Even when you have a president who you know would like to fix the vote, or whatever, there is a lot of checks and balances. But what happens when the CIA is interfering in elections? There’s no checks and balances. That is a real threat to American democracy.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., talking to comedian Dave Smith on the Part of the Problem podcast.
“That doesn’t matter; that wasn’t real Marxism.”
That’s what the bloody Marxists always say. . . . It’s like, “Oh, how many millions of people have to die before you’re convinced that it’s real Marxism?”
And I know what they mean by that, too. They mean,
“If I was the Marxist dictator, things woulda gone a lot better.”
Well, it’s like . . . “Think again, Sunshine. . . . if you’re the sort of person who thinks thatif you were [in] control things would have gone a lot better, then you are the sort of person who should never be in control.”
Jordan Peterson to Joe Rogan, on Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.
Both in England and on the Continent a graduated property tax (l’impôt progressif) has been advocated, on the avowed ground that the state should use the instrument of taxation as a means of mitigating the inequalities of wealth. I am as desirous as any one that means should be taken to diminish those inequalities, but not so as to relieve the prodigal at the expense of the prudent. To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours.
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), Book V, Chapter II.
When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.
Aristotle, Politics, Book Eight.
In a civilized nation no man can excuse his crime against the person or property of another by claiming that he, too, has been a victim of injustice. To tolerate that is to invite anarchy.
Richard Milhous Nixon, “What Has Happened to America?” Reader’s Digest (October 1967).
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), Chapter V, “Applications.”
A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
Men are only too clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to those of others.
Titus Livius, Ab urbe condita (History of Rome; 27–9 B.C.), Book XXVIII, sec. 25.
The only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.
Polybius, The Histories, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1889), Book I, Chapter 1.
The old Romans all wished to have a king over them because they had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.
Titus Livius, Ab urbe condita (History of Rome; 27–9 B.C.), Book I, sec. 17.
Necessitas etiam timidos fortes facit.
Necessity makes even the timid brave.
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter LVII.