Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2006-07-05 Jul 5, 2006It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.~ VoltaireAll discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.~ Judge Learned HandReasonable argument is impossible when authority becomes the arbiter.~ Orson Scott Card Jul 4, 2006If the author of the Declaration of Independence were to utter such a sentiment today, the Post Office Department could exclude him from the mail, grand juries could indict him for sedition and criminal syndicalism, legislative committees could seize his private papers ... and United States Senators would be clamoring for his deportation that he... should be sent back to live with the rest of the terrorists.~ Frank I. CobbI consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people' (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.~ Thomas Jefferson Jul 3, 2006No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right.~ William E. BorahThe whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.~ H. L. MenckenA new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals’ rights – which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state.~ Gerry Spence Jun 30, 2006There are two kinds of restrictions on human liberty -- the restraint of law and that of custom. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.~ Carrie Chapman CattThe mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution unto truth, has been a preemptory adhesion unto authority.~ Sir Thomas BrowneFor liberalism, the individual is the end, and society the means. For fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.~ Alfredo Rocco Jun 29, 2006Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.~ Aldous HuxleyThe power of authority is never more subtle and effective than when it produces a psychological “atmosphere” or “climate” favorable to the life of certain modes of belief, unfavorable, and even fatal, to the life of others.~ Arthur BalfourUniformity, therefore, is an essential built-in element of utopian existence, and it is no less important that this uniformity remain permanent.~ Thomas Molnar Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print