"You are not an enemy combatant, you are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any army, you are a terrorist. To call you a soldier gives you far too much stature."
JUDGE WILLIAM G. YOUNG,of the United States District Court in Boston, sentencing Richard C. Reid.

The flesh in me would add that "You are the scum of the earth! Now get out of my courtroom."

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune."
–James Madison

"It is of great importance to set a resolution ... never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible ... "
–Thomas Jefferson

"It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance."
–Thomas Jefferson

"Statesmen by dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. ... The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty."
--John Adams

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
--Benjamin Franklin

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Nothing but good can result from an exchange of information and opinions between those whose circumstances and morals admit no doubt of the integrity of their views."

--Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1797

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

--Thomas Jefferson

"I join [with others] in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advance. This is precisely the doctrine which the present despots of the earth are inculcating and their friends here re-echoing and applying especially to religion and politics: 'that it is not probable that anything better will be discovered than what was known to our fathers.' We are to look backwards, then, and not forwards for the improvement of science and to find it amidst feudal barbarisms and the fires of Spital-fields. But thank heaven the American mind is already too much opened to listen to these impostures; and while the art of printing is left to us, science can never be retrograde. What is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost."

--Thomas Jefferson

"One of the questions... on which our parties took different sides was on the improvability of the human mind in science, in ethics, in government, etc. Those who advocated reformation of institutions pari passu with the progress of science maintained that no definite limits could be assigned to that progress. The enemies of reform, on the other hand, denied improvement and advocated steady adherence to the principles, practices and institutions of our fathers, which they represented as the consummation of wisdom and acme of excellence, beyond which the human mind could never advance... [They predicted that] freedom of inquiry... will produce nothing more worthy of transmission to posterity than the principles, institutions and systems of education received from their ancestors... [But we] possess... too much science not to see how much is still ahead of [us], unexplained and unexplored. [Our] own consciousness must place [us] as far before our ancestors as in the rear of our posterity."

--Thomas Jefferson to John Adams

"I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science."

--Thomas Jefferson

"Allow all the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government."

-Abraham Lincoln

I won a nickname, 'the Great Communicator.' But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things. --Ronald Reagan in his Farewell Address, Jan. 11, 1989.

"The most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome."
–James Madison, The Federalist, 39.

"You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
–James Madison, The Federalist, 51.

"[A] wise and frugal government...shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
--Thomas Jefferson

"With malice toward none; with charity for all...let us strive on to finish the work we are in."
–Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

"'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world."
--George Washington

"If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?"
--John Adams

I won a nickname, 'the Great Communicator.' But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.
— Ronald Reagan in his Farewell Address, Jan. 11, 1989.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
--Thomas Paine