Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't
go away
- Philip K. Dick
What has always made the state a hell
on earth has been precisely that man
has tried to make it his
heaven.
--Friedrich Holderlin, quoted by Friedrich Hayek in "The Road To
Serfdom,"
1944.
A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they
may be more docile
instruments in its hand even for beneficial purposes -
will find that with
small men no great thing can really be
accomplished.
--John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty," 1859
"I don't
favor a complete cutoff of welfare
programs. The shock on our moral senses
would be
too great. If you get addicted to heroin, you don't
just stop.
This is the narcotic of a paternalistic
government."
-- WRNG Radio's
Neal Boortz in an interview
with CL (May 29, 1976)
The one
means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.
--
Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf," 1924
Great men, great nations, have not
been boasters and buffoons, but
perceivers of the terror of life, and have
manned themselves to meet it.
-- Emerson, "The Conduct of Life,"
1860.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
Congress. But I
repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain
True, it is
evil that a single man should crush the herd, but see not there
the worst
form of slavery, which is when the herd crushes out the man.
-- Antoine
de Saint-Exupery, "Citadelle," 1948.
Take life into your own hands
and what happens? A terrible thing: no one
to blame.
-- Erica
Jong
The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepard of the
people still
demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.
-- Eric
Hoffer, "The Ordeal of Change," 1964
You cannot build character and
courage by taking away a person's initiative
and independence. You cannot
help people permanently by doing for them what
they could and should do for
themselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln, 1861.
The man who never
looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who
reads them, inasmuch as
he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he
whose mind is filled with
errors and falsehood.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Norvell, June
11, 1807.
Nay, the number of armies importeth not much, where the
people is of weak
courage; for as Virgil saith, "It never troubles the wolf
how many the
sheep be."
-- Sir Francis Bacon, Essays,
1625.
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other
people's money ---
only for wanting to keep your own money." (Joseph
Sobran)
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to
obtain the
largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible
amount of
hissing.
-- Jean Baptiste Colbert, 1665.
A
detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune,
Luck
or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload
it
upon a star.
-- The definition of responsibility according to Ambrose
Bierce, "The
Devil's Dictionary," 1911.
The free state offers what
a police state denies -- the privacy of the
home, the dignity and peace of
mind of the individual.
-- Justice William O. Douglas,
1953.
The flood of money which gushes into politics today is a
pollution of
democracy.
-- Theodore H. White, "Time," Nov.
1984.
Not one cent should be raised unless it is in accord
with
the law.
-- Napoleon, November 15, 1804.
A foreign war
is a lot milder than a civil war.
-- Michel de Montaigne, "Essays,"
1580-88.
Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as
important as a
wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind
me that
people are part of nature, but it isn't true. Somewhere along the
line --
at about a billion years ago, maybe half that -- we quit the contract
and
became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon
the
earth.
Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin
nature, some of us
can only hope for the right virus to come along.
--
David M. Graber, National Park Service.
In all tyrannical governments
the supreme magistracy, or the right both of
making and enforcing the laws,
is vested in one and the same man, or one
and the same body of men; and
wherever these two powers are united
together, there can be no public
liberty.
-- Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England,
1783.
Thanks to Daily Outrage.
