Thanks to all regarding the confirmation of the quote's source. After reading the transcript and finding no other backup source, the quote is deemed to be from Ron Suskind who is paraphrasing Cheney:

"What Cheney does at that moment is say that we will probably have to be a country ruled by men rather than laws in this period." - Ron Suskind
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/etc/script.html

We are marking the quote as 'False.'

Thanks again for helping us keep Liberty Quotes as accurate as possible.

The quote is marked as 'attributed', and that is the way it will remain.

Phillip, there are a great many famous quotations 'attributed' to speakers -- they are 'attributed' because no source has been found. This is a famous quotation attributed to Franklin, and thus has a place in our quotations database.

Thanks, Mike, Chicago. We have updated the quote as an excerpt of the original. We have added the full quote in its entirety here: http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Catherine.Bertini.Quote.8B33 .

Thank you!

@Mary, looking at the IP's of the posters in question, it looks like they are all from the NY area. I would say the post from Mark Deploy is classic troll-baiting. From 'Mobile, AL' hey who wants to bring back slavery? is clearly supposed to provoke. The four posts in question appeared weeks after each other -- not normal posting behaviour for this site. Nobody took the bait, which is not surprising for our regulars.

Kind of cool to be a target of blatant political trolling. :-)

The quote is true -- the source has been updated. The quote Rich Tompkins has provided is the one without a source, and it is also unlikely Rush ever said it as he could be considered one of the defenders of the 'Bastille of medical science.'

@Bookworm, we can only assume that you are a left-wing extremist by the aspersions you cast. It might behoove you to read the TOP of the page - FALSE John Dewey quote. Is that left-wing enough for you? How about reading the source information listed instead of making insinuations -- you only reveal your own prejudices (i.e. pre-judgment).

Hey, jim k! On the donation page, change the Country to United States at the top. Then wait a moment, and the form will show the State field. Thanks!

Thank you, Jaems, for your research. You have put the quote into context.

I knew this quote would press a few buttons. Please bear in mind that this site is devoted to LIBERTY and the responsibility that goes with it. America was founded upon the declaration that all men are created equal -- what was Israel founded upon? Does Israel have a right to exist? Does Palestine? Hammad's quote above could be attributed to any people besieged by war -- only the last word was 'Palestine.' The quote is about oppression, war, courage, perseverance, and LIBERTY.

Our apologies, we neglected to add the title 'The Rules for Liberty' to the top of the quote. It has been amended. Thank you!

Here is the rest of the quote:
"When an individual or a party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion, public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it represents the majority and implicitly obeys it; if to the executive power, it is appointed by the majority and serves as a passive tool in its hands. The public force consists of the majority under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of hearing judicial cases; and in certain states even the judges are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd the measure of which you complain, you must submit to it as well as you can.

If, on the other hand, a legislative power could be so constituted as to represent the majority without necessarily being the slave of its passions, an executive so as to retain a proper share of authority, and a judiciary so as to remain independent of the other two powers, a government would be formed which would still be democratic while incurring scarcely any risk of tyranny."

De Tocqueville attached an interesting footnote to this paragraph citing a couple examples of his concern. See page 257 of Democracy In America.

Thanks for the confirmation of which 'Adams' this was from. We will make the correction later -- we still want folks to be able to access the quote from this URL for a couple days more. Thank you.

Yes, we had the wrong John Marshall Harlan. The byline has been corrected. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Please, watchman, I have asked you in the past to keep your remarks to the quotes. How about some of your own words instead of all this old English prophecy. This is not the forum for proselytizing, and your posts are always long 'sermons' quoting chapter and verse from the Bible. Please give us a break - I am the Editor and I will start editing. Keep it short and sweet please - and to the point. We got it - God, Jesus, the Bible. Tell us something we don't know. Consider that nearly every one of your posts is 3 or 4 times longer than anyone else's - how about toning it back a bit. No one here wants or needs to be preached to - it is a sign of arrogance and self-righteousness. By all means, share your own experiences, but enough with the preaching. This is a moderated forum, and I am moderating. Enough is enough. Thank you.

Thanks to all of you who wrote in to confirm that this quote is false. The source has been updated and the quote tagged as false.

It appeared in print in a 1980 tract on regulation by Bernard Siegan, a well-known law professor, after quoting Jefferson's epistle to John Adams about different kinds of aristocracy.

Siegan wrote: "In other words, man should be allowed to govern himself, and he should not be ruled by a small elite."
see: http://www.tcfrank.com/essays/Check_It_Yourself

Thank you, George. The quote's source and exact words have been updated. Cheers.

@Anonymous, Chicago - the quote does not appear in any of the three Humanist Manifestos of 1933, 1973, or 2003.

We have updated the quote to put it in context, as the previous version was grammatically incorrect. Thanks.

Thank you, Wounded Eagle, for the citation. The source has been updated.

Dick, I say this with all sincerity -- you are dumb. As I have explained to you several times before, we do not add any comments to the quote pages. This page was published in February 2003. Your comment was posted on April 6, 2006 at 9:08 AM. This is a BLOG, Dick, in which people add comments to pages. As the years go by, more comments are added to the page. Shall we remove ALL your comments over the years and prohibit you from commenting from here on?

Thanks, Mike. I do appreciate the thought with which you respond to the quotes -- your contribution brings value to the content, and I love your expression 'the statist theocracy that infests this land' :-) Yes, I can see how one's opinions about these quotes can change over time. As for dick, his views appear to depend on the political party in power -- i.e. the media is corrupt during the Bush years, but they speak only truth during Obama's tenure. If only life were that simple.

Wow, Dick, how ignorant can you be? This quote page with its associated comments is over 8 years old. People add comments to it over the years. Some quotes are emailed out to the list more than once every 5 years or so. The link to the quote is to the same page as the last time the quote was sent out, so the previous comments are still there. We do not add comments to the quote pages -- if there is a comment made by you, it was put there by you -- we have the IP addresses to prove it. Perhaps you do not understand the concept of a blog and the ongoing discussion for each of these quote pages. And why would we purposefully add your comments when you don't actually make an argument? It doesn't really add any value to the discussion. If we were to re-post comments from others on a page, we would certainly pick more intelligent posts. If you don't like what you have said in the past, I suggest you post a comment that you would be proud to see 10 years later. So far, you are only embarrassing yourself.

Dick, This is the 2nd time you have claimed that we are making posts for you. We do not, have not, and have no need to. Your comment was made the last time this quote was sent out in August 2006 as was also Reston's to which you replied.

So let me express to the readers of Liberty Quotes that Dick does not stand behind his comments - even he does not believe what he says apparently (not that he is actually saying anything...). Yes he did make the comment, and yes he did agree with Reston (as he frequently does). You can check a cached version of this page with Google and see that his comment has been here for years. Get a grip, Dick.

The ratings, KG, are for the quote and made by the commenters themselves. We do not rate people's comments. Thank you.