Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2009-10-21 Oct 21, 2009Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. (The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.)~ Cornelius TacitusThe denial or revocation of a parenting license would be expected to be a painful experience, particularly for mothers. The overall importance of protecting innocent children from incompetent parenting justifies the inconvenience to a few parents and the inevitable imperfections of a licensing system.~ Jack C. WestmanIt would not be unreasonable, by analogy with a motor vehicle licence, that a permit to reproduce should also be needed with a minimum age of, for example, twenty-five, and a proof required that the parents are of sufficient maturity and financial resource to take proper care of the child. Young, sexually active, but emotionally immature teenagers would need help.~ Sir Roy Yorke Calne Oct 20, 2009Every State is known by the rights it maintains.~ Harold J. LaskiEarly in 1979, I and several other young nurses from my ward were summoned to a mass meeting. All sixty-odd of us were young married women who had not yet been sterilized. Secretary Wang arrived and took up a position in front of the assembly. His round little face, normally the picture of conviviality, was set in an expression of the utmost gravity. 'Today we have a matter of extreme urgency,' he began, 'a toudeng dashi, to discuss. It concerns the population of the motherland. The People's Republic of China has within its borders nearly a billion people, or one-fifth of the world's population. This is a big burden for the people's government. ... Having children is not a question that we can afford to let each family, each household, decide for itself. ... It is a question that should be decided at the national level. China is a socialist country. This means that the interests of the individual must be subordinated to the interests of the state. Where there is conflict between the interests of the state in reducing population and the interests of the individual in having children, it must be resolved in favor of the state.'~ Chi AnConsequently, any activity that is potentially harmful to others and requires certain demonstrated competence for its safe performance, is subject to regulation that is, it is theoretically desirable that we regulate it. ... In fact, I dare say that parenting is a paradigm of such activities since the potential for harm is great (both in the extent of harm any one person can suffer and in the number of people potentially harmed) and the need for competence is so evident. Consequently, there is good reason to believe that parents should be licensed.~ Hugh LaFollette Oct 19, 2009Having gathered all power to itself, [the State] has become the sole focus of all conflict, and it must construct totalitarian defences to match its total exposure.~ Anthony de JasayThe state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.~ H. L. MenckenThe misapprehension springs from the fact that the learned jurists, deceiving themselves as well as others, depict in their books an ideal of government -- not as it really is, an assembly of men who oppress their fellow-citizens, but in accordance with the scientific postulate, as a body of men who act as the representatives of the rest of the nation. They have gone on repeating this to others so long that they have ended by believing it themselves, and they really seem to think that justice is one of the duties of governments. History, however, shows us that governments, as seen from the reign of Caesar to those of the two Napoleons and Prince Bismarck, are in their very essence a violation of justice; a man or a body of men having at command an army of trained soldiers, deluded creatures who are ready for any violence, and through whose agency they govern the State, will have no keen sense of the obligation of justice. Therefore governments will never consent to diminish the number of those well-trained and submissive servants, who constitute their power and influence.~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi Oct 16, 2009Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.~ William Graham SumnerOnce the government becomes the supplier of people's needs, there is no limit to the needs that will be claimed as a basic right.~ Lawrence Auster ... I suggest that the more the state intervenes in such situations, the more 'necessary' (on this view) it becomes, because positive altruism and voluntary cooperative behaviour atrophy in the presence of the state and grow in its absence. Thus, again, the state exacerbates the conditions which are supposed to make it necessary. We might say that the state is like an addictive drug: the more of it we have, the more we 'need' it and the more we come to 'depend' on it.~ Michael Taylor Oct 15, 2009It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.~ Joseph Paul GoebbelsI claim for the nation an education that depends only on the State, because children of the State must be raised by members of the State.~ Louis-René de Caradeuc de La ChalotaisAgainst individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.~ Benito Mussolini Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print