Every device employed to bolster individual freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of the absoluteness of power. The indications are that such an impairment is brought about not by strengthening the individual and pitting him against the possessors of power, but by distributing and diversifying power and pitting one category or unit of power against the other. Where power is one, the defeated individual, however strong and resourceful, can have no refuge and no recourse.
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Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue read more
Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.
We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our read more
We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love.
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of read more
Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.
Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.
Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.
The career of a politician mainly consists in making one part of the nation do what it does not want read more
The career of a politician mainly consists in making one part of the nation do what it does not want to do, in order to please and satisfy the other part of the nation. It is the prolonged sacrifice of the rights of some persons at the bidding and for the satisfaction of other persons. The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them.
I've been to war, and it's not easy to kill. It's bloody and messy and totally horrifying, and the consequences read more
I've been to war, and it's not easy to kill. It's bloody and messy and totally horrifying, and the consequences are serious.
...there is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
...there is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'etre to the imperfection of man and can read more
Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'etre to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man's innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.
