| Quotations - General |
[Quote No.44234] Need Area: Friends > General
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson
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[Quote No.44237] Need Area: Friends > General
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It is choosing between the unpalatable and the disastrous." - John Kenneth Galbraith
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[Quote No.44239] Need Area: Friends > General
"...the struggle for freedom has always been a struggle against privilege [unequal treatment and its justification]." - Sheldon Richman
Editor of 'The Freeman' and TheFreemanOnline.org, and a contributor to 'The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics'. [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/murky-labels/ ]
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[Quote No.44244] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Giving too much power to government opens the way to government abusing its power. As Lord Acton said, 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'] The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures.... The separate existence of the federal states will not be done away.... The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such law is in itself a limited one." - Adolf Hitler
(1889-1945) German Nazi Dictator. Source: attempting to allay the people's fears over the Reichstag's centralization of law enforcement with the passage of the 'Enabling Act' on March 23, 1933; (Historian William Shirer attributes this Enabling Act alone as the legal basis for Hitler's dictatorship).
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[Quote No.44250] Need Area: Friends > General
"[In war...] The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." - George Orwell
(1903-1950), pen-name of Eric Arthur Blair, British author of the best-selling books, '1984' and 'Animal Farm'.
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[Quote No.44251] Need Area: Friends > General
"The government consists of a gang of men [and women we call politicians] exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." - H. L. Mencken
(1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic.
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[Quote No.44253] Need Area: Friends > General
"Whensoever the general government assumes undelegated [in the Constitution] powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." - Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President. Source: Kentucky Resolves.
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[Quote No.44256] Need Area: Friends > General
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." - James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA and 4th US President.
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[Quote No.44257] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Popular sovereignty:] The powers granted by the proposed [social contract of the U.S.] Constitution are the gift of the people, and may be resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people." - James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA and 4th US President.
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[Quote No.44258] Need Area: Friends > General
"A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a republic [dedicated to equal liberty for all], and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace [and therefore the US Constitution's stipulations ensuring no standing army, a free press and free speech and the right to bear arms.]" - James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA and 4th US President. Source: The Federalist No. 46.
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[Quote No.44259] Need Area: Friends > General
"Good Government is not intrusive, the people are hardly aware of it; the next best is felt yet loved; then comes that which is known and feared; the worst government is hated." - Lao-Tzu
(570-490 BC), - Li Erh - 'Old Sage', Father of Taoism. Source: Tao Te Ching.
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[Quote No.44262] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Self-Defense and Martial Arts:] Individuals have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them." - John Locke
(1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist. Considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution and who, by far, was the most often non-biblical writer quoted by the Founding Fathers of the USA. Source: 'Second Treatise on Civil Government' 174 (Chicago 1955).
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[Quote No.44263] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Self-Defense and Martial Arts:] It being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion..." - John Locke
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[Quote No.44264] Need Area: Friends > General
"I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else [and therefore the importance of defending my Liberty at all times and in all situations]." - John Locke
(1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist. Considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution and who, by far, was the most often non-biblical writer quoted by the Founding Fathers of the USA.
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[Quote No.44270] Need Area: Friends > General
"Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship." - Harry S. Truman
(1884 – 1972), 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953). As the 34th Vice President of the United States (1945) and the third to serve under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his unprecedented fourth term.
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[Quote No.44272] Need Area: Friends > General
"It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but [politicians, and their public relations advisors, know...] you can fool enough of them to rule a large country." - William J. Durant
(1885 – 1981), prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for 'The Story of Civilization', 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife Ariel Durant and published between 1935 and 1975.
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[Quote No.44299] Need Area: Friends > General
"The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity [and the lowest common denominator, rather than to a meritocracy and the highest ideals]." - James F. Cooper
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[Quote No.44331] Need Area: Friends > General
"[When power-mad politicians immorally manipulate the press in order to lie to a too trusting public to improve their popularity, power base and prospects] Democracy...is the worship of jackals by jack asses." - H. L. Mencken
(1880-1956), American journalist, editor, essayist, linguist, lexicographer and critic.
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[Quote No.44333] Need Area: Friends > General
"Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
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[Quote No.44335] Need Area: Friends > General
"[At present many groups are calling for new 'rights'. Unfortunately those advocating these new 'rights' have not stopped to think that to meet these new 'rights' the established unalienable human rights of others, for example the life, liberty and property of another group, would have to be denied, so they are actually immorally advocating the denial of equal human rights which humanity has fought so painfully to establish and maintain over the centuries.] Any alleged 'right' of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right." - Ayn Rand
Quote from 'The Virtue of Selfishness', 1964.
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[Quote No.44336] Need Area: Friends > General
"You have [unalienable human] rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe [inherent within your human nature that you are born with]." - John Adams
(1735 - 1826), second President of the United States (1797–1801), having earlier served as the first Vice President of the United States. An American Founding Father, he was a statesman, diplomat and a leader of American independence from Great Britain. Well educated, he was an Enlightenment political theorist who promoted republicanism.
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[Quote No.44338] Need Area: Friends > General
"Once we start from this idea, accepted by all our political theorists [that] 'The motive force of society is the government'; once men consider themselves as sentient, but passive, incapable of improving themselves morally or materially by their own intelligence and energy, and reduced to expecting everything from the law; in a word, when they admit that their relation to the state is that of a flock of sheep to the shepherd, it is clear that the [power and] responsibility of the government is immense. Good and evil, virtue and vice, equality and inequality, wealth and poverty, all proceed from it. It is entrusted with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; hence, it is responsible for everything [and thereby each individual is equivalently disempowered, regardless of their individual capacity, want or need]." - Frederic Bastiat
Quote from his book, 'The Law', 1850.
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[Quote No.44339] Need Area: Friends > General
"A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action — which means; the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.)" - Ayn Rand
Quote from her book, 'The Virtue of Selfishness', 1964.
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[Quote No.44341] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Foreign policy and free trade:] It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.... Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences." - George Washington
First US President. Quote from his Farewell Address, September 26, 1796.
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[Quote No.44342] Need Area: Friends > General
"Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust. Whether our Constitution has hit on the exact degree of control necessary, is yet under experiment." - Thomas Jefferson
Quote from his letter to M. van der Kemp, 1812.
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[Quote No.44361] Need Area: Friends > General
"You've gotta be original [i.e. an individual], because if you're like someone else, what do they [i.e. your family, your work team, society and humanity] need you for?" - Bernadette Peters
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[Quote No.44367] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Don't succumb to peer pressure and group think. Above all else think for yourself and value your freedom, individuality, authenticity and being yourself, so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property:] Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies?" - Edward Young
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[Quote No.44372] Need Area: Friends > General
"The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called 'society,' or the 'nation,' which is only a collection of individuals. [In the individual's expression of their equal, unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the foundation for a better future for each member of humanity.]" - Emma Goldman
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[Quote No.44373] Need Area: Friends > General
"Be thankful not only that you are an individual but also that others are different. The world needs all kinds, but it also needs to use and respect that individuality." - Donald A. Laird
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[Quote No.44375] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Freedom, individuality, authenticity and being yourself, so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property:] Do not be awestruck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can!" - Norman Vincent Peale
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[Quote No.44377] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Freedom, individuality, authenticity and being yourself, so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property:] The problem [of society] is to find a form of association [a social contract] which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods [private property] of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all [for mutual protection], may still obey himself alone, and remain as free [from force, coercion and fraud] as before [when alone in nature with his unalienable human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and private property]." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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[Quote No.44379] Need Area: Friends > General
"True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world!" - Felix E. Schelling
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[Quote No.44381] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Freedom, individualism, individuality and being yourself, so long as it doesn't hurt the physical person or property of another:] There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its power and authority was derived, and treats him [or her] accordingly [and not as a means to an end that benefits the state or a portion of the state or population more than the individuals concerned]." - Henry David Thoreau
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[Quote No.44382] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Do not succumb to peer pressure or group think:] Individuality is the salt of common life. You may have to live in a crowd, but do not have to live like it, nor subsist on its food." - Henry Van Dyke
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[Quote No.44384] Need Area: Friends > General
"No act of kindness [voluntary compassion], no matter how small, is ever wasted." - Aesop
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[Quote No.44385] Need Area: Friends > General
"Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder [more voluntarily compassionate] than is necessary." - J. M. Barrie
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[Quote No.44386] Need Area: Friends > General
"When kindness [voluntary compassion] has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them." - Willa Cather
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[Quote No.44388] Need Area: Friends > General
"True kindness [voluntary compassion] presupposes [empathy -] the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others." - Andre Gide
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[Quote No.44389] Need Area: Friends > General
"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness [voluntary compassion]." - the Dalai Lama
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, a Tibetan Buddhist.
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[Quote No.44390] Need Area: Friends > General
"It is a little embarrassing that after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder [more voluntarily compassionate] to each other." - Aldous Huxley
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[Quote No.44392] Need Area: Friends > General
"Kindness [voluntary compassion] is in our power, even when fondness is not." - Dr. Samuel Johnson
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[Quote No.44393] Need Area: Friends > General
"A part of kindness [voluntary compassion] consists in loving people more than they deserve." - Joseph Joubert
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[Quote No.44394] Need Area: Friends > General
"In this world, you must be a bit too kind [voluntarily compassionate] in order to be kind enough." - Pierre de Marivaux
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[Quote No.44395] Need Area: Friends > General
"Deeds of kindness [voluntary compassion] are equal in weight to all of the commandments." - The Talmud
(Hebrew: 'talmud' = 'instruction, learning', from a root 'lmd' = 'teach, study'), a central text of mainstream Judaism, considered second to the Torah. It is also traditionally referred to as Shas, a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the 'six orders' of the Oral Law of Judaism. The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (c. 200 CE), the first written compendium of Judaism's Oral Law, and the Gemara (c. 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably.
The whole Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. It is written in Tannaitic Hebrew and Aramaic. The Talmud contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis on a variety of subjects, including law, ethics, philosophy, customs, history, theology, lore and many other topics. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of rabbinic law and is much quoted in other rabbinic literature.
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[Quote No.44396] Need Area: Friends > General
"All values in this world are more or less questionable, but the most important thing in life is human kindness [voluntary compassion]." - Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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[Quote No.44397] Need Area: Friends > General
"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there." - Robert M. Pirsig
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[Quote No.44399] Need Area: Friends > General
"Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster!" - Robert M. Pirsig
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[Quote No.44411] Need Area: Friends > General
"To ensure moral salvation, it is primarily necessary to depend on oneself because in the moment of peril we are alone." - Maria Montessori
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[Quote No.44418] Need Area: Friends > General
"[The unalienable human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness dictate the utmost equal freedom from force, coercion and fraud for each individual person: i.e. 'Live and let live'. Others have said it differently, but with the same meaning:] If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or faraway [so long as he is peaceful and honest]." - Henry David Thoreau
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[Quote No.44422] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Political and government interference in things, especially the free market and the capitalist economy, can actually make everything more dangerous by making people believe they don't have to behave in a mature, careful and self-responsible way, as others are supposed to protect them as well as they would protect themselves. In economics this is called 'moral hazard'. For example, in the Great Recession, also called the Great Financial Crisis, of 2007-09, people believed the credit rating agencies' AAA rating on sub-prime mortgage backed securities, which eventually proved to be worthless, rather than doing their own 'due diligence'. The belief in central banks rescuing economies in recessions through Keynesian stimulus efforts is another dangerous belief that encourages reckless behavior by banks, businesses, consumers and governments, that Austrian School economists have been warning about for nearly a century.] Maybe we should learn from the lessons learned in the Dutch town of Drachten. A number of years ago the local council took the seemingly drastic step of removing all traffic lights, most road signs, lane markers and other devices designed to control the traffic flow through the city centre.
The result? The local residents complained at first because they felt less safe, which was exactly the objective of the exercise. When you feel less safe, you slow down and you seek eye contact with your fellow drivers and pedestrians. The experiment has since been repeated elsewhere and the result is the same – a dramatic reduction in the number of accidents everywhere the ‘naked street’ approach (as they call it) has been introduced.
What has this got to do with risk taking in the financial markets you may wonder? A lot, I would argue. The rating agencies told us that any AA or AAA rated paper was safe, just like the little green man does when he shows up at my local traffic junction to tell me that it is now safe to cross the street. Human beings have an inclination to switch their brains off when operating within a system that is perceived to be safe [a 'paternal' political-economic system, which is the goal of socialist, statist government policies]. Hence a (part) solution to the financial crisis could very well be to make it appear as if the financial system is less safe. Fewer and simpler rules will achieve precisely that. [When governments and politicians in order to win votes try to step in, like parents and treat adults like children needing protection, then the adults start behaving like children and not taking responsibility for their own lives and safety - literally disempowering themselves. This is a common and very dangerous mistake by 'big government' politicians. It is an example of the famous concept of 'The Law of Unintended Consequences' - of focusing on the obvious 'seen' consequences without the 'hard won', 'real world' wisdom to look for and understand the not obvious 'unseen' consequences. That by trying to be too 'caring and kind' socialist, statist politicians, like parents who don't understand their role is to create independent adults rather than dependent adult-age children, keep their citizens in a state of incompetent 'childhood', which is dangerous and expensive for all, rather than educating and expecting all but the mentally and physically 'unfit', to become adults with adult responsibilities for themselves, as well as the freedoms to make the most of their potential and opportunities for the good of all.]" - The Absolute Return Partners
Financial Analysts. Quote from their 'Absolute Return Letter', September 2012, page 2.[http://www.arpllp.com/core_files/The_Absolute_Return_Letter_0912%281%29.pdf ]
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