Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [141-160] of 163 Self-Determination quotesSelf-Determination QuotesSelf-Determination Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Before the creation of the welfare state, immigrants who came to this country were for the most part attracted by America’s reputation as a land of freedom and opportunity. Laws and customs that then prevailed required immigrants to carve out their individual destinies by their own labor, perseverance, intelligence, and determination.~ James Thornton Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the blood of real civilization.~ G. M. Trevelyan A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values.~ Pierre Trudeau I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.~ Mark Twain Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.~ Mark Twain Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.~ Mark Twain Mind Your Business~ U. S. Treasury Just as there is a very short distance between the U.S. and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what to do, how to think, and how to live. And sometimes your freedom is not taken away at gunpoint, but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one small silencing at a time. Never allow the government – or anyone else – to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do.~ Armando Valladares To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in.~ Mark Van Doren The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.~ Vincent van Gogh [T]his Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.~ Virginia Resolution of 1798 The struggle for freedom ... is not the struggle of the many against the few, but of minorities -- sometimes of a minority of but one man -- against the majority.~ Ludwig von Mises A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one nation the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens who devote themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.~ George Washington It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.~ George Washington If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.~ Daniel Webster The States are nations.~ Daniel Webster If the States were not left to leave the Union when their rights were interfered with, the government would have been National, but the Convention refused to baptize it by that name.~ Daniel Webster Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.~ Oscar Wilde Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights.~ George Will And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.~ Marianne Williamson Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print