Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [81-100] of 260 Authority quotesAuthority QuotesAuthority Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.~ Milton Friedman The history of totalitarian regimes is reflected in the evolution and perfection of the instruments of terror and more especially the police.~ Carl J. Friedrich If I said, "The live-and-let-live people I've met are generally warm and generous, although often reserved and respectful, while the control freaks I've met are generally cynical, mean and aggressively obnoxious," would that seem likely to be true? Of course it does. It IS true, and it's obviously logically consistent and what you'd expect. BUT, if I said, "I've found the intellectual defenders of private property and laissez-faire capitalism whom I've met to be generally warm and generous, while the so-called "liberal" defenders of the welfare state I've found to be often cynical, mean and tight-fisted in their personal lives," would THAT seem likely to be true? Think about it. Well, it's also true ... it's a matter of semantics, or word choice. BECAUSE BOTH SENTENCES SAY EXACTLY THE SAME THING.~ Rick Gaber What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?~ Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi Some who are too scrupulous to steal your possessions nevertheless see no wrong in tampering with your thoughts.~ Khalil Gibran What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.~ Rudolph W. Giuliani Government will not fail to employ education to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.~ William Godwin No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy (agent) is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. It is not to be supposed that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their will to that of their constituents. A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by judges as fundamental law. If there should happen to be a irreconcilable variance between the two, the Constitution is to be preferred to the statute.~ Alexander Hamilton In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.~ Alexander Hamilton All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people ... turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government ... Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.~ Alexander Hamilton It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.~ Alexander Hamilton All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.~ Judge Learned Hand Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of the law. Detestation of existing politics is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution...~ Judge Learned Hand Imagine the traditionalist as living in synopticon—a suspect that is the target of 24/7 viewing, indoctrination, and conditioning by progressive auditors. In other words, a 40-45 percent minority of Americans is relentlessly lectured, sermonized, demonized, and neutered by a 360- degree ring of prying institutional overseers. There is no escape. There is no respite. There is no quarter given.~ Victor Davis Hanson The [classical] liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people -- he is not an egalitarian -- but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are.~ Friedrich August von Hayek Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality.~ Friedrich August von Hayek There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change "orderly." ~ Friedrich August von Hayek The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good.~ Friedrich August von Hayek If you really want to compete with Russia and China to prevent the 21st Century from being dominated by a new axis of evil, you must first defeat the Church of Global Warming. As long as that’s the official state religion of the Western world, we haven’t got a prayer.~ John Hayward If we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishments, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings -- as in one country they propose to do -- in our House of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes, request them, as at Vienna, and I think now at Paris also, to be good enough to leave their greatcoats in the vestibules ... I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time.~ Auberon Herbert Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print