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It comes as news to most people to learn that practically all important ethical teachers -- Moses, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohammed, and Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance -- have denounced lending at interest as usury and as morally wrong.more Lawrence Dennis quotes |
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Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large.more John Dewey quotes |
Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty: For as violations of the rights of the governed, are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner, as to touch individuals but slightly. Thus they are disregarded. The power or profit that arises from these violations centering in few persons, is to them considerable. For this reason the governors having in view their particular purposes, successively preserve an uniformity of conduct for attaining them. They regularly increase the first injuries, till at length the inattentive people are compelled to perceive the heaviness of their burthens -- They begin to complain and inquire — but too late. They find their oppressors so strengthened by success, and themselves so entangled in examples of express authority on the part of their rulers, and of tacit recognition on their own part, that they are quite confounded: for millions entertain no other idea of the legality of power, than it is founded on the exercise of power.more John Dickenson quotes |
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.more Denis Diderot quotes |
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Governments do not govern, but merely control the machinery of government, being themselves controlled by the hidden hand.more Benjamin Disraeli quotes |
I repeat... that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist.more Benjamin Disraeli quotes |
For you see, the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.more Benjamin Disraeli quotes |
Demagogues and agitators are very unpleasant, they are incidental to a free and constitutional country, and you must put up with these inconveniences or do without many important advantages.more Benjamin Disraeli quotes |
I was at last beginning to see how ignorant I had become, how long since I had read anything except Party literature. I thought of our bookshelves stripped of books questioned by the Party, how when a writer was expelled from the Party his books went, too. I thought of the systematic rewriting of Soviet history, the revaluation, and in some cases the blotting out of any mention of such persons as Trotsky. I thought of the successive purges. Suddenly I too wanted the answers to the questions Senator Hickenlooper was asking and I wanted the truth. I found myself hitting at the duplicity of the Communist Party.more Dr. Bella Dodd quotes |
The process of completely freeing oneself emotionally from being a Communist is a thing no outsider can understand. The group thinking and group planning and the group life of the Party had been a part of me for so long that it was desperately difficult for me to be a person again. ... But I had begun the process of “unbecoming” a Communist. It was a long and painful process, much like that of a polio victim who has to learn to walk all over again. I had to learn to think. I had to learn to love. I had to drain the hate and frenzy from my system. I had to dislodge the self and the pride that had made me arrogant, made me feel that I knew all the answers. I had to learn that I knew nothing. There were many stumbling blocks in this process.more Dr. Bella Dodd quotes |
What I had failed to understand was that the security I felt in the Party was that of a group and that affection in that strange communist world is never a personal emotion. You were loved or hated on the basis of group acceptance, and emotions were stirred or dulled by propaganda. That propaganda was made by the powerful people at the top. That is why ordinary Communists get along well with their groups: they think and feel together and work toward a common goal.more Dr. Bella Dodd quotes |
There had been many things I had not really understood. I had regarded the Communist Party as a poor man’s party, and thought the presence of certain men of wealth within it accidental. I now saw this was no accident. I regarded the Party as a monolithic organization with the leadership in the National Committee and the National Board. Now I saw this was only a facade placed there by the movement to create the illusion of the poor man’s party; it was in reality a device to control the “common man” they so raucously championed.more Dr. Bella Dodd quotes |
To those who find it difficult to understand how a mind can be imprisoned, my puny indictment of the communist movement before the Tydings Committee may have seemed slight indeed, for I no doubt gave some comfort to the Party by my negative approach. But it takes time to “unbecome” a Communist.more Dr. Bella Dodd quotes |
We in the Party had been told in 1945, after the publication of the Duclos letter, that the Party in the United States would have a difficult role to play. Our country, we were told, would be the last to be taken by the Communists; the Party in the United States would often find itself in opposition not only to the interests of our government, but even against the interests of our own workers.
Now I realized that, with the best motives and a desire to serve the working people of my country, I, and thousands like me, had been led to a betrayal of these very people. I now saw that I had been poised on the side of those who sought the destruction of my own country.
I thought of an answer Pop Mindel, of the Party’s Education Bureau, had once given me in reply to the question whether the Party would oppose the entry of our boys into the Army. I had asked this question at a time when the Communists were conducting a violent campaign for peace, and it seemed reasonable to me to draw pacifist conclusions. Pop Mindel sucked on his pipe and with a knowing look in his eyes said:
“Well, if we keep our members from the Army, then where will our boys learn to use weapons with which to seize power?”
I realized how the Soviets had utilized Spain as a preview of the revolution to come. Now other peoples had become expendable — the Koreans, North and South, the Chinese soldiers, and the American soldiers. I found myself praying, “God, help them all.”
What now became clear to me was the collusion of these two forces: the Communists with their timetable for world control, and certain mercenary forces in the free world bent on making profit from blood. But I was alone with these thoughts and had no opportunity to talk over my conclusions with friends.more Dr. Bella Dodd quotes |
It’s never more important to move slowly and carefully before granting the state new powers than in the wake of tragedies.more Brian Doherty quotes |
[M]onopoly profits exist over the long run only when the government guarantees them, as in utilities and cable. And for
concentration of market power, no robber baron can hold a candle to the U.S. government.... The hugest concentration of market power in this
country does not lie with the likes of Rupert Murdoch or Bill Gates, but with government itself.... No private company, no matter how huge or
wealthy, could possibly have as much widespread power over the function of American markets as government does. And this power is exercised
with essential unseriousness.... And unlike business attempts to make money, which necessarily involve selling something to a willing consumer,
government’s market manipulations require forcing people into situations -- whether paying for cars or food, paying for R&D or new technologies, or
selling off a part of their company -- that they would not have wanted to be in but for the government’s ham-handed threat of force.... Nothing could
serve the workings of the marketplace better than [government] leaving it.more Brian Doherty quotes |
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Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land.more Justice William O. Douglas quotes |
Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation.more Justice William O. Douglas quotes |
We recognize the force of the argument that the effects of war under modern conditions may be felt in the economy for years and years, and that if the war power can be used in days of peace to treat all the wounds which war inflicts on our society, it may not only swallow up all other powers of Congress but largely obliterate the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments as well.more Justice William O. Douglas quotes |
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Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.more Justice William O. Douglas quotes |
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The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and…the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression and obedience.more Justice William O. Douglas quotes |
These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence.more Justice William O. Douglas quotes |
A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.more William O. Douglas quotes |
But our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas; that is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is this article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world.more William O. Douglas quotes |
Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?more William O. Douglas quotes |
Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged.more William O. Douglas quotes |
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.more Frederick Douglass quotes |
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.more Frederick Douglass quotes |
Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.more Frederick Douglass quotes |
We must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us, and that we may find objectionable. If we fail in this task, we become victims of the precedents we create.more Judge Robert Doumar quotes |
[R]estricting arms to the military and police eviscerates the principle that power should flow from the people to government, and turns the government into a master rather than a servant.more Robert Dowlut quotes |
[W]e continue to evolve a cute little concept of a changing legal accommodation named the “Living Constitution Theory” which is only a perversion stating, “To heck with what our Constitution says; we in power will twist it to suit our ideas anytime and every time we so choose.”more Dr. Jack Down quotes |
If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?more William Drayton quotes |
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It is the growing custom to narrow control, concentrate power, disregard and disfranchise the public; and assuming that certain powers by divine right of money-raising or by sheer assumption, have the power to do as they think best without consulting the wisdom of mankind.more W. E. B. Du Bois quotes |
The history of Christianity has been largely written in blood, the
blood of those whom it has sought to proselytize as well as that of those
Christians who did not share the theology or ambitions of the male clerical
oligarchy that has always wielded power in Christendom. This ignoble
distinction is not nor has it ever been the exclusive prerogative of any
particular denomination or sect; it is a living legacy of horror that is
tragically common to the Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox
bodies of Christian churches.more John J. Dunphy quotes |
If the previous paragraphs [of 'A Religion For A New Age'] prove
anything, it is that the Bible is not merely another book, an outmoded and
archaic book, or even an extremely influential book; it has been and remains
an incredibly dangerous book. It and the various Christian churches which
are parasitic upon it have been directly responsible for most of the wars,
persecutions and outrages which humankind has perpetrated upon itself over
the past two thousand years.more John J. Dunphy quotes |
I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future
must be waged and won in the public school classroom
by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith:
a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark
of what theologians call divinity in every human being...
The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new --
the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery,
and the new faith of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world
in which the never-realized Christian ideal of 'love thy neighbor' will finally be achieved.more John J. Dunphy quotes |
Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.more Will Durant quotes |
Hamilton's whole monetary policy is based on unconstitutional grounds and unsound reasoning, and fraudulent statements. His policies were fought through the whole public career of Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph and many another truly great lovers of Republican Government.
His policies have proved to be more destructive of our independent and democratic form of government than the old subjugation of the Colonies by Great Britain. The deliberations in Congress over Hamilton's Bank Bill, and the opinions of members of The Cabinet show the intensity of feeling between the private money interests and those supporting the Constitution. History records that the “money changers” have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.more Olive Cushing Dwinell quotes |
‘Balanced’ is a code for ‘denied’: a right to free speech that must be ‘balanced’ against so exhaustive a list of other supposed values means a right that can be exercised only when those in power judge that the speech in question is innocuous to them.more Ronald Dworkin quotes |
The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.more Max Eastman quotes |
Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we’re not vigilant.more Clint Eastwood quotes |
