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2014 May 30
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"A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues... is on the way to totalitarianism and death." |
"We have not passed that subtle line
between childhood and adulthood
until we move
from the passive voice
to the active voice -- that is,
until we have stopped saying,
'It got lost,'
and say, 'I lost it.'" |
"To punish a man because we infer
from the nature of some doctrine which he holds,
or from the conduct of other persons
who hold the same doctrines with him,
that he will commit a crime, is persecution,
and is, in every case, foolish and wicked." |
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2014 May 29
|
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something." |
"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society." |
"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned." |
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2014 May 28
|
"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is
assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question.
It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other,
but it is "not done"... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy
finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely
unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in
the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." |
"No human has yet grasped 1% of what can be known about spiritual realities ... I grew up Presbyterian. Presbyterians thought the Methodists were wrong. Catholics thought all Protestants were wrong. The Jews thought the Christians were wrong. So, what I'm financing is humility. I want people to realize that you shouldn't think you know it all." |
"Many politicians... are in the habit of laying it down as
a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till
they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool...
who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim." |
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2014 May 27
|
"The voice of the majority is no proof of justice." |
"Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals." |
"All men have equal rights to liberty,
to their property, and to the protection of the laws." |
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2014 May 26
|
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed'
for wanting other people's money --
only for wanting to keep your own money." |
"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." |
"When you start talking about government as 'we' instead of 'they,' you have been in office too long." |
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