Quotable: Bastiat, Jefferson and Gandhi

I love good quotes. Now with this blog I have a place to highlight them as I come across them. Some good ones are appearing today over on RGE Blog:

“The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!

“If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.”

-- Frederic Bastiat, The Law (1848)

Hattip: Guest on 2008-07-25 15:18:16 on RGE Blog

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)

Hattip: Mike C on 2008-07-25 17:40:32

"The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles"

-- Mahatma Gandhi: Indian leader, 1869-1948

Hattip: PeterJB on 2008-07-25 18:24:58