Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been too much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.more Rose Wilder Lane quotes | Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political
structure, of these United States protects any American from
arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the
Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the
torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a
cellar.more Rose Wilder Lane quotes | All free constitutions are formed with two views -- to deter the governed from crime, and the governors from tyranny.more John Lansing, Jr. quotes | A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness.more Lao-Tzu quotes | Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking.more Lao-Tzu quotes | | No citizen enjoys genuine freedom of religious conviction until the state is indifferent to every form of religious outlook from Atheism to Zoroastrianism.more Harold J. Laski quotes | It must never be forgotten...that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power.more Richard Henry Lee quotes | The statist objective, always, is to make as many persons as possible, as dependent as possible, on a government as big as possible.more Robert W. Lee quotes | It is becoming increasingly apparent that many—arguably most—of the problems that plague our nation have been aggravated rather than alleviated by federal intervention. In one area after another, massive infusions of tax dollars have been squandered on false solutions which, when they fail to achieve their stated objectives, are cited to justify even more spending on other futile schemes that result in bigger government. Examples include programs and laws supposedly intended to reduce racial animosity which have instead heightened race-related tensions; welfare schemes that, rather than reducing poverty, have enticed millions of Americans to become dependent on Washington for their daily bread; federal funding (and control) of education, which has spawned a monumental education crisis; a “war” on drugs which has done little to curb drug traffic, but which has eroded many personal liberties; a health-care finance system that has deteriorated as government meddling and regulation have increased; and a masochistic immigration policy larded with false "solutions" that, while failing to stop the inflow of illegal aliens, have paved the way for further government intrusion into the lives of nearly all Americans.more Robert W. Lee quotes | It is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order, for a larger and higher organisation, to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies.more Pope Leo XIII quotes | The Seven Deadly Sins of the Press:
- Concentrated Power of the Big Press.
- Passing of competition and the coming of monopoly.
- Governmental control of the press.
- Timidity, especially in the face of group and corporate pressures.
- Big Business mentality.
- Clannishness among the newspaper publishers that has prevented them from criticizing each other.
- Social blindness.more Max Lerner quotes | If we expected self-reliance of family groups, if we expected hardiness and resilience and initiative on the part of individuals, and if we rewarded initiative instead of dependence on government, we would not only ameliorate many of the family-related social problems we see at present, but we would also reduce our vulnerability to terrorism. People who are hardy, resilient, and self reliant are a lot harder to terrorize.more Bernard H. Levin quotes | No truly sophisticated proponent of repression would be stupid enough to shatter the façade of democratic institutions.more Murray B. Levin quotes | The fundamental principle is this: No matter how worthwhile an end may be, if there is no constitutional authority to pursue it, then the federal government must step aside and leave the matter to the states or to private parties. The president and Congress can proceed only from constitutional authority, not from good intentions alone. If Congress thinks it necessary to expand its powers, the Framers crafted an amendment process for that purpose. But too often, rather than follow that process, Congress has disregarded the limits set by the Constitution and gutted our frontline defense against overweening federal government.more Robert A. Levy quotes | For who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?more C. S. Lewis quotes | In the ancient world individuals have sold themselves as slaves, in order to eat. So in society. Here is a witch-doctor who can save us from the sorcerers -- a war-lord who can save us from the barbarians -- a Church that can save us from Hell. Give them what they ask, give ourselves to them bound and blindfold, if only they will! Perhaps the terrible bargain will be made again. We cannot blame men for making it. We can hardly wish them not to. Yet we can hardly bear that they should.more C. S. Lewis quotes | What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about 'Man taking charge of his own destiny'. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?more C. S. Lewis quotes | I do not like the pretensions of Government -- the grounds on which it demands my obedience -- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique. I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously.
On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They 'cash in'. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants' 'science'-- they didn't think much of Hitler's racial theories or Stalin's biology. But they can be muzzled.more C. S. Lewis quotes | Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists' puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man's opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.more C. S. Lewis quotes | That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended -- civilizations are built up -- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.more C. S. Lewis quotes | A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.more C. S. Lewis quotes | It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects -- military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden -- that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.more C. S. Lewis quotes | | I have been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a Dome on it.more Abraham Lincoln quotes | | This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.more Abraham Lincoln quotes | I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from ... the Declaration of Independence ... that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence ... I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.more Abraham Lincoln quotes | The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. By adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.more Abraham Lincoln quotes | ... the privilege of creating and issuing money... is the government's greatest creative opportunity... [saving] the taxpayers immense sums of money...more Abraham Lincoln quotes | In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.more Walter Lippmann quotes | Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.more Walter Lippmann quotes | The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.more Walter Lippmann quotes | It is the very essence of despotism that it can never afford to fail. This is what distinguishes it most vitally from democracy. In a despotism there is no organized opposition which can take over the power when the Administration in office has failed. All the eggs are in one basket. Everything is staked on one coterie of men. When the going is good, they move more quickly and efficiently than democracies, where the opposition has to be persuaded and conciliated. But when they lose, there are no reserves. There are no substitutes on the bench ready to go out on the field and carry the ball. That is why democracies with the habit of party government have outlived all other forms of government in the modern world. They have, as it were, at least two governments always at hand, and when one fails they have the other. They have diversified the risks of mortality, corruption, and stupidity which pervade all human affairs. They have remembered that the most beautifully impressive machine cannot run for very long unless there is available a complete supply of spare parts.more Walter Lippmann quotes | | It is perfectly true that the government is best which governs least. It is equally true that the government is best which provides most.more Walter Lippmann quotes | In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable.more Walter Lippmann quotes | The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.more John Locke quotes | The Natural Liberty of Man is to be free from any Superior Power on Earth, and not to be under the Will or Legislative Authority of Man, but to have only the Law of Nature for his Rule.more John Locke quotes | Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that.
For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends,
and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes
Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.more John Locke quotes | [W]henever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty ...more John Locke quotes | The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.more John Locke quotes | Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and
made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.more John Locke quotes | [E]very Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.more John Locke quotes | And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage, and thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community, contrary to the end of society and government: therefore in wellordered commonwealths, where the good of the whole is so considered, as it ought, the legislative power is put into the hands of divers persons, who duly assembled, have by themselves, or jointly with others, a power to make laws, which when they have done, being separated again, they are themselves subject to the laws they have made; which is a new and near tie upon them, to take care, that they make them for the public good. more John Locke quotes | | The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.more John Locke quotes | Because law enforcement resources have been concentrated on the street drug trade in minority communities, drug arrests of minorities increased at 10 times the rate of increase for whites.more Los Angeles Times quotes | Participation is an instrument of conquest because it encourages people to give their consent to being governed. ... Deeply embedded in people's sense of fair play is the principle that those who play the game must accept the outcome. Those who participate in politics are similarly committed, even if they are consistently on the losing side. Why do politicians plead with everyone to get out and vote? Because voting is the simplest and easiest form of participation by masses of people. Even though it is minimal participation, it is sufficient to commit all voters to being governed, regardless of who wins.more Theodore Lowi quotes | |
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