Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and
jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands,
killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?: Kahlil Gibran

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Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the
government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different
ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and
reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to
live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in
them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the
conqueror: Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

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An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor
does truth become error because nobody sees it: Mohandas Gandhi

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In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is
neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave: John
James Inga

"I would like to do whatever it is that presses the essence from the
hour." -- Mary Oliver

"...freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and
trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright
constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an
age of revolution and reformation." - Thomas Jefferson

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"The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus ... are perhaps greater
securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution]
contains. ...The practices of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all
ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. ...

To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate,
without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of
despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole
nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to
jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a
less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary
government." - Alexander Hamilton

"To gain in strength and elevation of mind, day by day...there is
something in all this which may yet sanctify life." -- Marceline
Desbordes-Valmore

"Christopher Columbus is a symbol, not of a man, but of imperialism.
... Imperialism and colonialism are not something that happened decades
ago or generations ago, but they are still happening now with the
exploitation of people. ... The kind of thing that took place long ago in
which people were dispossessed from their land and forced out of
subsistence economies and into market economies -- those processes are still
happening today." - John Mohawk, Seneca, 1992

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The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their
possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When
you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary,
they offer to share with anyone...."

From his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into
the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships
returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they
went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women,
and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then
picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five
hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and
were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that,
although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed
"no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in
the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be
sold."

Excerpted from a People's History of the United States : by Howard Zinn
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Columbus_PeoplesHx.html

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"When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy,
neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are
empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the
taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am
friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that
country boast of its constitution and government ." - Thomas Paine