Charlton Heston

"Let me make a short, opening, blanket comment. There are no "good guns". There are no "bad guns". Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody — except bad people."

"You do not define the First Amendment. It defines you. And it is bigger than you. Thats how freedom works. It also demands you do your homework. Again and again, I hear gun owners say, how can we believe anything the anti-gun media says when they cant even get the facts right? For too long, you have swallowed manufactured statistics and fabricated technical support from anti-gun organizations that wouldnt know a semi-auto from a sharp stick. And it shows. You fall for it every time."

"Charlton Heston once told me that getting ahead in acting was more a matter of luck than talent and skill; but then he hastily amended that. "What I meant," he said, "was that there are a lot of skillful and talented people out there, far more than the industry can absorb, so that it takes luck, at least one good break, to rise above the crowd. However, if you havent done your homework and developed your skills, one good break wont do you any good because you wont be able to exploit it."

"You could say that the paparazzi and the tabloids are sort of the "assault weapons" of the First Amendment. Theyre ugly, a lot of people dont like them, but theyre protected by the First Amendment — just as "assault weapons" are protected by the Second Amendment."

"I remember a decade ago at my first annual meeting in St. Louis. After my banquet remarks to a packed house, they presented me with a very special gift. It was a splendid hand-crafted musket. I admit I was overcome by the power of its simple symbolism. I looked at that musket and I thought of all of the lives given for that freedom. I thought of all of the lives saved with that freedom. It dawned on me that the doorway to all freedoms is framed by muskets. So I lifted that musket over my head for all to see. And as flashbulbs popped around the room, my heart and a few tears swelled up, and I uttered five unscripted words. When I did, that room exploded in sustained applause and hoots and shouts that seemed to last forever. ... So as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those words again for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: From my cold dead hands!"

"I always work on the theory that the audience will believe you best if you believe yourself. This meant that I had to come to understand Moses well enough to believe in my portrayal of him."

"Thank you all for coming and thank you for supporting your organization. I also want to applaud your courage in coming here today. Or course, you have a right to be here. As you know, weve cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that. But its fitting and proper that we should do this. Because NRA members are, above all, Americans. That means that whatever our differences, we are respectful of one another and we stand united, especially in adversity. I have a message from the mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the mayor of Denver. He sent me this and said, "Dont come here. We dont want you here." I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, Ive run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing. But the mayor said "Dont come." Im sorry for that. Im sorry for the newspaper ads saying the same thing, "Dont come here." This is our country. As Americans, were free to travel wherever we want in our broad land."

"I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either cant understand it, dont like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. Thats why the Second Amendment is Americas first freedom."

"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder. Yet in essence, that is what you have asked our loved ones to do, through an ill-contrived and totally naive campaign against the Second Amendment."

"NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surely among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to rescue the students at Columbine. "Dont come here"? Were already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home."

"Moses is the keystone to every mans ethical code. He was the first man of record in history to conceive of the law as separate from the will of a ruler, to choose whether a man should live by grace of law, or law by grace of man. In a literal sense Moses lives at every council table today."

"Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do cant be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on Americas campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, whore supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression? Lets be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason. You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you validate that ... and abide it ... you are — by your grandfathers standards — cowards."