Gordon Seekings, Webmaster 4 Feb 2008. "Yes - this is one of the pages that at least one Conservative has put on her blog that she thinks is a strange page for a Lib Dem website. However, as we think that free-speech and education is an important matter, we thought the contents may be of interest whether you agree with the sentiments expressed by the quoted people or not."

William Hazlitt: "The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."

Sami Abdul-Rahman - Kurdish leader on the American plan to occupy Iraq, (Independent, 18 Feb 2003): "Conquerors always call themselves liberators."

Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience & therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950: "To initiate a war of aggresion is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

UN Chief Kofi Annan - -September 2004. Source BBC: "The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter."

Olavo de Cavarlho: "Some explanations of a crime are not explanations: they're part of the crime."

English born (Thetford), Ex-English Customs Officer and first honorary citizen of the United States and first honorary citizen of the French Republic, Thomas Paine (1737-1809): "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

Josef Stalin: "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

General Colin Powell (1991) when asked his assessment of Iraqi military and civilian casualties: "That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in."

Ellen Key: "Everything, everything in war is barbaric... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being."

George W. Bush's mother, Barbara, (ABC/Good Morning America, 18 March 2003): "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

George Washington: "Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."

Former U.N. Ambassador Madeline Albright, responding to a reporter on whether the over half a million Iraqi children killed by the UN sanctions against Iraq were "worth it." (CBS 11 May 1996): "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."

Kris Kristofferson (singer/songwriter 1969): "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."

Anatole France, pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault (1844-1924): "A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain."

Hermann Goering: "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

USA President Dwight D Eisenhower: "Every warship, every tank, and every military aircraft built is in the final sense a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, and those who are naked, and are not clothed."

Albert Einstein: "He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake; science for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilisation should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable an ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

Adolf Hitler (1 Feb 1933): "This Government will regard it as it's first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."

Frederick Douglass, African-American slave, and later abolitionist: "Find out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

Eleanor Roosevelt: "When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Howard Thurman: "During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism."

English born (Thetford), Ex-English Customs Officer and first honorary citizen of the United States and first honorary citizen of the French Republic, Thomas Paine (1737-1809): "He who dares not offend cannot be honest."

USA President Woodrow T. Wilson: "The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy."

Bertrand Russell: "Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."

USA President Theodore Roosevelt (1918): "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Rudolf Hoess, SS commandant at Auschwitz, in his statement to the War Crimes Tribunal: "This so called ill treatment and torture in detention centres, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees"

Billings Learned Hand (1872-1961) US Federal Appeals Judge (1924-1951). "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women."

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), US civil rights leader: "The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery."

Three quotes to read together

"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.": Lt Gen William Boykin, speaking of 43rd US President (2001- ) George W Bush (New York Times, 17 October 2003:

"God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany.": Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.": Aristotle