Quotes worth thinking about

I just saw these quotes online today. I believe they warrant some thought:

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of Human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

-- Colonial America sympathesizer William Pitt, British House of Commons, November 18, 1783

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

-- Samuel Adams

"Doctors have been caught using poisons, and those who falsely assume the name of philosopher have occasionally been detected in the gravest crimes. Let us give up eating, it often makes us ill; let us never go inside houses, for sometimes they collapse on their occupants; let never a sword be forged for a soldier, since it might be used by a robber."

-- ancient Roman educator Marcus Fabius Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, II, xvi