Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [21-40] of 443 Oppression quotesOppression QuotesOppression Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its purpose is to protect persons and property.... If you exceed this proper limit -- if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, or artistic -- you will then be lost in uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it on you.~ Frederic Bastiat It's gotten to where defense attorneys in federal drug cases can do their clients about as much good as Dr. Kevorkian can do his -- quietly shepherd them through to the least painful end.~ Dan Baum Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.~ Rev. Henry Ward Beecher All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.~ Isaiah Berlin But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you – the social reformers – see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.~ Isaiah Berlin Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery.~ Georges Bernanos Statism – the subordination of the individual to the state -- leads inevitably to the most hideous oppression.~ Andrew Bernstein Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.~ Albert J. Beveridge Republicans don't know how to defend morally an individual's right to achieve wealth and to keep it, and that is why they fail. ... It's part and parcel with their ambivalence over the individualist heritage of the nation. ... One of the things that people have to understand is that the American Revolution was truly an epic revolution in the way individuals were perceived in relation to the rest of the society. Throughout history individuals had always been cogs in some machine; they'd always been something to be sacrificed for the king, the tribe, the gang, the chieftain, the society around them, the race, whatever, and the real revolution, in America especially, was a moral revolution. It was a moral revolution in that ... suddenly, with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the individual, his life, his well-being, his property, his happiness became central to our values, and that is what really made America unique. People came here from all over the world to try to escape the kind of oppression they had and experienced in the past. They came here for freedom; they came here for self-expression and self-realization, and America offered them that kind of a place.~ Robert Bidinotto The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.~ Ambrose Bierce Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.~ Ambrose Bierce The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.~ Steve Biko Compelling a man by law to pay his money to elect candidates or advocate law or doctrines he is against differs only in degree, if at all, from compelling him by law to speak for a candidate, a party, or a cause he is against. The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.~ Justice Hugo L. Black Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.~ Napoleon Bonaparte As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would have [the] constriction of our liberties that would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago.~ Judge Robert Bork [It is] a natural Right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the [English] Bill of rights, to keep arms for their own defense; and as Mr. Blackstone observes, it is to be made use of when the sanctions of Society and law are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.~ Boston Evening Post The first step in saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose it unless fundamental political changes occur.~ James Bovard Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.~ Anne Bradstreet Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.~ Anne Bradstreet Absolutism is a guarantee of objectionable morals in the same way that absolutism in government is a guarantee of objectionable government.~ Robert Briffault Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print