| To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads -- such is the behavior of the multitude.more Mencius quotes | The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the
prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and
intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.more H. L. Mencken quotes | The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to prevailing superstition or taboo.more H. L. Mencken quotes | The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.more H. L. Mencken quotes | That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.more H. L. Mencken quotes | I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself.
If modern people were a little less sane, a little more doubtful,
a little more aware of their absurdities and contradictions,
perhaps there might be the possibility of their survival.more Thomas Merton quotes | Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.more John Stuart Mill quotes | | The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.more John Stuart Mill quotes | The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.more John Stuart Mill quotes | | No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore our belief in our own guidance.more Henry Miller quotes | Utopians...consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of mankind’s totalization may flounder.more Thomas Molnar quotes | | | We fought the Revolutionary War for no taxation without representation, it seems to me that we are much worse off today, because we are heavily taxed, and only the king's corporations control this Country, together with mob rule, of the special interests.more James Montgomery quotes | If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.... The beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward to an infinite future, having lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do.... These words are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world.more Samuel Eliot Morison quotes | | | All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the right to keep and bear arms for security or defense of self, family, home and others, and for lawful common defense, hunting, recreational use, and all other lawful purposes, and such rights shall not be denied or infringed by the state or any subdivision thereof.more Nebraska Constitution quotes | | | The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the state, am the people.'... Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. more Friedrich Nietzsche quotes | Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you.more Albert Jay Nock quotes | It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. ... it does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance.more Albert Jay Nock quotes | Many now believe that with the rise of the totalitarian State the world has entered upon a new era of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like circumstances, and it will do precisely the same kind of thing. The State will unfailingly aggrandize itself, if only it has the power, first at the expense of its own citizens, and then at the expense of anyone else in sight. It has always done so, and always will.more Albert Jay Nock quotes | [T]he State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation -- that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class -- that is, for a criminal purpose. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient.more Albert Jay Nock quotes | In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary.more Kathleen Norris quotes | The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.more Sandra Day O'Connor quotes | The prima facie evidence provision in this case ignores all of the contextual factors that are necessary to decide whether a particular cross burning is intended to intimidate. The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut.more Sandra Day O'Connor quotes | When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone.more George O'Neil quotes | Politics doesn't work. Look at the parts of America where government has had the most power, where government has spent the most money. Look at the housing projects we've got the poor people in.more P. J. O'Rourke quotes | Think of what big governments have gotten up to in this century : not one, but two world wars, the gulag, the holocaust, aerial bombing of civilian population centers, the Berlin Wall, nuclear explosions, the post office. A wicked individual might want these, but he wouldn't have the cash and connections to get them. A villainous corporation could afford them but has to market the products. The Vietnam draft would be a tough sell for even the most fiendish businessmen. "Get shot! Get killed! Get diseases from foreign women who despise you in their hearts!more P. J. O'Rourke quotes | You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.more P. J. O'Rourke quotes | Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else. more P. J. O'Rourke quotes | There is a place for government in the affairs of men, and our Declaration of Independence tells us precisely what that place is. The role of government is to protect individuals in their God-given individual rights. Freedom is the natural birthright of man, but all that government can do in behalf of freedom is to let the individual alone, and it should secure him in his rights by making others let him alone.more Rev. Edmund A. Opitz quotes | | | | It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation.more Camille Paglia quotes | | It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact between those who govern and those that are governed: but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.more Thomas Paine quotes | But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?more Thomas Paine quotes | | If Big Brother (of Orwell's 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed.more Michael Parenti quotes | When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.more George Pataki quotes | You have to remember, rights don’t come in groups we shouldn’t have ‘gay rights’; rights come as individuals, and we wouldn’t have this major debate going on. It would be behavior that would count, not what person belongs to what group.more Dr. Ron Paul quotes | The loyalists in the beginning of the late war objected to associating, arming and fighting, in defense of our liberties, because these measures were not constitutional. A free people should always be left... with every possible power to promote their own happiness.more Pennsylvania Gazette quotes | |
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