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2008 February 01
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." |
"Laws control the lesser man.
Right conduct controls the greater one." |
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good
of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live
under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may
at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end for they do so with the approval
of their own conscience." |
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2008 January 31
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"The legal code can never be identified with the code of morals.
It is no more the function of government to impose a moral code
than to impose a religious code. And for the same reason." |
"In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes." |
"...[A] prohibition on moral judgments against various sexual behaviors is a violation of the freedom, even of the religious liberty, of those who view such behavior as wrong. If we don't have a right to act according to our religious belief by forming judgments according to those beliefs about human conduct and behavior, then, exactly what does the free exercise of religion mean? Can the free exercise of religion really mean simply that I have the right to believe that God has ordained certain things to be right or wrong but that I can't act accordingly? Surely free exercise means the freedom to act according to belief. And, yet, if we are not allowed to act according to belief when it comes to fundamental moral precepts, then what will be the moral implications of religion? None at all. But if we accept an understanding of religious liberty that doesn't permit us to discriminate the wheat from the chaff in our own actions and those of others, haven't we in fact permitted the government to dictate to us a uniform approach to religion? And, isn't that dictation of uniformity in religion exactly what the First Amendment intended to forbid?" |
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2008 January 30
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"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." |
"It makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man, or a bad man defrauded a good man, or whether a good or bad man has committed adultery: the law can look only to the amount of damage done." |
"We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing." |
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2008 January 29
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"A man does what he must -- in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers -- and this is the basis of all human morality." |
"You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty." |
"No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions." |
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2008 January 28
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"All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores." |
"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." |
"There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. In concentrating on the ends of choice, the conservative, by neglecting the conditions of choice, loses that very morality of conduct with which he is so concerned. And the libertarian, by concentrating only on the means, or conditions, of choice and ignoring the ends, throws away an essential moral defense of his own position." |
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