Quotes to inspire and frighten...
Intellectuals of all stripes throughout history have made their ideas part of the public discourse. Some of which are profoundly inspirational, others simply trigger the gag reflex and still others make one shutter. Below is a sampling of each…one must make an independent judgment as to which does what.The following are courtesy of my hometown Libertarian talk show host, Neal Boortz.
"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run, these are the only people who count." [Robert Heinlein]
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." [Voltaire]
"Fascism finds it necessary, at the outset, to take away from the ordinary human being what he has been taught and has grown to cherish the most; personal liberty. And it can be affirmed, without falling into exaggeration, that a curtailment of personal liberty not only has proved to be, but necessarily must be, a fundamental condition of the triumph of Fascism." [Mario Palmeiri]
"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president." [Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents]
We must organize all labor, no matter how dirty and arduous it may be, so that every (citizen) may regard himself as part of that great army of free labor.... The generation that is now fifteen years old... must arrange all their tasks of education in such a way that every day, and in every city, the young people shall engage in the practical solution of the problems of common labor, even the smallest, most simple kind. [Vladimir Lenin]
"All the people I know who are driving for a form of national service, primarily want it to be compulsory. They realize that's a terrible problem politically, so they're not willing to say it. It is endangerment of freedom and the potential for indoctrination that skeptics do not like in the national service concept. However benign the program, some think it will not succeed on any meaningful scale unless is compulsory." [Martin Anderson, Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution]
"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." [Hillary Clinton, 1993]
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..." [President Bill Clinton, 'USA Today' March 11, 1993: Page 2A]
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." [Ayn Rand]
"Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all." [Nikita Khrushchev, February 25, 1956 20th Congress of the Communist Party]
"It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. .... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture.... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man." [Adolph Hitler, 1933]
There is the great, silent, continuous struggle: the struggle between the State and the Individual; between the State which demands and the individual who attempts to evade such demands. Because the individual, left to himself, unless he be a saint or hero, always refuses to pay taxes, obey laws, or go to war. [Benito Mussolini]
Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position. [Mario Palmieri, "The Philosophy of Fascism" 1936]
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage." [Alexander Tyler]
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." [Voltaire]
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. [H.L. Mencken]
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights. [H.L. Mencken]
"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." [Ayn Rand]
For good and ill, these people have influenced history. With time, it will become abundantly clear how I view each of the quotes above. In the meantime, tell me what you think, as I already know what I think.
posted by Robert @ Saturday, March 12, 2005
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