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The oppression is growing, and anyone who has had to submit to the Tempter's machine-gun fire during this last week thinks differently from what he did even three weeks ago.

— Martin Niemöller

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Guns

More quotes by Martin Niemöller

For politicians truth and falsehood are unimportant. So I never could become a politician — not even a church politician.

Our people are trying to break the bond set by God. That is human conceit rising against God.

One thing is clear, the president of North Vietnam is not a fanatic. He is a very strong and determined man, but capable of listening, something that is very rare in a person of his position.

Then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

We had been frightened of atomic weapons since 1945. In those days I became convinced — and remain convinced now — that, after Hitler, Truman was the greatest murderer in the world.

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From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen.

Frederick Douglass The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)

The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy.

Edward Abbey Abbey's Road (1979)

Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Mao Zedong

Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.

Hermann Göring Radio broadcast (1936)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Martin Niemöller (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.