I am of the view that black Americans will move inexorably and …

I am of the view that black Americans will move inexorably and naturally toward conservatism when we stop discouraging them; when they are treated as a diverse group with differing interests; and when conservatives stand up for what they believe in rather than against blacks. This is not a prescription for success, but rather an assertion that black Americans know what they want, and it is not timidity and condescension. Nor do I believe gadget ideas such as enterprise zones are of any consequence when blacks who live in blighted ares know that crime, not lack of tax credits, is the problem. Blacks are not stupid. And no matter how good an idea or proposal is, no one is going to give up the comfort of the leftist status quo as long as they view conservatives as antagonistic to their interests, and conservatives do little or nothing to dispel the perception. Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas, Policy Review October 1991

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed …

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)

As constitutional scholar Roger Pilon has documented, even expenditures for the most …

As constitutional scholar Roger Pilon has documented, even expenditures for the most charitable of purposes were routinely spurned as illegitimate. In 1794, James Madison wrote disapprovingly of a $15,000 appropriation for French refugees: ‘I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.’ Stephen Moore
Between Power and Liberty, Director of Fiscal Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, March, 1997

If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me …

If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it — well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act. Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, 1905-1982