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We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love.
Author: Richard Mitchell
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All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.
Author: F.a. Hayek
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The fact that slaughter [battle] is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but [it does] not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.
Author: Carl Von Clausewitz
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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Author: Carl Von Clausewitz
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
Author: William Godwin
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...a man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
Author: Thomas Henry Huxley
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At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.
Author: Eric Idle
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The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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He is free who knows how to keep in his own hand the power to decide, at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power.
Author: Salvador De Madariaga
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The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
Author: William H. Borah
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Governments will always misuse the machinery of the law as far as the state of public opinion permits.
Author: Emile Capouya
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No serious historian of politics would imagine that he had accounted for the protective tariff of the system of bounties or subsidies, for the monetary and banking laws, for the state of law in regard to corporate privileges and immunities, for the actual status of property rights, for agricultural or for labor policies, until he had gone behind the general claims and the abstract justifications and had identified the specifically interested groups which promoted the specific law.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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The war for liberty never ends. One day liberty has to be defended against the power of wealth, on another day against the intrigues of politicians, on another against the dead hand of bureaucrats, on another against the patrioter and the militarist, on another against the profiteer, and then against the hysteria and the passions of the mobs, against obscurantism and stupidity, against the criminal and against the overrighteous. In this campaign every civilized man is enlisted till he dies, and he only has known the full joy of living who somewhere and at some time has struck a decisive blow for the freedom of the human spirit.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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For the principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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It seems that an essential condition for crises is to be found in the existence of a highly developed system of communications and the spreading of a homogenous mentality over vast areas.But when the hour and the right material are at hand, the contagion spreads with the speed of electricity over hundreds of miles, and affects the most diverse populations, which hardly know each other. The message flies through the air and they all suddenly agree on that one issue, if only a sulky admission that "there's got to be a change.".
Author: Jakob Burckhardt
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..the Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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In war, the stronger overcomes the weaker. In business, the stronger imparts strength to the weaker.
Author: Frederic Bastiat
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Even a cursory glance at history should convince one that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite insignificant part in the human tragedy, compared to the numbers massacred in unselfish loyalty to one's tribe, nation, dynasty, church, or political ideology, ad majorem gloriam dei. The emphasis is on unselfish. Excepting a small minority of mercenary or sadistic disposition, wars are not fought for personal gain, but out of loyalty and devotion to king, country or cause. Homicide committed for personal reasons is a statistical rarity in all cultures, including our own. Homicide for unselfish reasons, at the risk of one's own life, is the dominant phenomenon of history.
Author: Arthur Koestler
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One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
Author: Thomas Sowell
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My father was a minister. I had to make up for the lack of sin.
Author: Londo Molari
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People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Author: Kierkegaard
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Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
Author: Stephen Covey
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The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one. - "London Times", February 17, 1941.
Author: Archibald Wavell
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There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.
Author: William J. Clinton
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So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.
Author: Roger Baldwin
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Power (n): The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
Author: Anonymous
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Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
Author: Dwight D Eisenhower
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Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.
Author: William Ewart Gladstone
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Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
Author: Thurgood Marshall
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Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
Author: John Stuart Mill
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A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
Author: Franklin D. Roosevelt
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We hold that the reckless disregard for human life implicit in knowingly engaging in criminal activity known to carry a grave risk of death represents a highly culpable mental state that may be taken into account in making a capital sentencing judgment not inevitable, lethal result.
Author: Sandra Day O'connor
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Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
Author: Dwight D. Eisenhower
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If you have a lemon, make lemonade.
Author: Howard Gossage
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All of the troubles that some people have in life is that which they married into.
Author: Edgar Watson Howe
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Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects.
Author: Leo Tolstoy
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The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives. Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence; and things mean and splendid exist alike.
Author: Francis Bacon
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Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. What other virtue can there be in fifty-one percent except the brute fact that fifty-one is more than forty-nine? The rule of fifty-one per cent is a convenience, it is for certain matters a satisfactory political device, it is for others the lesser of two evils, and for others it is acceptable because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all sense of its true meaning when we imagine that the opinion of fifty-one per cent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole hundred per cent, or indulge in the sophistry that the rule of a majority is based upon the ultimate equality of man.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilizations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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It is the very essence of despotism that it can never afford to fail. This is what distinguishes it most vitally from democracy. In a despotism there is no organized opposition which can take over the power when the Administration in office has failed. All the eggs are in one basket. Everything is staked on one coterie of men. When the going is good, they move more quickly and efficiently than democracies, where the opposition has to be persuaded and conciliated. But when they lose, there are no reserves. There are no substitutes on the bench ready to go out on the field and carry the ball. That is why democracies with the habit of party government have outlived all other forms of government in the modern world. They have, as it were, at least two governments always at hand, and when one fails they have the other. They have diversified the risks of mortality, corruption, and stupidity which pervade all human affairs. They have remembered that the most beautifully impressive machine cannot run for very long unless there is available a complete supply of spare parts.
Author: Walter Lippmann
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Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
Author: Honore De Balzac
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To desire the attainment of this equality or superiority by the particular means of others being brought down to our own level, or below it, is, I think, the distinct notion of envy.
Author: Joseph Butler
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Who overcomesBy force, hath overcome but half his foe.
Author: John Milton
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Delegating means letting others become the experts and hence the best.
Author: Timothy Firnstahl
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Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie!" till you can find a rock.
Author: Wynn Catlin
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