Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2006-07-07 Jul 7, 2006Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships.~ Andrei SakharovDistrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.~ Friedrich NietzscheAuthority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.~ Robert Lindner Jul 6, 2006Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.~ Albert CamusAuthority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.~ Anne BradstreetThe issues can be stated very briefly: Who will be controlled? Who will exercise control? What type of control will be exercised? Most important of all, toward what end or purpose, or in the pursuit of what value, will control be exercised?~ Carl Rogers 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 Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print