress and collect votes to re-order the priorities of the United States of America." - Terry Herndon, NEA Executive Director, 1973
“Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.”
–Adolf Hitler
”Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”
- John Dewey
"The bureaucracy is a circle from which one cannot escape. Its hierarchy is a
hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the understanding of detail to the
lower levels, whilst the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the
general, and so all are mutually deceived."
- Karl Marx
"We must create out of the younger generation a generation of Communists. We must turn children, who can be shaped like wax, into real, good Communists.... We must remove the children from the crude influence of their families. We must take them over and, to speak frankly, nationalize them. From the first days of their lives they will be under the healthy influence of Communist children's nurseries and schools. There they will grow up to be real Communists."
– Communist Party Education Workers Congress (1918)
"It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance, and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy." - Albert Shanker, late president, American Federation of Teachers, "Reding, Wrighting & Erithmatic," Wall Street Journal, October 2, 1989
(Should he be with friends or foes?)
"Anyone
who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible
without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social
position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included."
-- Karl Marx(1818-1883)
(what does this say about the feminist movement, career moms, latchkey kids...and our current state of education and government?)