Mao Zedong on guns

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

Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: it is right to rebel.

Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969The Chance for Peace (1953)

• War & Peace

Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.

Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527

• Freedom
• War & Peace

I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.

Frank Lloyd Wright1867–1959

• Writing