Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"In literature as in love,
we are astonished by what is chosen by others."

~ Andre Maurois  

"In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former.

His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot -- which is a mere substitute for a bullet -- because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency, into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him."

~ Lysander Spooner  

"To vest a few fallible men -- prosecutors, judges, jurors -- with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries…"

~ Jerome D. Frank  

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.... And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes."

~ John Adams  

"A free press
is not a privilege
but an organic necessity
in a great society."

~ Walter Lippmann  

"No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order,
stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death,
I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs
(which alas! is all too inadequate)."

~ Frederic Bastiat  

"The tax that was supposed to soak the rich has instead soaked America. The beneficiary of the income tax has not been the poor, but big government. The income tax has given us a government bureaucracy that outnumbers the manufacturing work force. It has created welfare dependencies that have entrapped millions of Americans in an underclass that is forced to live a sordid existence of trading votes for government handouts."

~ Paul Craig Roberts  

"Private property was the original source of freedom.
It still is its main bulwark."

~ Walter Lippmann  

"Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes."

~ Thomas Sowell  

"We will all be better citizens when voting records of our Congressmen
are followed as carefully as scores of pro-football games."

~ Lou Erickson  

"If ... our bureaucratic masters are becoming more akin to Soviet-style or Eastern European counterparts, it was rarely seen as a plus that those central schemers had wonderful intentions with their five-year plans. Such goals as 'job safety,' 'equality,' and freedom from 'discrimination,' depending on their definitions, may be good things for society, but they were never intended to be the business of the federal government."

~ William P. Hoar  

"Suppression of expression conceals the real problems confronting a society and diverts public attention from the critical issues. It is likely to result in neglect of the grievances which are the actual basis of the unrest, and this prevent their correction."

~ Thomas I. Emerson  

"If a single writer in a country is in chains,
then there are some links of that chain that binds us all."

~ Vaclav Havel  

"Your book is dedicated
by the soundest reason.
You had better get out of France
as quickly as you can."

~ Voltaire