Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2021-01-25 Jan 25, 2021If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.~ Alexis de TocquevilleAs the organized Left gained cultural power, it turned into a monster that found perpetual victimhood, combined with thought and speech control, the most efficient way to hold on to that power. Suddenly it was the Left, the protector of liberty, that was setting rules about what could and could not be said or even thought.~ Tammy BruceA people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.~ William O. Douglas Jan 22, 2021It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.~ Edmund BurkeEither you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.~ F. Scott FitzgeraldIt should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.~ John Adams Jan 21, 2021It [government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.~ Alexis de TocquevilleThese decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.~ AnacharsisArticle I, Section 8, of the Constitution, of course, lays out the delegated, enumerated, and therefore limited powers of Congress. Only through a deliberate misreading of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution has the federal government been allowed to overreach its authority and extend its tendrils into every corner of civil society.~ Edward H. Crane Jan 20, 2021Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.~ Justice William O. DouglasOnce the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land.~ Justice William O. DouglasThe struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and…the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression and obedience.~ Justice William O. Douglas Jan 19, 2021Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them.~ Harold EvansAs to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.~ Jeremy Bentham‘Balanced’ is a code for ‘denied’: a right to free speech that must be ‘balanced’ against so exhaustive a list of other supposed values means a right that can be exercised only when those in power judge that the speech in question is innocuous to them.~ Ronald Dworkin Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print