The Devil's Advocate Quotes

“What manner of men had lived in those days...who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion? Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity? Had they not know that power delegated to the government becomes the club of tyrants? They must have known. They had their own history to remember, and the history of five thousand years. Yet, they had willingly and knowingly, with all this knowledge, declared themselves unfit to manage their own affairs and had placed their lives, which belonged to God only, in the hands of sinister men who had long plotted to enslave them, by wars, by "directives," by "emergencies." In the name of the American people, the American people had been made captive.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate

“On the day when you again allow abominable men to confiscate your freedom, your money, your lives, your private property, your manhood and your sacred honor, in the name of "security' or "national emergency' you will die, and never again shall you be free. If plotters again destroy your Republic, they will do it by your greedy and ignorant assent, by your disregard of your neighbors' rights, by your apathy and your stupidity. We were brought to the brink of universal death and darkness because we had become that most contemptible of people -- an angerless one. Keep alive and vivid all your righteous anger against traitors, against those who would abrogate your Constitution, against those who would lead you to wars with false slogans and cunning appeals to your patriotism.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate

“In the end they had lost everything, their freedom as men, their rights as men, their dignity as men, and had become nothing else but slaves of an omnipotent State, working endlessly, half-starved, half-clothed, half-sheltered in ruined buildings, endlessly spied upon, supervised, commanded by the Military and treated like dogs.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate: The Epic Novel of One Man's Fight to Save America from Tyranny

“A wise man distrusts his neighbor. A wiser man distrusts both his neighbor and himself. The wisest man of all distrusts his government. Therefore, be watchful and sleepless; be brave, be strong; be without fear. This is not the end. Villains will try, again and again and again, to enslave you, until the end of time. It is in your hands to defeat them and to destroy them, whenever or however they appear. “If you do not, then may God have mercy on your souls!”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate: The Epic Novel of One Man's Fight to Save America from Tyranny

“We are striving for a point of reference, and the only one which can ever be pertinent to man is the Divine point of reference. Only then will affirmations have any verity.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate: The Epic Novel of One Man's Fight to Save America from Tyranny

“Even wars, if they ever again arise to degrade us, should not be an excuse for an attack upon the Constitution. When one law of a nation is broken with impunity the rest are rendered ineffectual.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate: The Epic Novel of One Man's Fight to Save America from Tyranny