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2019 March 15
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"Freedom of thought and freedom of speech in our great institutions
are absolutely necessary for the preservation of our country.
The moment either is restricted, liberty begins to wither and die..." |
"Another not unimportant consideration is, that the powers of the general government will be, and indeed must be, principally employed upon external objects, such as war, peace, negotiations with foreign powers, and foreign commerce. In its internal operations it can touch but few objects, except to introduce regulations beneficial to the commerce, intercourse, and other relations, between the states, and to lay taxes for the common good. The powers of the states, on the other hand, extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, and liberties, and property of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state." |
"Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined." |
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2019 March 14
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"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion." |
"Large and permanent military establishments
... are forbidden by the principles of free government,
and against the necessity of which the militia
were meant to be a constitutional bulwark." |
"Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order." |
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2019 March 13
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"Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of." |
"Whenever they burn books,
they will also, in the end,
burn human beings." |
"Liberty cannot be preserved
without a general knowledge among the people, who have...
a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right
to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge,
I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers." |
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2019 March 12
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"The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends
and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while
we are drifting side by side to our common doom." |
"Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners." |
"Whenever a separation is made
between liberty and justice,
neither, in my opinion, is safe." |
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2019 March 11
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"We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that religion,
or the duty we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it,
can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.
The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and
conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it
as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right." |
"The legitimate powers
of government extend to such acts
only as are injurious to others.
But it does me no injury
for my neighbor to say
there are twenty gods, or no God.
It neither picks my pocket
nor breaks my leg." |
"...So long as the people
do not care to exercise their freedom,
those who wish to tyrannize will do so;
for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name
of any number of gods, religious and otherwise,
to put shackles upon sleeping men." |
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