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| Quotations - General | [Quote No.44950] Need Area: Friends > General
"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'Emergency.' It was a tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of the men striving to get on horseback. And 'Emergency' ['crisis'] became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains. The invasion of New Deal Collectivism was introduced by this same Trojan Horse." - Herbert Hoover
US President. Quoted in 'Crisis and Leviathan'.
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| [Quote No.44970] Need Area: Friends > General
"[How to develop empathy:] In order to empathize with the suffering of others, [use your imagination and] make mental images. When someone experiences suffering and pain, make a picture in your mind as if it were happening to you. [Then you have a better idea about what to say and how to behave as it is ...] Whatever you would want other people to do for you in such a situation..." - Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
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| [Quote No.44988] Need Area: Friends > General
"Each man [or woman when directed to go to war by his or her government] must for himself [or herself] alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man [or a woman with personal integrity]. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may." - Mark Twain
(1835 - 1910)
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| [Quote No.44989] Need Area: Friends > General
"What is right [to you personally] is often [unfortunately and unforgivably] forgotten by what is convenient." - Bodie Thoene
Source: Warsaw Requiem
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| [Quote No.44990] Need Area: Friends > General
"The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts." - Blaise Pascal
(1623 - 1662), French mathematician and philosopher. Quote from his book, 'Pensées', 1670.
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| [Quote No.44994] Need Area: Friends > General
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
(1918 - 2008), Russian novelist, Soviet dissident, imprisoned for 8 years for critizing Stalin in a personal letter, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1970.
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| [Quote No.44995] Need Area: Friends > General
"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty." - Albert Einstein
(1879 - 1955), Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921. Quote from his article, 'What I Believe,' Forum and Century, 1930.
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| [Quote No.44996] Need Area: Friends > General
"[In moral issues in particular a person needs to think independently and be authentic.] Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." - Harper Lee
(1926 - ) American author and 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novelist for her book, 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. Quote from 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.
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| [Quote No.44997] Need Area: Friends > General
"In their great wisdom, our Founding Fathers, gathered in Philadelphia to draft the new U.S. Constitution, gave the sole authority to declare war to the U.S. Congress. ... our Founders understood that it was essential, to secure a representative form of republican self-government, that the power to declare war must be in the hands of Congress, and not in the Executive Branch. ...
Nothing has transpired in the intervening centuries to justify any alteration in their wise decision. Under our Federal Constitution, only the Congress has the power to declare war, and that must remain a cardinal principle. In recent decades, we have seen an erosion of that Constitutional principle, and I fully concur that this erosion must be halted and reversed." - Gen. Joseph P. Hoar
(1934 - ), US Marine Corps four-star general (retired), Chief of Staff and later the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). Source: Sep 21, 2012, press conference to introduce HCR 107, which reasserts the Constitutional clause on Congress' exclusive responsibility to declare war, and states that any president who does not get Congressional authorization before entering war will be immediately subject to impeachment.
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| [Quote No.44998] Need Area: Friends > General
"In existing criminology there are concepts:
a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society,
a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe,
but there is no concept of a criminal state,
or a criminal government, or criminal legislation.
Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes." - P. D. Ouspensky
(1878 - 1947). Quote from 'A New Model of the Universe', 1931.
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| [Quote No.44999] Need Area: Friends > General
"By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything
which does not interfere with the happiness of another.
By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think
and the right to think wrong." - Robert G. Ingersoll
(1833 - 1899), American political leader and orator.
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| [Quote No.45014] Need Area: Friends > General
"Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance." - Winston Churchill
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| [Quote No.45015] Need Area: Friends > General
"In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships." - Alexis De Tocqueville
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| [Quote No.45028] Need Area: Friends > General
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. [History has shown that unlimited power is dangerous as it corrupts the user away from moral justice towards pure self-interest.]" - James Madison
Federalist No. 58, published February 20, 1788.
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| [Quote No.45029] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Individualism and the need for legal protection of individuals' lives, property and freedom from force, coercion and fraud by any one or group:] Misuse of government power, particularly in times of stress, has brought suffering to humanity in all ages about which we have authentic history. Some of the world's noblest and finest men have suffered ignominy and death for no crime - unless unorthodoxy is a crime. Even enlightened Athens had its victims such as Socrates. Because of the same kind of bigotry, Jesus, the great Dissenter, was put to death on a wooden cross. The flames of inquisitions all over the world have warned that men endowed with unlimited government power, even earnest men, consecrated to a cause, are dangerous [especially to minorities, including the smallest minority - the individual]." - Hugo L. Black
Quote from his 'The Bill of Rights', published 1960.
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| [Quote No.45040] Need Area: Friends > General
"So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind,
Is all the sad world needs." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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| [Quote No.45042] Need Area: Friends > General
"I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could. " - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
(1869 - 1948), Indian lawyer and leader of the Indian independence movement.
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| [Quote No.45043] Need Area: Friends > General
"The moral test of [any individual or] government is how that [individual or] government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life - the sick, the needy and the handicapped." - Hubert Horatio Humphrey
(1911 - 1978), US Vice President
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| [Quote No.45055] Need Area: Friends > General
"...To achieve liberty and peace, two powerful human emotions have to be overcome. Number one is 'envy' which leads to hate and class warfare. Number two is 'intolerance' which leads to bigoted and judgmental policies. These emotions must be replaced with a much better understanding of love, compassion, tolerance and free market economics. Freedom, when understood, brings people together. When tried, freedom is popular.
The problem we have faced over the years has been that economic interventionists [authoritarians] are swayed by envy, whereas social interventionists [authoritarians] are swayed by intolerance of habits and lifestyles. The misunderstanding that tolerance is an endorsement of certain activities, motivates many to legislate moral standards which should only be set by individuals making their own choices. Both sides use force to deal with these misplaced emotions. Both are authoritarians. Neither endorses voluntarism [freedom]. Both views ought to be rejected.
I have come to one firm conviction after these many years of trying to figure out 'the plain truth of things.' The best chance for achieving peace and prosperity, for the maximum number of people world-wide, is to pursue the cause of LIBERTY.
If you find this to be a worthwhile message, spread it throughout the land." - Ron Paul
Republican Congressman for Texas. Previously a doctor, he held and advocated libertarian views, promoting freedom socially and economically. Quote from his 'Farewell to Congress' speech, 14th November, 2012.
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| [Quote No.45056] Need Area: Friends > General
"The immoral use of force is the source of man’s political problems. Sadly, many religious groups, secular organizations, and psychopathic authoritarians [encourage, advocate and] endorse government initiated force to change the world... Government in a free society should have no authority to meddle in social activities or the economic transactions of individuals [which are peaceful and voluntary]. Nor should government meddle in the affairs of other nations. All things peaceful [and voluntary without force or fraud], even when controversial, should be permitted." - Ron Paul
Republican Congressman for Texas. Previously a doctor, he held and advocated libertarian views, promoting freedom socially and economically. Quote from his 'Farewell to Congress' speech, 14th November, 2012.
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| [Quote No.45061] Need Area: Friends > General
"Every election [in a society where government and its ability to tax is allowed to go beyond only stopping the use of force and fraud in social and economic contexts] is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods [in order to buy votes and therefore political power].
" - H. L. Mencken
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| [Quote No.45069] Need Area: Friends > General
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking [forcing] others to live as one wishes to live [rather than as they wish to live so long as it is peaceful and voluntary]." - Oscar Wilde
(1854 - 1900), Quote from his book, 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'.
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| [Quote No.45078] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Skepticism, particularly about political promises, is important because...women and] Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true." - Julius Caesar
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| [Quote No.45083] Need Area: Friends > General
"I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people [and therefore the continual efforts by the pro-war powers to keep winning the heart and minds of the citizenry through the media]." - Edmund Burke
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| [Quote No.45091] Need Area: Friends > General
"Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul..." - Eric Hoffer
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| [Quote No.45100] Need Area: Friends > General
"That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful force extorts from them." - John Locke
'The Second Treatise of Civil Government', published 1690.
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| [Quote No.45101] Need Area: Friends > General
"Do you not see, first, that — as a mental abstract — physical force is directly opposed to morality; and, secondly, that it practically drives out of existence the moral forces? How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free action of an intelligent being? If you tie a man's hands there is nothing moral about his not committing murder. Such an abstaining from murder is a mechanical act; and just the same in kind, though less in degree, are the acts which men are compelled to do under penalties imposed upon them by their fellow men. Those who would drive their fellow men into the performance of any good actions do not see that the very elements of morality — the free act following on the free choice — are as much absent in those upon whom they practice their legislation as in a flock of sheep penned in by hurdles." - Auberon Herbert
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| [Quote No.45102] Need Area: Friends > General
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." - Lord Acton
'The History of Freedom and Other Essays', 1907.
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| [Quote No.45103] Need Area: Friends > General
"Many idealists think they know better than the ordinary person what is good for that person. They consider themselves a cut above the ordinary individual who just isn’t smart enough to know what he or she should do. Idealists seek government power [and legal force] to impose their ideas upon the rest of us. They may be personally honest insofar as not thinking of lining their own pockets with money but have little compunction about bolstering their egos with government power... [and] to impose their ideas upon those of us who just want to make our way in a free market in open competition with everyone else. They don’t believe in a free market or voluntary actions. They do believe in controlling others by means of government power." - Harry Hoiles
'The Santa Ana Register', June 2, 1979.
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| [Quote No.45125] Need Area: Friends > General
"Right makes might." - Abraham Lincoln
Quote from his address at the Cooper Union in 1860.
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| [Quote No.45127] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Governments often go to war when their economies are in a slump in order to increase aggregate demand, employment and domestic social cohesion, as per Keynesian economic theory:]
It is not an exaggeration to say that the end of abnormal unemployment [since the Great Depression] is in sight. And it isn’t only the unemployed who will feel the difference. A great number besides will be taking home better money each week. And with the demand for efficient labor outrunning the supply, how much more comfortable and secure everyone will feel in his job. The Grand Experiment has begun. If it works – if expenditure on armaments [in preparation for World War II] really does cure unemployment – I predict that we shall never go back all the way to the old state of affairs. Good may come out of evil. We may learn a trick or two, which will come in useful when the day of peace comes... If we can cure unemployment [through government stimulus spending to increase aggregate demand] for the wasted purposes of armaments, we can cure it for the productive purposes of peace." - John Maynard Keynes
Economist whose theories about increasing government spending during recessions, etc., were the basis for the school of economics called Keynesianism, so favoured by governments since the Great Depression. Quote from his famous May 23rd, 1939, BBC radio address, 'Will Re-armament Cure Unemployment?'. [http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/john_maynard_keynes_explains_cure_to_high_unemployment_in_his_own_voice_1939.html ]
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| [Quote No.45128] Need Area: Friends > General
"Any government administration or political party that consorts with either labor [as in socialism and in its extreme communism] or management [as in 'crony capitalism', also called corporatism, and in its extreme 'fascism'] to use its legal power to reduce the freedom from force or fraud of any member of society is an abomination and is unworthy of power and the trust of the populace." - Seymour@imagi-natives.com
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| [Quote No.45129] Need Area: Friends > General
"[All governments should be aware that business, like all other special interest groups - including labor unions, etc, will try to usurp government's legal right to use force for their own interests.] ...people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. [Any government administration or political party that succumbs and consorts with management - as in 'crony capitalism', also called corporatism, and in its extreme 'fascism' - or any other special interest group, for example labor as in socialism and in its extreme communism, to use its legal power to reduce the freedom from force or fraud of any member of society is an abomination and is unworthy of power and the trust of the populace.] " - Adam Smith
Famous economist
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| [Quote No.45130] Need Area: Friends > General
"[There is an unfortunate, blindness that power and authority brings to all but the most enlightened leaders - politicians, bureaucrats, business-people, academics, etc ...even parents. A blindness born of hubris, pride, and lack of skepticism with their own assumptions, logic, infallibility and advisors. Usually those concerned will try to say they are not to blame, but they usually are and their denials and scapegoating of blame only goes to reinforce their ignorance and the public's contempt of their competence, integrity, character and position. The following article is about an example of this with the Great Recession, also known as the Great Financial Crisis, of 2007, second only to the Great Depression in financial and social cost to the world:]
‘I Saw the Crisis Coming. Why Didn’t the Fed?’
Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, proclaimed last month that no one could have predicted the housing bubble. ‘Everybody missed it,’ he said, ‘academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators.’
But that is not how I remember it. Back in 2005 and 2006, I argued as forcefully as I could, in letters to clients of my investment firm, Scion Capital, that the mortgage market would melt down in the second half of 2007, causing substantial damage to the economy. My prediction was based on my research into the residential mortgage market and mortgage-backed securities. After studying the regulatory filings related to those securities, I waited for the lenders to offer the most risky mortgages conceivable to the least qualified buyers. I knew that would mark the beginning of the end of the housing bubble; it would mean that prices had risen — with the expansion of easy mortgage lending — as high as they could go.
I had begun to worry about the housing market back in 2003, when lenders first resurrected interest-only mortgages, loosening their credit standards to generate a greater volume of loans. Throughout 2004, I had watched as these mortgages were offered to more and more subprime borrowers — those with the weakest credit. The lenders generally then sold these risky loans to Wall Street to be packaged into mortgage-backed securities, thus passing along most of the risk. Increasingly, lenders concerned themselves more with the quantity of mortgages they sold than with their quality.
Meanwhile, home buyers, convinced by recent history that real estate prices would always rise, readily signed onto whatever mortgage would get them the biggest house. The incentive for fraud was great: the F.B.I. reported that its mortgage fraud caseload increased fivefold from 2001 to 2004.
At the same time, I also watched how ratings agencies vouched for subprime mortgage-backed securities. To me, these agencies seemed not to be paying much attention.
By mid-2005, I had so much confidence in my analysis that I staked my reputation on it. That is, I purchased credit default swaps — a type of insurance — on billions of dollars worth of both subprime mortgage-backed securities and the bonds of many of the financial companies that would be devastated when the real estate bubble burst. As the value of the bonds fell, the value of the credit default swaps would rise. Our swaps covered many of the firms that failed or nearly failed, including the insurer American International Group and the mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I entered these trades carefully. Suspecting that my Wall Street counterparties might not be able or willing to pay up when the time came, I used six counterparties to minimize my exposure to any one of them. I also specifically avoided using Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns as counterparties, as I viewed both to be mortally exposed to the crisis I foresaw.
What’s more, I demanded daily collateral settlement — if positions moved in our favor, I wanted cash posted to our account the next day. This was something I knew that Goldman Sachs and other derivatives dealers did not demand of AAA-rated A.I.G.
I believed that the collapse of the subprime mortgage market would ultimately lead to huge failures among the largest financial institutions. But at the time almost no one else thought these trades would work out in my favor.
During 2007, under constant pressure from my investors, I liquidated most of our credit default swaps at a substantial profit. By early 2008, I feared the effects of government intervention and exited all our remaining credit default positions — by auctioning them to the many Wall Street banks that were themselves by then desperate to buy protection against default. This was well in advance of the government bailouts. Because I had been operating in the face of strong opposition from both my investors and the Wall Street community, it took everything I had to see these trades through to completion. Disheartened on many fronts, I shut down Scion Capital in 2008.
Since then, I have often wondered why nobody in Washington showed any interest in hearing exactly how I arrived at my conclusions that the housing bubble would burst when it did and that it could cripple the big financial institutions. A week ago I learned the answer when Al Hunt of Bloomberg Television, who had read Michael Lewis’s book, ‘The Big Short,’ which includes the story of my predictions, asked Mr. Greenspan directly. The former Fed chairman responded that my insights had been a ‘statistical illusion.’ Perhaps, he suggested, I was just a supremely lucky flipper of coins.
Mr. Greenspan said that he sat through innumerable meetings at the Fed with crack economists, and not one of them warned of the problems that were to come. By Mr. Greenspan’s logic, anyone who might have foreseen the housing bubble would have been invited into the ivory tower, so if all those who were there did not hear it, then no one could have said it.
As a nation, we cannot afford to live with Mr. Greenspan’s way of thinking. The truth is, he should have seen what was coming and offered a sober, apolitical warning. Everyone would have listened; when he talked about the economy, the world hung on every single word.
Unfortunately, he did not give good advice. In February 2004, a few months before the Fed formally ended a remarkable streak of interest-rate cuts, Mr. Greenspan told Americans that they would be missing out if they failed to take advantage of cost-saving adjustable-rate mortgages. And he suggested to the banks that ‘American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage.’
Within a year lenders made interest-only adjustable-rate mortgages readily available to subprime borrowers. And within 18 months lenders offered subprime borrowers so-called pay-option adjustable-rate mortgages, which allowed borrowers to make partial monthly payments and have the remainder added to the loan balance (much like payments on a credit card).
Observing these trends in April 2005, Mr. Greenspan trumpeted the expansion of the subprime mortgage market. ‘Where once more-marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit,’ he said, ‘lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately.’
Yet the tide was about to turn. By December 2005, subprime mortgages that had been issued just six months earlier were already showing atypically high delinquency rates. (It’s worth noting that even though most of these mortgages had a low two-year teaser rate, the borrowers still had early difficulty making payments.)
The market for subprime mortgages and the derivatives thereof would not begin its spectacular collapse until roughly two years after Mr. Greenspan’s speech. But the signs were all there in 2005, when a bursting of the bubble would have had far less dire consequences, and when the government could have acted to minimize the fallout.
Instead, our leaders in Washington either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted the bubble. And even when the full extent of the financial crisis became painfully clear early in 2007, the Federal Reserve chairman, the Treasury secretary, the president and senior members of Congress repeatedly underestimated the severity of the problem, ultimately leaving themselves with only one policy tool — the epic and unfair taxpayer-financed bailouts. Now, in exchange for that extra year or two of consumer bliss we all enjoyed, our children and our children’s children will suffer terrible financial consequences.
It did not have to be this way. And at this point there is no reason to reflexively dismiss the analysis of those who foresaw the crisis. Mr. Greenspan should use his substantial intellect and unsurpassed knowledge of government to ascertain and explain exactly how he and other officials missed the boat. If the mistakes were properly outlined, that might both inform Congress’s efforts to improve financial regulation and help keep future Fed chairmen from making the same errors again." - Michael J. Burry
He founded and then ran the hedge fund Scion Capital from 2000 until 2008. This article was published in 'The New York Times', 3rd April 2010. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04burry.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1353679516-TNdru1JvjJFWS5hLu+Bx2Q ] [also refer Dr. Michael Burry UCLA's Economics Department's 2012 commencement speech http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-22/michael-burrys-reminder-after-every-over-consumption-brutal-hangover-inevitable ]
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| [Quote No.45134] Need Area: Friends > General
"The media and award bestowing committees are not necessarily good judges of character or history and therefore fame can become infamy very quickly and it should not be the fundamental part of forming a judgement about any person. A good example is German dictator, Adolf Hitler, who won Time's 'Man of The Year' in 1938, less than a year before he started World War II!" - Seymour@imagi-natives.com
refer http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html and http://www.google.com.au/search?q=man+of+the+year+adolf+hitler&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-au:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&rlz=1I7ADFA_en&redir_esc=&ei=R2O0UKL5Na-yiQev94CwAw
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| [Quote No.45140] Need Area: Friends > General
"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long." - Thomas Sowell
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| [Quote No.45141] Need Area: Friends > General
"The most basic question is not what is best [which is subjective], but who shall decide what is best [i.e. each individual freely for themselves so long as they don't hurt another's person or property, a majority or a small powerful minority]?" - Thomas Sowell
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| [Quote No.45145] Need Area: Friends > General
"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind." - Thomas Sowell
American economist and social theorist
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| [Quote No.45147] Need Area: Friends > General
"The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his 'basic rights' [and entitlements, showing a self-serving misunderstanding of what natural rights are, as proposed by the philosopher John Locke and adopted by the Founding Fathers in the US Declaration of Independence, US Constitution and US Bill of Rights]. " - Thomas Sowell
American economist and social theorist
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| [Quote No.45148] Need Area: Friends > General
"Considering how often throughout history even intelligent people have been proved to be wrong, it is amazing that there are still people who are convinced that the only reason anyone could possibly say something different from what they believe is stupidity or dishonesty. [That attitude towards those that disagree is not helpful as it does not encourage rational debate in pursuit of what is right rather than who is right.]" - Thomas Sowell
American economist and social theorist
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| [Quote No.45150] Need Area: Friends > General
"A [natural] right, such as a right to free speech, imposes no obligation on another, except that of non-interference. [It is therefore also called a negative right as it does not require anything but forebearance from another]. The so-called [basic] right to health care, food or housing, whether a person can afford it or not, is something entirely different; it does impose an obligation on another. [This is therefore why a basic right is called in contrast a positive right as it does requires something from someone else.] If one person has a right to something he didn't produce, simultaneously and of necessity it means that some other person does not have right to something he did produce. That's because, since there's no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, in order for government to give one American a dollar, it must, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. [Basic rights for all mean natural rights for some have to be forcefully violated and that is why natural rights advocates, those that believe in equal natural birth-rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and private property, as advocated by the philosopher John Locke and adopted by the Founding Fathers of the US Declaration of Independence, US Constitution and US Bill of Rights, philosophically have to oppose basic rights. Natural rights have been advocated in the past by those political ideologies that support personal responsibility and individual freedom from force and fraud like free market capitalism while basic rights have been advocated in the past by those political ideologies that support collective responsibility and freedom from need such as socialism and communism.]" - Walter Edward Williams
(1936 - ), an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.
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| [Quote No.45156] Need Area: Friends > General
"Government is necessary, but the only rights we can delegate to government are the ones we possess. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate authority to government to defend us. By contrast, we don't have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government." - Walter Edward Williams
(1936 - ), an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.
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| [Quote No.45157] Need Area: Friends > General
"No human should be coerced by the state to bear the medical expense, or any other expense, for his fellow man. In other words, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another is morally offensive." - Walter Edward Williams
(1936 - ), an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.
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| [Quote No.45161] Need Area: Friends > General
"Throughout history, the right to [the individual freedom from force or fraud in order to] pursue one's goals in a peaceable, voluntary manner, without direction, control, and coercion, has won a hostile reception [especially from rulers, politicians and religious leaders and those that agree with them and benefit from their orders]. There's little older in history than the idea that some [whether a minority or a majority] should give orders and others obey." - Walter Edward Williams
(1936 - ), an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.
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| [Quote No.45162] Need Area: Friends > General
"People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What's more, they believe they've been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others." - Walter Edward Williams
(1936 - ), an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.
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| [Quote No.45163] Need Area: Friends > General
"Equality before the general rules of law [equal treatment] is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty that can be secured without destroying liberty. It is an equality that neither requires nor assumes people are in fact equal. Our attempt to make people equal in fact [equal outcome] by rigging law to produce equal results destroys civility and generalized respect for the law. Government cannot create an advantage for one person without simultaneously creating a disadvantage for another." - Walter Edward Williams
(1936 - ), an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.
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| [Quote No.45166] Need Area: Friends > General
"The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary [honest and peaceful] things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary [honest and peaceful] things with which we disagree." - Walter Edward Williams
(1936 - ), an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.
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| [Quote No.45180] Need Area: Friends > General
"The bottom line is that the true test of one’s commitment to freedom of association doesn’t come when he allows people to associate in ways he approves. The true test of that commitment comes when he allows people to be free to voluntarily associate in ways he deems despicable." - Walter Edward Williams
(1936 - ), an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.
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| [Quote No.45196] Need Area: Friends > General
"Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito. [The Latin quote is usually translated as 'You should not give in to evils, but proceed ever more boldly against them' or sometimes as 'Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it'.]" - Virgil
(70 BC – 19 BC), an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets and is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. Quote from his work, 'Aeneid', book 6, 95, which is a Latin epic poem, modeled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.
The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the Iliad, composed in the 8th century BC. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous piety, and fashioned this into a compelling founding myth or national epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, explained the Punic wars, glorified traditional Roman virtues and legitimized the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes and gods of Rome and Troy.
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| [Quote No.45229] Need Area: Friends > General
"[The following statement summarizes the classical liberal position for the right of self-determination:] Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off [if they can, either by persuasion and vote, or by force if necessary] the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better... Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." - Abraham Lincoln
Quote from 1848, speaking on behalf of the Texas secession from Mexico.
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