“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

“Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies; and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. the same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed through all time. Whether the power of the people, or that of the (best men; nobles) should prevail, were questions which kept the states of Greece and rome in eternal convulsions...”

“If you make guns illegal, the only people who will have them will be criminals—and the government, which of course is the same thing.”

“Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aim, at becoming the government.”

“The object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength…I do not think any government has the right, though they may very well have the power, to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend themselves…however, unless there is not only a right but also a fundamental willingness amongst the people to defend themselves no police force, however large, can do it.”

“Gods and politics are the tools with which the godless and unprincipled manipulate the gullible.”