Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [1-20] of 42 Compulsion quotesCompulsion QuotesCompulsion Next 20 quotes No Gulag, evidently, can deter the advocates of state power from believing in their own virtue and in the morality of the power they exercise. We are all Hobbesians now. Virtue is presumed to reside in the state. Its reliance on compulsion is seen as fulfilling, not undermining, morality. Our communicators, oddly employed in the private sector, work tirelessly to ensure that state control is maintained, our taxes stay high, the official message is promoted. The people know, and can only know, a tiny fraction of what Leviathan does, and what they know is what these partisans tell them.~ Tom Bethel Government should not tell you what to do unless there's a compelling public purpose.~ Michael Bloomberg Government is a parasite—a cancer that by nature tries to spread deeper into society. Those who want to run others’ lives won’t give up and start minding their own business.~ Harry Browne In the hands of the state, compulsory public education becomes a tool for political control and manipulation -- a prime instrument for the thought police of the society. And precisely because every child passes through the same indoctrination process -- learning the same "official history," the same "civic virtues," the same lessons of obedience and loyalty to the state -- it becomes extremely difficult for the independent soul to free himself from the straightjacket of the ideology and values the political authorities wish to imprint upon the population under its jurisdiction. For the communists, it was the class struggle and obedience to the Party and Comrade Stalin; for the fascists, it was worship of the nation -- state and obedience to the Duce; for the Nazis, it was race purity and obedience to the Fuhrer. The content has varied, but the form has remained the same. Through the institution of compulsory state education, the child is to be molded like wax into the shape desired by the state and its educational elite. We should not believe that because ours is a freer, more democratic society, the same imprinting procedure has not occurred even here, in America. Every generation of school-age children has imprinted upon it a politically correct ideology concerning America's past and the sanctity of the role of the state in society. Practically every child in the public school system learns that the "robber barons" of the 19th century exploited the common working man; that unregulated capitalism needed to be harnessed by enlightened government regulation beginning in the Progressive era at the turn of the century; that wild Wall Street speculation was a primary cause of the Great Depression; that only Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal saved America from catastrophe; and that American intervention in foreign wars has been necessary and inevitable, with the United States government required to be a global leader and an occasional world policeman.~ Richard M. Ebeling Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Our scheme of law affords great latitude for dissent and opposition. It compels wide tolerance not only for their expression but also for the organization of people and forces to bring about the acceptance of the dissenter’s claim….We have alternatives to violence.~ Abe Fortas The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?~ Milton Friedman Free enterprise capitalism exists only when people in the private sector are free to pursue their own interests without direction from government. When politicians start passing laws to tell them what to do, or bureaucrats start issuing edicts to tell them what to do, it is no longer capitalism; it's fascism.~ Rick Gaber If a single writer in a country is in chains, then there are some links of that chain that binds us all.~ Vaclav Havel Education -- compulsory schooling, compulsory learning -- is a tyranny and a crime against the human mind and spirit. Let all those escape it who can, any way they can.~ John Holt Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control.~ Jack Hugh I have never met a more dedicated bunch of people than I did working in the union, at every level. The work is difficult and demanding, and very few people would do it if they didn’t believe in its righteousness. However, the conviction that you know what’s best insulates you against reflecting morally on your own actions and it teaches you to begin assessing morality in terms of either the ends justifying the means, or even worse, of mere good intention justifying those means.~ Ben Johnson To say "I have to" is to speak the language of compulsion, duty, authority -- the language of injunctions imposed on us from without. Objectivism is not a duty ethic, but an ethic of values, the ultimate value being one's own life and happiness. The language of values is "I want" and "I will": I want this, and I will do what it takes to get it.~ David Kelley It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.~ Krishnamurti Without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony.~ Lao-Tzu Consider compulsory school-attendance laws, for instance. They fill government schools with children who don't want to be there. Some students are violent, attacking -- and even killing -- teachers and other students. Teachers must lock their classrooms to keep hoodlums at bay in the hallways. Thus, compulsory attendance laws, alleged to promote education, can make it almost impossible.~ Marisa Manley A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.~ John Stuart Mill You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.~ Octave Mirbeau No external force will ever succeed in making you 'want what you do not want and believe what you do not believe'. A man may take my life, but not my faith.~ Gerhard Oestreich Can anybody point me to that one time in history where the side that was demanding censorship, segregation, propaganda, radical education, papers to move freely in society, plus government forces going door to door to demand compliance were the good guys?~ Candace Owens Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you or pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect your pupils by compulsion?~ Isabel Paterson Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print