The original discussion thread is located at http://forces.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?t=802

"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass?" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -Edmund Burke

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin

"Your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

“California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death. The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent...At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.” - Michael Chrichton, "Aliens Cause Global Warming"

"First they came for the Socialists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Socialist.
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 Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left
to speak up for me.”
- Martin Niemoler ( Alleged Anti-Semite. Spent 8 years in Dachau Concentration Camp).

“...there is no evidence that casual exposure to secondhand smoke has any impact on your life expectancy.” - Jacob Sullum

"As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more before accepting a paper for publication." - Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine

"My basic rule is if the relative risk isn't at least 3 or 4, forget it." - Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration.

"An association is generally considered weak if the odds ratio [relative risk] is under 3.0 and particularly when it is under 2.0, as is the case in the relationship of ETS and lung cancer." - Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist

“There's something luxurious about having a girl light your cigarette. In fact, I got married once on account of that.” - Harold Robbins

“The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it.
It satisfies no normal need. I like it.
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean
It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen.
I like it.”
- Graham Lee Hemminger, Tobacco

“My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.” - Winston Churchill (Obese smoker who died at 91. Considered by many to be “The Greatest Man of the Twentieth Century”)

"If you eliminate smoking and gambling, you will be amazed to find that almost all an Englishman's pleasures can be, and mostly are, shared by his dog." - George Bernard Shaw

“Science has already proven the dangers of smoking, alcohol and Chinese food, but I can still ruin soft drinks for everyone.” - Lisa Simpson

“A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?” - Oscar Wilde

“This vice brings in one hundred million francs in taxes every year. I will certainly forbid it at once - as soon as you can name a virtue that brings in as much revenue.” - Napoleon III

“If I could smoke from more than one orifice, I most certainly would.” - Graham Parker

Is it true that you smoke eight to ten cigars a day?
That's true.
Is it true that you drink five martinis a day?
That's true.
Is it true that you still surround yourself with beautiful young women?
That's true.
What does your doctor say about all of this?
My doctor is dead. - George Burns

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.” – George Bernard Shaw

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” – Robert H. Heinlein

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” – James Bovard

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.” – Thomas Jefferson

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” – H.L. Mencken

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C. S. Lewis

“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws.” – Ayn Rand
“It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself.” – Justice Casey Percell

“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” – Thomas Jefferson

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” – Voltaire

“If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.” – Winston Churchill

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” – William Pitt

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. “– H.L. Mencken

“An Avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he a establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” - Thomas Paine

“There's nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.” – Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize in Economics and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient

“Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demand for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.” – Ayn Rand

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

“When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of uncertainty–some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.” - Richard P. Feynman

“Hell is other people” - John Paul Sartre

"I don't know. Everything. Living. Smoking" - John Paul Sartre (answering the question “What is the most important thing in your life?”)

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."- Adolf Hitler

"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think."- Adolf Hitler

“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.’
- Adolf Hitler

“The greater the lie, the greater the chance that it will be believed.”
- Adolf Hitler

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” - George Orwell

“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.’ - George Orwell

“What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?” -George Orwell

“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.” - George Orwell

"It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake."
-- Mark Twain.

Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A."
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."

"One Has The Moral Responsibility To DISOBEY Unjust Laws" Martin Luther King

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men."---Samuel Adams

Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds
of reason in that it attempts to control a
man's appetite by legislation and
makes a crime out of things that are
not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a
blow at the very principles upon which
our government was founded."
... Abraham Lincoln ( December 1840)

The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy - a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting "Sieg Health" and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind.
O'Rourke, P.J.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. - Thomas Jefferson

It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. - Emiliano Zapta, Mexican revolutionary

When someone says to me, “Ugh, you smoke.” I reply, “Ugh, you’re ugly. I can quit smoking.”-Winston Churchill

I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. - Thomas Jefferson (1800)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. - William Pitt (1783)

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. - P.J. O'Rourke

Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your government is doing to you. - Joseph Sobran (1990)

"The most common way people give up their power
is by thinking they don't have any." -- Alice Walker, author

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it. - Daniel Webster (1834)

"... and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with
it the equivalent power to do things TO you."
-- Albert Jay Nock

"A hypothesis or theory is clear, decisive, and positive, but it is believed by no one but the man who created it. Experimental findings, on the other hand, are messy, inexact things, which are believed by everyone except the man who did that work."
- Harlow Shapley

Today I will smoke my usual 12 cigarettes as I have done for 43 years without remorse. The cigarette has accompanied all the most significant moments of my life, highlighting moments of joy, comforting me in times of suffering, calming me in times of anguish.
Caesar Zappulli maintained that he had coffee – which he could easily do without – just to have the excuse to smoke a cigarette; he drank whiskey – which he did not like – for the same reason. Once he said: “don’t ask me why I make love… it could well be for the sublime pleasure of a post-coital cigarette”
– Antonio Martino, Italian Minister of Defence

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under
robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's
cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated;
but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end
for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C.S. Lewis

"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance."
- Woodrow Wilson

"Governments that restrict people's rights put themselves into a
state of war with the people who are thereupon absolved from any
further obedience" - English philosopher, John Locke

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as
sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and
public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."
- John Adams

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
- Ronald Reagan

"But, what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation? You simply...disobey. - Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom." ~Charlton Heston, Winning the Culture War, 02/16/99

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." ~Frederick Douglass, 1857

"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." ~Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

"Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." ~C.S. Lewis

"It is a just person who disobeys an unjust law." ~Plato

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business. This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat." ~Eric Hoffer

"Prohibition...makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." ~Abraham Lincoln, December 1840

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~Robert Kennedy

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin

"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation." ~Thomas Jefferson

"If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes... Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded." ~Noah Webster

"Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience." ~John Locke, 1690

"If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools." ~William Penn

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." ~Voltaire

"In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act." ~George Orwell

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." ~Ronald Reagan

"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common--they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." ~Doctor Who

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." ~Frederick Douglass

"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." ~Edward Dowling

"A lie becomes the truth if repeated often enough" ~Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, Nazi Germany

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." ~Mahatma Gandhi

"There's no such thing as perfect air. If there was, God wouldn't have put bristles in our noses" ~Coun. Bill Clement

"Better a smoking freedom than a non-smoking tyranny." ~Antonio Martino, Italian Minister of Defense

"If smoking cigars is not permitted in heaven, I won''t go." ~Mark Twain

"The people who have the biggest passion for restricting other people's behavior are the very people we should worry about most. Unfortunately, they keep running for office." ~John Stossel

"The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be." ~Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher

"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States--and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!" ~Kurt Vonnegut, author

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." ~Pericles, 430 BC

"One man with courage makes a majority." ~Andrew Jackson, US President

"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants." ~Albert Camus, author

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." ~Harry S. Truman

"It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones." ~Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Julius Caesar." ~Julius Caesar

"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." ~Winston Churchill, 1941

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is Liberty." ~Thomas Jefferson

"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day." ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816

"It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country." ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Hugh P. Taylor, October 4, 1823

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." ~George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

"If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave." ~John Adams, Rights of the Colonists, 1772

"Laws do not persuade just because they threaten." ~Seneca, 65 AD

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~Robert Kennedy

"Human Rights and Property Rights
The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of "human rights" versus "property rights," as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that "human rights" are superior to "property rights" simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of "human." - John Galt