How prescient Byrd was. It's almost as if he time-traveled to the present day and went back to 1910 to report his findings. This quote illustrates how regulatory power - instituted for the purported "good of the people" - in reality becomes corrupt and a noose around the neck of an economy. The unstated effect of every government policy is to restrict the legal choices of individuals and increase the power of the state. Let the Free Market decide who wins and loses in business by individuals deciding what products and services best suit their needs and their pocketbooks, not government!

Dependent, helpless, disspirited and servile. This was the trend in government for 92% of the last century (except for the Reagan years) and until the election of Tea-Party backed politicians, was the status quo in Washington, D.C. No wonder the government-loving Democrats and Republicans want Christianity removed from the public square, just as the Communists attack religion when they gain power. No, the only legitimate power is the state, according to them. Thank God for the NTU and the Tea Party movement!

Spoken like the good statist that he is. Clinton thinks that serving the state is the highest purpose of the individual. Interesting how this type of totalitarian thought has given us a President whose primary credentials for office are a history of being a "community activist." In a free society, the good of the individual trumps the good of the state, and the individual is free to determine for him or herself what constitutes good. If anyone wonders just where the individual freedom that Americans have assumed would always be there for us, this quote illustrates the thought process that began the decline.

This quote is so full of generalities and run-on thoughts that whatever coherent thought de la Boetie might have started out to express is lost in the excess verbosity. What is it with all the populist quotes this site is sending all of a sudden? I thought this site was about Liberty, not Populist pandering to the masses.

I'm assuming there was a typo in the purported year of the speech including this quote, otherwise the former Premier of France would have given it more than 50 years after he died. The power of the spirit is energy that, like any other tool, can be used to either beneficial or destructive ends. The spirit of revolution is, without further qualification, nothing more than the spirit of destruction, since it justifies itself by its hatred. Those that tout revolution for its own sake seek to whip up blind public emotion so that they can direct it to their own ends, which history has shown to be personal power in a totalitarian state. If there is a rational cause that unites the people in a just pursuit of redress, then the spirit of revolution is fuel for the cause, and therefore not destructive. However, it's not surprising that Guizot, like any member of the ruling class seeking to retain his position of power, would rail against an energy that could be used to deprive him of it.

Hague was a corrupt Democrat politician of the first half of the 20th century, who ran the Democrat political machine in New Jersey and had a huge influence in the Democrat political machine in the United States until 1949. This isn't just my opinion, have a look at Wikipedia's entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_hague It's not surprising then, that that he would find talk of rights and freedom offensive, since they threatened his hold on political power. This isn't a "liberty quote" but a "tyranny quote" and think it should be on a site of that name, instead of one espousing liberty.