Thoughts
for Today
Collected by Wes Penre
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Thoughts Archives
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June
22.
"The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which
it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the
character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal."
Henri Frederic
Amiel - (1821-1881) - Source: Journal, 17 June 1852
June
21.
"In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a
comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When
... the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens
ceased to be free."
Sir Edward Gibbon
(1737-1794)
June
20.
"The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public
welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy."
Montesquieu, 1748 (1689-1755)
June
19.
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want
crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This
struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both
moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will."
Frederick Douglass
(1818-1895)
June
18.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the
active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal
vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of
his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
John Philpot
Curran (1750-1817): Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790.
(Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
June
17.
"The greatest of fault, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881)
June
16.
"If the people were to ever find out what we have
done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched."
George Bush
(1924-), cited in the June, 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter
June
15.
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest
causes."
Thomas Paine
(1737-1809)
June
14.
'I would never die for my beliefs because I might be
wrong.'
Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970)
June
13.
"Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is
capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to
think, and this they consider freedom."
Oswald Spengler -
(1880-1936) Source: The Decline of the West, 1926
June
12.
"Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny"
Robert
A. Heinlein, Author (1907-1988)
June
11.
"Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than
the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have
an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs
who have no opinion -- and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is
evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth
again reverts to a new minority."
Søren Kierkegaard
- (1813-1855) Danish philosopher
June
10.
"Tis the times plague when madmen lead the blind"
William
Shakespeare [1564-1616] (King Lear) ... or was it ...
Sir Francis Bacon
[1561-1626] (King Lear)
June
09.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are
free."
Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe - (1749-1832)
June
08.
"To
educate a man is to unfit
him to be a slave."
Frederick Douglass -
[Frederick Baily]
(1818-1895), escaped slave,
Abolitionist, author, editor
of the North Star and later
the New National Era
June
07.
"Freedom
of the press, freedom of
association, the
inviolability of domicile,
and all the rest of the
rights of man are respected
so long as no one tries to
use them against the
privileged class. On the day
they are launched against
the privileged they are
overthrown."
Prince Peter Kropotkin
(1842-1921) Russian prince,
author, called "The
Anarchist Prince"
June
06.
"A State which dwarfs its men, in
order that they may be more docile
instruments in its hands -- even for
beneficial purposes -- will find
that with small men no great thing
can really be accomplished."
John Stuart Mill - (1806-1873)
English philosopher and economist
June
05.
"When you see that
trading is done, not by consent, but
by compulsion - when you see that in
order to produce, you need to obtain
permission from men who produce
nothing - when you see that money is
flowing to those who deal, not in
goods, but in favors - when you see
that men get richer by graft and by
pull than by work, and your laws
don't protect you against them, but
protect them against you - when you
see corruption being rewarded and
honesty becoming a self-sacrifice -
you may know that your society is
doomed"
Ayn Rand - (1905-1982) Author -
Source: Atlas Shrugged, Francisco's
"Money Speech"
June
04.
"Every evil, harm and
suffering in this life comes from the love
of riches."
Catherine of Siena - (1347-1380)
Dominican Tertiary - c.1370
June
03.
"COWARDICE, n. A charge
often leveled by all-American types against
those who stand up for their beliefs by
refusing to fight in wars they find
unconscionable, and who willingly go to
prison or into exile in order to avoid
violating their own consciences. These
'cowards' are to be contrasted with
red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who
literally bend over, grab their ankles,
submit to the government, fight in wars they
do not understand (or disapprove of), and
blindly obey orders to maim and to kill
simply because they are ordered to do so—all
to the howling approval of the all-American
mob. This type of behavior is commonly
termed 'courageous.'"
Chaz Bufe
June
02.
“If it's natural to kill, how come
men have to go into training to learn how?”
Joan Baez (1941-)
June
01.
"He who allows oppression, shares
the crime."
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
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