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It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
Neither your life nor my life, nor the future of this country, will be affected in the slightest by whether Linda Tripp is naughty or nice. But if any president is able to commit crimes with impunity by using the vast powers and perquisites of his office to cover up, then we will have a danger of corruption and abuse of power that can only grow with the passing years and generations.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
One of the most pathetic — and dangerous — signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other 90 percent of the people?more Thomas Sowell quotes |
The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians -- risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has -- is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
One of the painfully sobering realizations that come from reading history is the utter incompetence that is possible among leaders of whole nations and empires — and the blind faith that such leaders can nevertheless inspire among the people who are enthralled by their words or their posturing.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
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The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that -- however bloody -- can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.more Lysander Spooner quotes |
[T]he only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets ...more Lysander Spooner quotes |
The history of civilized man is the history of the incessant conflict between liberty and authority. Each victory for liberty marked a new step in the world's progress; so we can measure the advance of civilization by the amount of freedom acquired by human institutions.more Charles T. Sprading quotes |
A political convention illustrates the workings of majority rule: If the minority in a party advocate a progressive move which is defeated when put to a vote in the convention, the minority are prohibited from advancing it during the campaign; if this minority refuse to advocate what the convention has decided to be right, they are barred from the platform and press, the cry of majority rule is raised against them, and they are called "traitors to the party;" but if they abandon their progressive ideas and advocate the wishes of the majority they are rewarded with office. Thus majority rule develops the dishonest politician: in order to rule sometime, he consents to being ruled at other times. The desire to rule and the willingness to be ruled ends in degradation; and no one who accepts the principles of equal liberty can endorse majority rule.more Charles T. Sprading quotes |
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The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day.more Joseph Story quotes |
Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and
intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished
from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and
the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people,
in order to betray them.more Justice Joseph Story quotes |
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All history is one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others.more William Graham Sumner quotes |
Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.more Jonathan Swift quotes |
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Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.more William Howard Taft quotes |
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An important art of politcians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.more Talleyrand quotes |
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Liberty, human dignity, a higher standard of living is fundamental. And, steadily, I think, people are beginning to realise that you don't have those things unless you have a pretty large private enterprise sector. Any Iron Curtain country has neither liberty, nor a very high standard of living. The two things go, economic and political freedom, go together. I've been right in the forefront of saying that, here, in the States, and it's very interesting to me now, to see a number of articles from people who are taking up the same theme. They are disturbed that Socialism is reducing liberty and freedom for ordinary people, and that's really what matters.more Margaret Thatcher quotes |
The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.more Norman Thomas quotes |
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Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.more Henry David Thoreau quotes |
Nelson Rockefeller was in the forefront of the struggle to establish not only an American system of political and economic security but a new world order.more New York Times quotes |
The last stage but one of every civilisation, is characterised by the forced political unification of its constituent parts, into a single greater whole.more Arnold J. Toynbee quotes |
It is a known fact that the policies of the government today, whether Republican or Democrat are closer to the 1932 platform of the Communist Party than they are to either of their own party platforms in that critical year.more Walter Trohan quotes |
As against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane.more Pierre Trudeau quotes |
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We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.' We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of freedom! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, 'We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history.'more Bishop Desmond Tutu quotes |
Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.more Mark Twain quotes |
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics.more Mark Twain quotes |
