Weapons are the tools of power ... In the hands of the free and decent citizen, they should be the tools of liberty ... An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.

The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression.

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.

It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

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.

...for, though they needed not to care much what people said of them while they were both conscious to themselves of an unspotted purity, yet, because few could have come so near the fire as they did and not have been scorched, had it been known it would have occasioned suspicions in some and reflections from others. Good people would have been troubled, and bad people would have triumphed, and therefore let it not be known. Note, We must always take care, not only to keep a good conscience, but to keep a good name: either we must not do that which, though innocent, is liable to be misinterpreted, or, if we do, we must not let it be known. We must avoid not only sin, but scandal.

Courage is the sin quo non of leadership: it is that quality of character that will encounter danger with firmness.  Courage will stand on principle in the face of opposition and unpopularity.  It will confront moral evil with the truth, and will face physical danger with valor.  While others may falter through fear, a courageous leader will remain calm in crisis and vigilant in action.

Heroes are people who overcome evil by doing good at great personal risk….

Unfortunately our modern definition of “hero” has been stretched to include all manner of people who do not warrant the title.  The athlete who just set a new sports record isn’t a hero.  Nor is the “daring” movie star or even the adventurer out to be the first solo climber to scale Mt. Everest.  They may be brave – but they don’t meet the definition of a hero for whatever they achieve benefits only “self”.

Real heroes are selfless.

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.  The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good.  Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.  DNA neither knows nor cares.  DNA just is.  And we dance to its music.