All Quotes

"A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: And their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to render them independent on others, for essential, particularly for military supplies."

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe."

"If we don't get gun-control laws in this country, we are full of beans. To have the National Rifle Association rule the United States is pathetic. And I agree with Mayor Michael Bloomberg: It's time to put up or shut up about gun control for both parties."

"A Winchester Rifle should have a place of honor in every black home."

"The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense."

"I have asserted the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense, and have acted on it. It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence."

"People use guns but, in a sense, guns use people too. When we have the technology for violence easily to hand, our choices are skewed and we are more vulnerable to being manipulated into violent action."

"Remember when she had Tom Selleck on her program a while back? She blind-sided Tom Selleck! He's a good fella, ain't never hurt nobody, but he's in the NRA, so she hates that. She was like, 'Well, you're in the NRA. Let me tell you something, Tom: guns kill people!' Do you believe she said that? On the Rosie O'Fatass show! She looks right at him and says, 'Guns kill people!' Let me tell you something: husbands that come home early kill people! Alright? The gun was just sitting there! If guns kill people, I can blame misspelled words on my pencil! Git-r-done!"

"In August 2009, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer was discussing a tea party rally in Arizona, where it's legal to carry an unconcealed weapon. She said: "A man at a pro-health care rally... wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip... There are questions about whether this has racial overtones, I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns." All that her audience was shown were a rifle and pistol strapped to a man's back. MSNBC concealed the fact that the armed man was black and did not show the interview he gave to the reporter. Brewer knowingly deceived her audience because an armed black man didn't fit the racial narrative."

"If you take guns away from legal gun owners then the only people who would have guns would be the bad guys. ... Even a pacifist would get violent if someone were trying to kill him or her. You would fight for your life, whatever your beliefs. You'd use a rock or tear one of these chairs out of the floor. Hey, maybe I've been watching too many Bruce Willis movies!"

"So this time let us skip all the sighing and promising and moments of silence. Why keep up the pretense that we are going to take any real and practical steps toward sanity? Everyone knows we are not going to do a single damn thing. We can't. We are captives of The Gun. The Gun is patriotic. The Gun is America. The Gun is God."

"“People were allowed to own guns, and everyone did own guns [in the West], for the most part,” says Winkler. “Having a firearm to protect yourself in the lawless wilderness from wild animals, hostile native tribes, and outlaws was a wise idea. But when you came into town, you had to either check your guns if you were a visitor or keep your guns at home if you were a resident.”"

"Frontier towns with and without gun legislation were violent places, more violent than family-friendly farming communities and Eastern cities of the time, but those without restrictions tended to have worse violence. “I've never seen any rhetoric from that time period saying that the only thing that's going to reduce violence is more people with guns,” says Winkler. “It seems to be much more of a 20th-century attitude than one associated with the Wild West.”"

"Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God."

"Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn't mean you're going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you'd be within your rights—I mean, you'd be justified; but that would be illegal and we don't do anything illegal. If the white man doesn't want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job. [...] If he's not going to do his job in running the government and providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget, he certainly can't begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don't go out shooting people, but any time—brothers and sisters, and especially the men in this audience; some of you wearing Congressional Medals of Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big—any time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and murder in cold blood, not some grownups, but four little girls while they were praying to the same God the white man taught them to pray to, and you and I see the government go down and can't find who did it."

"Games today are very, very real," Zelk says. "It's the weapons; it's the story lines, you know, that people get caught up in — even the optics that are used on the guns, it says L-3 EOTech. It actually has the name of the brand on the side of it so you know which optic, you know, you could go out and buy."

"Dear friends, on 9 October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends, too. They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. And my dreams are the same. Dear sisters and brothers, I am not against anyone. Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I am here to speak for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists. I do not even hate the Talib who shot me."

"Even if there was a gun in my hand and he was standing in front of me, I would not shoot him. This is the compassion I have learned from Mohamed, the prophet of mercy, Jesus Christ and Lord Buddha. This the legacy of change I have inherited from Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. This is the philosophy of nonviolence that I have learned from Gandhi, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa. And this is the forgiveness that I have learned from my father and from my mother. This is what my soul is telling me: be peaceful and love everyone."

"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity."

"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

".(אַכט איז ניט קיין אמת) זיבן איז אַ ליגן"

".אַ קלוגער פֿאַרשטײט פֿון אײן װאָרט צװײ"

".אַחרי מות קדושים"

".‎אױף אײן שלאָג פֿאַלט קײן בױם ניט אום"

".אױף פֿײַער זאָל מען קײן בױמל ניט גיסן"

"‎אַמאָל איז די רפֿואה ערגער פֿאַר דער מכּה‫.‬"

".אַז דער שטײן ליגט אױף אײן אָרט װערט ער אױך באַװאַקסן מיט גראָז"

".אַז מען לעבט, דערלעבט מען"

".בעסער הערן קללות איידער הערן נעבעך"

".‎פֿון אַ חזיר־שװענצל קען מען קײן שטרײַמל ניט מאַכן"

".אַ באַרג מיט אַ באַרג קומט זיך ניט צונױף, אָבער אַ מענטש מיט אַ מענטשן יאָ"

".די צײַט איז טײַערער פֿון געלט"

"געשװיגן הײסט אױך גערעדט‪.‬"

".שטיל װאַסער גראָבט טיף"

"I suppose when I was a child, when I lived almost entirely in a dream world, I suppose I thought of myself as a woman, but later on you realise you have to live in the real world and that you are not. You are only in some senses effeminate or feminine, and you must make this compromise, you must learn to live in a world where statistically you are a man, whatever you may think about yourself. I didn't want to become anything. Once I'd accepted the world, all I wanted was that the world should understand what kind of person I was."

"Fashion is a way of not having to decide who you are. Style is deciding who you are and being able to perpetuate it."

"I have come to think that both sex and politics are a mistake and that any attempt to establish a connection between the two is the greatest error of all."

"A pinch of notoriety will do."

"At the age of ninety, it has finally been explained to me that I am not really homosexual, I'm transgender. I now accept that. I no longer see myself as homosexual, though it is a word I have used to describe myself and which others have understandably used to describe me. I don't actually see myself as a man though, of course, I know I'm not physically a woman. The only thing in my life I have wanted and didn't get was to be a woman. [...] I don't dress like a woman ... I think my body is too like a man's body to have lived as a woman with any kind of success. I refer to myself as homosexual without thinking because of how I have lived my life."

"Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level."

"In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast."

"The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster [homosexuality] whose shape and size were not yet known or even guessed at. It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than socialism but more deadly, especially to children."

"Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice."

"Sometimes I wore a fringe so deep it obscured the way ahead. This hardly mattered. There were always others to look where I was going."

"To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody."

"I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share."

"I started to shed the monstrous aesthetic affectation of my youth so as to make room for the monstrous philistine postures of middle age, but it was some years before I was bold enough to decline an invitation to "Hamlet" on the grounds that I knew who won."

"I acquiesced in this on the grounds that the most anyone can expect from a holiday is a change of agony."

"As someone remarked, when told the new atomic bombs would explode without a bang, "they can’t leave anything alone.""

"The distinction between indoors and outdoors, which in England is usually so marked, was temporarily suspended in a hot gauzy haze."