Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2007-05-25 May 25, 2007Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement is the speaker’s enthusiasm for the result.~ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only a unanimity at the graveyard.~ Justice Robert H. JacksonThe world acquires value only through its extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent.~ Paul ValéryNothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.~ Ralph Waldo EmersonEverything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to chose one’s attitudes in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.~ Viktor FranklMake no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that “freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license,” and they will define freedom out of existence.~ Voltairine de Cleyre May 24, 2007Ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system – a system in which the state must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charge against an accused out of his own mouth.~ Felix FrankfurterAn equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental.~ Thomas JeffersonInjustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.~ Thomas Moore May 23, 2007A society committed to the search for truth must give protection to, and set a high value upon, the independent and original mind, however angular, however rasping, however, socially unpleasant it may be; for it is upon such minds in large measure, that the effective search for truth depends.~ Caryl Parker HaskinsCourage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.~ Sir Winston ChurchillOne day posterity will remember these strange times, when ordinary common honesty was called courage.~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko May 22, 2007Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.~ Nicolas-Sebasstien ChamfortThe study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.~ Paul Bede JohnsonAs hard as modern man strives to be free he is a slave chained to the past.~ Suso Ohno May 21, 2007Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past while we silence the rebels of the present.~ Henry Steele CommagerUltimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.~ Marilyn FergusonViolence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.~ Robert A. Heinlein Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print