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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 |
Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past,
by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.
Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control...
to be locked into a sequence of act and response,
of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always.
The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past.
Forgiveness frees the forgiver.
It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare.more Lance Morrow quotes |
If none of us ever read a book that was “dangerous,” had a friend who was “different,” or joined an organization that advocated “change,” we would all be the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.more Edward R. Murrow quotes |
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Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.more Benito Mussolini quotes |
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet.more Lyle Myhr quotes |
There will be no prison which can hold our movement down...
The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards
can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.more Huey P. Newton quotes |
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Before 1776 America was a British colony. The British Government had certain laws and rules that the colonized Americans rejected as not being in their best interests. In spite of the British conviction that Americans had no right to establish their own laws to promote the general welfare of the people living here in America, the colonized immigrant felt he had no choice but to raise the gun to defend his welfare. Simultaneously he made certain laws to ensure his protection from external and internal aggressions, from other governments, and his own agencies. One such form of protection was the Declaration of Independence, which states: '... whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.' Now these same colonized White people, these bondsmen, paupers, and thieves deny the colonized Black man not only the right to abolish this oppressive system, but to even speak of abolishing it.more Huey P. Newton quotes |
We felt that the police needed a label, a label other than that fear image that they carried in the community. So we used the pig as the rather low-lifed animal in order to identify the police. And it worked.more Huey P. Newton quotes |
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.more Reverend Martin Niemoeller quotes |
In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.more Reverend Martin Niemoeller quotes |
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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 |
This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention, the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State;
that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long-run
sustains, nourishes and impels human destinies.more José Ortega y Gasset quotes |
Every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered...History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.more George Orwell quotes |
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The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.more George Orwell quotes |
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.more George Orwell quotes |
Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.more George Orwell quotes |
The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders.more George Orwell quotes |
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.more P. D. Ouspensky quotes |
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression;
for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.more Thomas Paine quotes |
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An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.more Thomas Paine quotes |
For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever.more Thomas Paine quotes |
The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful
ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate
themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric
of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.more Michael Parenti quotes |
According to Gestapo records…they had little need to engage in direct spying on the citizens since the citizens themselves were more than willing to do their spying for them.more Kort E. Patterson quotes |
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Eight decades of amendments... to (the) code have produced a virtually impenetrable maze... The rules are unintelligible to most citizens... The rules are equally mysterious to many government employees who are charged with administering and enforcing the law.more Shirley Peterson quotes |
If oppression and wrong should gain the ascendancy, and injustice stalk abroad in the land, and all else fail him; nevertheless his humblest roof, and all things that are sheltered beneath it, would find, somehow, someway, a final refuge and protection in the Supreme Court of the United States.more Edward J. Phelps quotes |
The poorest man may in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.more William Pitt quotes |
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When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.more Plato quotes |
There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions… It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.more Sir Karl Popper quotes |
Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a "halter" intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men.more Josiah Quincy, Jr. quotes |
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is
precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.more Ayn Rand quotes |
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.more Ayn Rand quotes |
A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.more Ayn Rand quotes |
The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.more Ayn Rand quotes |
Do you think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.more Ayn Rand quotes |
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I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books.more Ronald Reagan quotes |
There are many well-meaning people today who work at placing an economic floor beneath all of us so that no one shall exist below a certain level or standard of living, and certainly we don't quarrel with this. But look more closely and you may find that all too often these well-meaning people are building a ceiling above which no one shall be permitted to climb and between the two are pressing us all into conformity, into a mold of standardized mediocrity.more Ronald Reagan quotes |
It ain’t over on April 15! If you stop, for example, for a $10 pizza on Thursday night to celebrate being done with the IRS for another year, the taxman will be right there to grab a slice or two. On top of paying the sales tax, you’ll also be picking up a major chunk of what the government charges the pizza shop owner for local property taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, federal payroll taxes, federal and state and local income taxes, and worker’s compensation taxes. Altogether, according to a study by the Americans for Tax Reform, that comes to $3.80 on a $10 pizza for the omnipresent taxman. If you pick up a Bud six-pack to go with the pizza, there’s another 43 cents of each beer dollar that goes straight to the taxman for excise taxes, income taxes, property taxes, etc. For something stronger, say Jack Daniels, the taxman’s share is $7.20, on average, out of every $10. Go lighter and just drink Pepsi and it’s 35 percent of what you pay that goes for taxes at all levels. Add some Marlboros and its 75 percent of the retail price that’s funneled directly into the state’s coffers. Get home and hit the light switch and another $26 out of every $100 on the electric bill goes for government rather than electricity. If you’re flying the next day, the taxman is up early and waiting at the aiport, pocketing $40 on every $100 airline ticket. And he’s there in the hotel lobby when you land, snatching $43 on every $100 of the hotel bill. Go out to dinner and it’s another $28 of every $100 of the tab that ends up with the government rather than with the restaurant, the farmers, truckers and everyone else who worked together to produce the meal.more Ralph Reiland quotes |
For the average family, all these taxes now eat 38 percent of gross income, a higher rate of taxation than ever before in the peacetime history of the United States. By comparison, the typical two-income family in the mid-1950s paid 28 percent of their income for taxes. We’re now at the absurd point where the typical family works until noon of every working day to satisfy the taxman, paying more in taxes than they spend for food, clothing and housing combined.more Ralph Reiland quotes |
