The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
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If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic read more
If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is -- and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.
My father was a minister. I had to make up for the lack of sin.
My father was a minister. I had to make up for the lack of sin.
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their read more
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.
Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.
Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also read more
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally.
(US District Judge in commenting on the Fox network lawsuit
read more
This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally.
(US District Judge in commenting on the Fox network lawsuit
against Al Franken's book).
Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend read more
Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. What other virtue can there be in fifty-one percent except the brute fact that fifty-one is more than forty-nine? The rule of fifty-one per cent is a convenience, it is for certain matters a satisfactory political device, it is for others the lesser of two evils, and for others it is acceptable because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all sense of its true meaning when we imagine that the opinion of fifty-one per cent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole hundred per cent, or indulge in the sophistry that the rule of a majority is based upon the ultimate equality of man.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
