Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2006-10-09 Oct 9, 2006Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.'~ Justice Charles Evans HughesThe real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.~ Max EastmanNature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.~ Will Durant Oct 6, 2006The last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.~ Viktor FranklA free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas.~ Henry Steele CommagerHumanity's most valuable assets have been the non-conformists. Were it not for the non-conformists, he who refuses to be satisfied to go along with the continuance of things as they are, and insists upon attempting to find new ways of bettering things, the world would have known little progress, indeed.~ Josiah William Gitt Oct 5, 2006The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.~ Bergan EvansThere are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and preservation of countries: defensive barriers, forts, trenches, and the like... But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all, and this applies especially to the dealings of democracies. What is this safeguard? Skepticism. This you must preserve. This you must retain. If you can keep this, you need fear no harm.~ DemosthenesIndividuality is freedom lived.~ John Dos Passos Oct 4, 2006We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent.~ Abraham FlexnerIt gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.~ Albert EinsteinBy freethinking I mean the use of the understanding in endeavoring to find out the meaning of any proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature of the evidence for or against, and in judging of it according to the seeming force or weakness of the evidence.~ Anthony Collins Oct 3, 2006Conform and be dull.~ James Frank DobieThere is no inherent misdirection in holding unorthodox views. Indeed, the autonomous individual, free from compulsive conformance and unquestioned assumptions, is likely to be unorthodox... They stimulate the climate of controversy without which political democracy becomes an empty formalism.~ Snell PutneyThe great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.~ William O. Douglas Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print