We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that religion, or the duty we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.more James Madison quotes |
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.more James Madison quotes |
In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.more James Madison quotes |
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Morality cannot exist one minute without freedom... Only a free man can possibly be moral. Unless a good deed is voluntary, it has no moral significance.more Everett Dean Martin quotes |
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In every declining civilization there is a small "remnant" of people who adhere to the right against the wrong; who recognize the difference between good and evil and who will take an active stand for the former and against the latter; who can still think and discern and who will courageously take a stand against the political, social, moral, and spiritual rot or decay of their day.more Donald S. McAlvaney quotes |
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I’m going to introduce a resolution to have the postmaster general stop reading dirty books and deliver the mail.more Gail W. McGee quotes |
If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.more Terence McKenna quotes |
The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society.more Margaret Mead quotes |
Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within. Rust destroys iron, moths destroy clothes, the worm eats away the wood; but greatest of all evils is envy, impious habitant of corrupt souls, which ever was, is, and shall be a consuming disease.more Menander quotes |
Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel.more H. L. Mencken quotes |
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May God prevent us from becoming 'right-thinking men' -- that is to say, men who agree perfectly with their own police.more Thomas Merton quotes |
That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.more John Stuart Mill quotes |
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.more Henry Miller quotes |
None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants.more John Milton quotes |
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.more John Milton quotes |
We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love.more Richard Mitchell quotes |
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Zealotry of either kind -- the puritan's need to regiment others or the victim's passion for blaming everyone except himself -- tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candlesnuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment.more Lance Morrow quotes |
The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance -- a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms -- A Nation of Finger Pointers.more Lance Morrow quotes |
As a first-time drug law offender, I was sentenced to 27 non-parolable years in prison. The amount of time was based on liquid waste found in the garage and unprocessed chemicals. There were no drugs.more David A. Nichols quotes |
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There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any over-large concentration of like-minded individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.more P. J. O'Rourke quotes |
There is only one basic human right,
the right to do as you damn well please.
And with it comes the only basic human duty,
the duty to take the consequences.more P. J. O'Rourke quotes |
If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert, and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.more P. J. O'Rourke quotes |
If it would be wrong for the government to adopt an official religion, then, for the same reasons, it would be wrong for the government to adopt official education policies. The moral case for freedom of religion stands or falls with that for freedom of education. A society that champions freedom of religion but at the same time countenances state regulation of education has a great deal of explaining to do.more James R. Otteson quotes |
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Video meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor. (I see the better way, and approve it; I follow the worse.)more Ovid quotes |
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Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.more Thomas Paine quotes |
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.more Isabel Paterson quotes |
The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.more Dr. Ron Paul quotes |
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Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.more Plato quotes |
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.more Plato quotes |
The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one, analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.more John Rawls quotes |
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Lottery tickets are the only consumer products actively promoted and sold by the state. The state does not sell toothpaste, or even promote brushing your teeth. But it tells people they should gamble. The main marketing concern is how to attract new players, who otherwise wouldn't gamble.more I. Nelson Rose quotes |
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