Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [241-260] of 1002 Responsibility quotesResponsibility QuotesResponsibility Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Our Founders warned us that all republics have eventually fallen into tyranny -- the only difference being the relative timeline of each republic's descent. ... From the summer of 1787 when our Framers deliberated over their magnificent Constitution, we have recognized that the clear statement and equal application of the Law is among the most critical duties of any government. If we allow ourselves to lose this, we may as well be back in ancient Rome, subject to the whim of every petty tyrant in the taxing bureau or the zoning board. For it doesn't matter whether the regulator's foot is shod in a jack boot or a Roman sandal; if he can hold you down with that boot upon your neck, then we are no longer in the America that our Founding Fathers intended for us.~ John F. Di Leo Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.~ John G. Diefenbaker I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.~ Frederick Douglass The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.~ Frederick Douglass Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.~ Frederick Douglass We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting, and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put.~ Frederick Douglass Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. ~ Frederick Douglass What shall be done with the four million slaves if they are emancipated? ... Primarily, it is a question less for man than for God -- less for human intellect than for the laws of nature to solve. It assumes that nature has erred; that the law of liberty is a mistake; that freedom, though a natural want of the human soul, can only be enjoyed at the expense of human welfare, and that men are better off in slavery than they would or could be in freedom; that slavery is the natural order of human relations, and that liberty is an experiment. What shall be done with them? Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone.~ Frederick Douglass To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.~ Frederick Douglass He who would be free must strike the first blow.~ Frederick Douglass You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! -- and that! -- and that! -- and that!~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.~ W. E. B. Du Bois Of all the tasks of government, the most basic is to protect its citizens from violence.~ John Foster Dulles The fact that most people think that being selfish means harming one's fellow man, that pursuing one's own self-interest equates to behaving brutally or irrationally, is, as Ms. Rand noted, a "psychological confession" on their part. In fact it is against one's own long-term self-interest to behave irrationally or trample others. Such actions are the exact opposite of selfish -- they're self-destructive.~ Wayne Dunn The concept of a Supreme Being who childishly demands to be constantly placated by prayers and sacrifice and dispenses justice like some corrupt petty judge whose decisions may be swayed by a bit of well-timed flattery should be relegated to the trash bin of history, along with the belief in a flat earth and the notion that diseases are caused by demonic possession. Ironically, the case for the involuntary retirement of God may have been best stated by one Saul or Paul of Tarsus, a first-century tentmaker and Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, who wrote, 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things' (I Corinthians 13:11). Those words are no less relevant today than they were two thousand years ago.~ John J. Dunphy How wonderful the world might be if only we gave to each other all the love we claim to give to God, a thought which has been expressed time and time again, yet it still manages to resound with a poignance that is almost painful. Such a world can be ours, sisters and brothers. Let us work together to achieve it.~ John J. Dunphy In my youth, I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.~ Will Durant The freedom of each individual can only be the freedom of all.~ Friedrich Durrenmatt There is no expedient to which the average person will not go to avoid the hard work of thinking.~ Thomas A. Edison Government of the self was the original basis for republican government, reflecting the view that civil society was much more than politics. Society was made up of men and women who gave order to their lives by entering into associations on a voluntary basis, quite apart from government, for all the various reasons of fellowship, philanthrophy, faith and commerce.~ Hans L. Eicholz Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print