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|  Lord Acton | Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being. | |
| Franklin P. Adams | To err is human; to forgive, infrequent. | |
| John Adams | I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself. | |
| John Quincy Adams | The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. | |
| Aesop | No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. | |
| Lisa Alther | I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic. | |
| Marcus Aurelius Antoninus | Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. | |
| Marcus Aurelius Antoninus | The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer. | |
| Matthew Arnold | But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok'd souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will. | |
| Saint Augustine | Near our vineyard there was a pear tree laden with fruit that was not attractive in either flavor or form. One night, when I [at the age of sixteen] had played until dark on the sandlot with some other juvenile delinquents, we went to shake that tree and carry off its fruit. From it we carried off huge loads, not to feast on, but to throw to the pigs, although we did eat a few ourselves. We did it just because it was forbidden. | |
| Ben H. Bagdikian | Letting a maximum number of views be heard regularly is not just a nice philosophical notion. It is the best way any society has yet discovered to detect maladjustments quickly, to correct injustices, and to discover new ways to meet our continuing stream of novel problems that rise in a changing environment. | |
| James Baldwin | The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. | |
| Tallulah Bankhead | Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. | |
| Tallulah Bankhead | Cocaine habit forming? Of course not. I ought to know, I've been using it for years. | |
| Dan Baum | The country's first drug ban explicitly targeted the opium of "the heathen Chinee." Cocaine was first banned in the south to prevent an uprising of hopped-up "cocainized Negroes. | |
| Judge David Bazelon | Members of society must obey the law because they personally believe that its commands are justified. | |
| Samuel Beckett | We are all born mad. Some remain so. | |
| Richard Bernstein | The whole point of the liberal revolution that gave rise to the 1960’s was to free us from somebody else’s dogma, but now the same people…are striving to impose on others a secularized religion…disguising it behind innocuous labels like ‘diversity training’ and ‘respect for difference.’ | |
| Daniel Joseph Berrigan | But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of truth? And more urgently,
how shall we do this in a bad time? | |
| Sir Walter Besant | Tolerance is the eager and glad acceptance of the way along which others seek the truth. | |
| Mary McLeod Bethune | If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander. | |
| Ambrose Bierce | The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling. | |
| Ambrose Bierce | Optimism: The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. ... It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious. | |
| Ambrose Bierce | Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. | |
| Leon Blum | A free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought. | |
| Napoleon Bonaparte | If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. | |
| Daniel Boorstin | We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant. | |
| William E. Borah | No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right. | |
| Charles Bradlaugh | Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful. Better a thousand fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people. | |
| Justice William J. Brennan | All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance – unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion, have the full protection of the guarantees [of the First Amendment]. | |
| Kingman Brewster | Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure. | |
| Bellamy Brooks | Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool. | |
| Patrick J. Buchanan | The village atheist has the right to be heard; he has no right to be heeded. While he has a right not to have his own children indoctrinated in what he believes are false and foolish teachings, he has no right to dictate what other children may be taught. | |
| William F. Buckley, Jr. | Marijuana is not much more difficult to obtain than beer. The reason for this is that a liquor store selling beer to a minor stands to lose its liquor license. Marijuana salesmen don't have expensive overheads, and so are not easily punished. | |
| Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton | Patience is not passive;
on the contrary, it is active;
it is concentrated strength. | |
| Luther Burbank | It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while. | |
| Edmund Burke | Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none. | |
| Albert Camus | Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction, therefore it destroys freedom. | |
| Al Capone | When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality. | |
| Joyce Cary | It is sometimes said that toleration should be refused to the intolerant. In practice this would destroy it... The only remedy for dogmatism and lies is toleration and the greatest possible liberty of expression. | |
| Zechariah Chafee, Jr. | You make men love their government and their country by giving them the kind of government and the kind of country that inspire respect and love; a country that is free and unafraid, that lets the discontented talk in order to learn the causes of their discontent and end those causes, that refuses to impel men to spy on their neighbors, that protects its citizens vigorously from harmful acts while it leaves the remedies for objectionable ideas to counter-argument and time. | |
| John Jay Chapman | Attack another’s rights and you destroy your own. | |
| Alexander Chase | The peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened by convictions. | |
| Gilbert Keith Chesterton | A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. | |
| Gilbert Keith Chesterton | Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions. | |
| Chinese Proverb | Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own. | |
| Noam Chomsky | If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. | |
| Justice Tom C. Clark | From the standpoint of freedom of speech and the press, it is enough to point out that the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them... It is not the business of government to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine. | |
| Arthur C. Clarke | Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. | |
| William Kingdon Clifford | It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. | |
| John Cogley | Tolerance implies a respect for another person, not because he is wrong or even because he is right, but because he is human. | |
| Samuel Taylor Coleridge | I have seen gross intolerance show in support of tolerance. | |
| Henry Steele Commager | America was born of revolt, flourished on dissent, became great through experimentation. | |
| Henry Steele Commager | Censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion... In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience. | |
| Confucius | If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself. | |
| Confucius | Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Let me do and I understand. | |
| Georges Courteline | If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits oneself, life would be unbearable. | |
| Norman Cousins | I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth. | |
| Patrick Cox | The holier-than-thou activists who blame the population for not spending more money on their personal crusades are worse than aggravating. They encourage the repudiation of personal responsibility by spreading the lie that support of a government program fulfills individual moral duty. | |
| Czech Proverb | The big thieves hang the little ones. | |
| Clarence S. Darrow | There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action. | |
| Clarence S. Darrow | The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom. | |
| Salvador De Madariaga | He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power. | |
| Michel De Montaigne | A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom. | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils it creates… | |
| Alan Dershowitz | If we move away from the American tradition of lawyers defending those with whom they vehemently disagree -- as we temporarily did during the McCarthy period -- we weaken our commitment to the rule of law... So beware of an approach which limits advocacy to that which is approved by the standards of political correctness. | |
| Rene Descartes | If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. | |