Favorite Quotations Compiled by David N. Mayer |
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"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." "There are only two creatures of value on the face of this earth: those with a commitment, and those who require the commitment of others." "That‘s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." "The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at
the expense of everyone else." "If we are willing to stay fully present to our emotions without denial or disowning, the result typically is not the collapse of reason but the emergence of more lucid awareness. In other words, feel deeply to think clearly." "It is not kindness, compassion, or selflessness that lift people out of poverty. It is liberated human ability--combined with perseverance, courage, and the desire to achieve something worthwhile and (sometimes) to make money in the process. " “We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex. Knowledge is our destiny. Self-knowledge, at last bringing together the experience of the arts and the explanations of science, waits ahead of us.” -- Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man, 1973) “Knowledge is not a loose-leaf notebook of facts. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are, primarily of what we are as ethical creatures. You cannot possibly maintain that informed integrity if you let other people run the world for you while you yourself continue to live out of a ragbag of morals that come from past beliefs.” -- Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man, 1973) “Every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.” -- Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man, 1973) "The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse." "Government being intended to protect Men from the Injuries of one another, and not to direct them in their own Affairs, in which no one is interested but themselves; it is plain, that their Thoughts and domestick Concerns are exempted entirely from its Jurisdiction." "By the establishment of Liberty, a due Distribution of Property and an equal Distribution of Justice is established and secured." "The more laws, the less justice.." "Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people." "I want to live, not merely survive; and I won‘t give up this dream of life that keeps me alive." "Make it count." "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain & bitter; for always there will be greater & lesser persons than yourself." "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." "My dear friend, there‘s a little bit of Don Juan in every man; but since I am Don Juan, there must be more of it in me." "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." "Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity." "Our society is what we make it. We can shape our institutions. Physical and human characteristics limit the alternatives available to us. But none prevents us, if we will, from building a society that relies primarily on voluntary cooperation to organize both economic and other activity, a society that preserves and expands human freedom, that keeps government in its place, keeping it our servant and not letting it become our master. " "A society that puts equality--in the sense of equality of outcome--ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality." "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- "And steadfast as Keats‘ Eremite, "There is a freedom which is mine, and which the State cannot take away. To the unreasonable tyranny of the mob, . . . I shall not submit." "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed‘ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents‘ ‘interests,‘ I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." "Whatever damage the antitrust laws may have done to our economy, whatever distortions of the structure of the nation‘s capital they may have created, these are less disastrous than the fact that the effective purpose, the hidden intent, and the actual practice of the antitrust laws in the United States have led to the condemnation of the productive and efficient members of our society because they are productive and efficient." "Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable." "By Liberty, I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys." "Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death." "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." "[N]o trial for High Treason can ever rob me of my inner worth as scholar or teacher or as a man who unflinchingly professes--that is what the title ‘professor‘ means--his philosophical and political convictions." "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.
The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to
render even them safe their minds must be improved to a certain degree." "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. . . . Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision." "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." "Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power. . . . In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern them? Let history answer this question." "The station which we occupy among the nations of the earth is honorable, but awful. Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, . . . all mankind ought then, with us, to rejoice in its prosperous, and sympathize in its adverse fortunes, as involving everything dear to man. And to what sacrifices of interest or convenience ought not these considerations to animate us, and to what compromises of opinion and inclination, to maintain harmony and union among ourselves, and to preserve from all danger this hallowed ark of human hope and happiness." "Americans are still paying the price of individual liberty, which is individual responsibility and insecurity." "[T]hese United States are a political structure unique in all history, built upon a natural fact never before used as a political principle: the fact that individual persons are naturally free, self-controlling, and responsible." "Everything that an American values, his property, his home, his life, his children‘s future, depends upon his keeping clear in his mind the revolutionary basis of this Republic. This revolutionary basis is recognition of the fact that human rights are natural rights, born in every human being with his life, and inseparable from his life; not rights and freedoms that can be granted by any power on earth." "The true revolutionary course which must be followed toward a free world is a cautious, experimental process of further decreasing the uses of force which individuals permit to Government; of increasing the prohibitions of Government‘s action, and thus decreasing the use of brute force in human affairs." "The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. . . . It is now no child‘s play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation." "We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth." "Screw the Government!" "What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human
nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary." "Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile
away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a
king can." "Reach out--take a chance--get hurt even. Play as well as you can--Go, team, go! Give me an L, give me an I, give me a V, give me an E. L-I-V-E, LIVE! Otherwise, you‘ve got nothing to talk about in the locker room." "I am not a number, I am a free man!" "When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before." "A Progressive is one who is in favor of more taxes instead of less, more bureaus and jobholders, more paternalism and meddling, more regulation of private affairs, and less liberty. In general, he would be inclined to regard the repeal of any tax as outrageous." "I believe in liberty. In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen. . . . I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law. I believe that the government, practically considered, is simply a camorra of incompetent and mainly dishonest men, transiently licensed to live by the labor of the rest of us. I am thus in favor of limiting its powers as much as possible, even at the cost of inconsiderable inconvenience, and of giving every citizen, wise or foolish, right or wrong, the right to criticize it freely, and to advocate changes in its constitution and personnel." "I do not have [Thomas Jefferson‘s] confidence in the wisdom and rectitude of the common man, but I go with him in his belief that the very commonest of common men have certain inalienable rights." "I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty . . . is bound to become a slave." "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. . . . [T]he only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." "It is always the individual who thinks. Society does not think any more than it eats or drinks." "I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion may be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it." "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel." "The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man that ever was propagated since man began to exist." "Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity." "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one." "Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of Government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to Government, and would exist if the formality of Government was abolished. . . . In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to Government." "The power to do things for people is also the power to do things to people." "If you go back 150 years you are a reactionary; but if you go back 1000 years, you are in the foremost ranks of progress." "People mostly do as they like, and that would be fine if they‘d let other people do the same." "One genius is about all a house will hold." "Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish." "Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me." "I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose." "I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold." "Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn‘t--doesn‘t live at all." "Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity. . . . The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way." "I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone‘s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need. I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others. It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing." "By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find it inconceivable . . . check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." "[T]here is no clash of interests among men who do not demand the unearned and who do not practice human sacrifices." "I like cigarettes. . . . I like to think of fire held in a man‘s hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his own expression." "To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. . . . If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.‘ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth had to be created. The words ‘to make money‘ hold the essence of human morality." "[Robin Hood] is the man who became a symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don‘t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. . . . Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive." [Definition of "politicians"]: ". . . men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalizations that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun." "I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and do it well. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people--the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbors and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologize for my ability--I refuse to apologize for my success--I refuse to apologize for my money. . . . If it is now the belief of my fellow men who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!" "To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason--Purpose--Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge--Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve--Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living." "Honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others." "The source of man‘s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A--and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man‘s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work." "Do you want to know who is John Galt? I am the first man of ability who refused to regard it as guilt. I am the first man who would not do penance for my virtues or let them be used as the tools of my destruction." "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it‘s yours." "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." "My morality is based on man‘s life as a standard of value. And since man‘s mind is his basic means of survival, I hold that if man wants to live on earth and to live as a human being, he has to hold reason as his only guide to action and that he must live by the independent judgment of his own mind. That his highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness, and that he must not force other people nor accept their right to force him. That each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest." "Who are to be the New Intellectuals? Any man or woman who is willing to think. All those who know that man‘s life must be guided by reason, those who value their own life and are not willing to surrender it to the cult of despair in the modern jungle of cynical impotence, just as they are not willing to surrender the world to the Dark Ages and the rule of the brutes." "The world crisis of today is a moral crisis--and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American Revolution." "If America perishes, it will perish by intellectual default. . . . Collectivism, as a social ideal, is dead, but capitalism has not yet been discovered." "The difference between political power and any other kind of social 'power,‘ between a government and any private organization, is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. . . . This is the precise difference between big business and big government. The sole means by which a government can grow big is physical force; the sole means by which a business can grow big, in a free economy, is productive achievement." "The only actual factor required for the existence of free competition is: the unhampered, unobstructed operation of the mechanism of a free market. The only action which a government can take to protect free competition is: Laissez-faire!--which, in free translation, means: Hands off!" "If you care about justice to minority groups, remember that businessmen are a small minority--a very small minority, compared to the total of all the uncivilized hordes on earth. Remember how much you owe to this minority--and what disgraceful persecution it is enduring. Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." "The proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories, all of them involving the issues of physical force and the protection of men‘s rights: the police, to protect men from criminals--the armed services, to protect men from foreign invaders--the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objective law." "In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government in such a society, is the task of protecting man‘s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force." "‘The common good‘ (or ‘the public interest‘) is an undefined and undefinable concept; there is no such entity as ‘the tribe‘ or ‘the public‘; the tribe (or the public or society) is only a number of individual men. . . . When ‘the common good‘ of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals." "The economic value of a man‘s work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return. This is the moral meaning of the law of supply and demand." "America‘s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to ‘the common good,‘ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes." "We cannot fight against collectivism, unless we fight its moral base: altruism. We cannot fight against altruism, unless we fight against its epistemological base: irrationalism. We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for something--and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason, and a view of man as a rational being." "The issue of freedom vs. statism--or individual rights vs. government controls, or capitalism vs. socialism--is the basic issue of political philosophy. It is the root, the start, the fundamental which is involved in every specific measure, by which all else is determined, by the side of which all other considerations are trivia. It is the basic--and, today, the only--issue by which a candidate must be judged: freedom vs. statism." "It‘s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, ‘We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.‘ This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man‘s relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves." "The Founding Fathers knew a government can‘t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose." "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness." "He had made . . . a strange and solemn discovery. It had come to him that no one would ever look through those eyes but he: that among all the lives, numerous beyond imagination, in which he might have lived, he was in this one, pinned to this single point of infinity; the rest always to be alien, he to be I." "He sees himself in his lover as if in a mirror, not knowing whom he sees. And when they are together, he too is released from pain, and when apart, he longs as he himself is longed for; for reflected in his heart is love‘s image, which is love‘s answer." "For what is a man, what has he got, if not himself, then he has not." "By pursuing his own interest [every individual] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good." "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens." "To see that the liberty of each man to pursue the objects of his desires is unrestricted, save by the like liberty of all, is [the] special function [of government]. To diminish this liberty by means of taxes, or civil restraints, more than is needful for performing such function, is wrong, because adverse to the function itself." "This fascist crap makes me want to puke" "It is the Forgotten Man who is threatened by every extension of the paternal theory of government. It is he who must work and pay. When, therefore, the statesmen and social philosophers sit down to think what the State can do or ought to do, they really mean to decide what the Forgotten Man shall do." "The truest and deepest pathos in this world is not that of suffering but of brave struggling. The truest sympathy is not compassion, but a fellow-feeling with courage and fortitude in the midst of noble effort." "We all owe to each other good-will, mutual respect, and mutual guarantees of liberty and security. Beyond this nothing can be affirmed as a duty of one group to another in a free state." "I heartily accept the motto,--‘That government is best which governs least‘; and I should like to see it acted up more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,--‘That government is best which governs not at all.‘" "I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom; left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible; they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery." “Republic – I like the sound of the word. Means people can live free, talk free, go or come by themselves, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. Republic is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat, same tightness a man gets when his baby takes his first step or . . . shaves or makes his first sound like a man. Some words can give you a feeling that makes your heart warm. Republic is one of those words.” --John Wayne, as “Davy Crockett,” in The Alamo (1960)
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." |
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