Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2007-05-30 May 30, 2007Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of the law. Detestation of existing politics is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution...~ Judge Learned Hand...if we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.~ Friedrich August von HayekPolitical freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.~ Milton Friedman May 29, 2007Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.~ Anne BradstreetThe advantage of national planning is its ability to remove the wastes of oligopolistic anarchy, i.e. meaningless product differentiation and an imbalance between different industries within a geographical area. It concentrates all levels of decision making in one locale and thus provide each region with a full complement of skills and occupations. This opens up new horizons of local development by making possible the social and political control of economic decision-making. Multinational corporations, in contrast, weaken political control because they span many countries and can escape national regulation.~ Stephen HymerThe War between the States... produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day. Today's federal government is considerably at odds with that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. ... [The War] also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that 'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed'.~ Walter E. Williams May 28, 2007The aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts us to the fact that modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in its imperial rhetoric, as a 'civilizing mission'.~ James C. ScottThe wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.~ John F. KennedyI think it would be an excellent idea.~ Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi 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 Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print