The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine.
-- George Washington

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson

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

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-- Abraham Lincoln

More Quotes on Religion from Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Lincoln, Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, Einstein, and others.

On September 6, 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known....[T]he provisions of the [Controlled Substances] Act permit and require the transfer of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance." - Source: US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Agency, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition," [Docket #86-22] (September 6, 1988), p. 57.

Marijuana is self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive, and in this world, what worse punishment could there be?
- - P. J. O'Rourke

Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other in order that the people may require a leader.
-- Plato

Crime is contagious....if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.
-- Justice Louis Brandeis

In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.
-- Pastor Martin Niemoller

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern.
-- William Blake (1757-1828)

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
-- Upton Sinclair, "The Jungle"

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.
-- U.S. Supreme Court, in American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
-- Seneca, A.D. 65

Silence gives consent.
-- Canon Law

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.
-- Thomas Paine

It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
-- James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

Two of the gravest general dangers to survival are the desire for comfort and a passive outlook.
-- U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel
-- H.L. Mencken

Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction . . . if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.
-- Alexander Hamilton, 1804

If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states, then the juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty.
-- Justice Theophilus Parsons, 1788

It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.
-- John Adams, 1771

There has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the power and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their power, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and find all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.
-- Lysander Spooner, 1852

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
-- U.S. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. [Who will police the police?]
-- Latin proverb

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
-- Thomas Carlyle

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood.
-- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, passed unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in December, 1948

We can never solve our significant problems from the same level of thinking we were at when we created the problems.
-- Albert Einstein

Don't hate the media, become the media.
-- Jello Biafra