All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” (1958).
William John Locke, The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905), p. 50.
Truth is the enfant terrible of the Virtues.
Doesn’t the idea, or ideal, of the minimal state lack luster? Can it thrill the heart or inspire people to struggle or sacrifice? Would anyone man barricades under its banner? It seems pale and feeble in comparison with, to pick the polar extreme, the hopes and dreams of utopian theorists. Whatever its virtues, it appears clear that the minimal state is no utopia.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State And Utopia (1974).
So much of what we see going on in the world is mirrored in our interactions with each other. We see nations testing other nations, measuring each other’s strengths and weaknesses. For some leaders, the question is always the same: How far can I go with my bullying, before the consequences catch up with me?
Barbara Emrys, co-author with Don Miguel Ruiz, on his website.
On one level or another, important philosophical points can be understood by every college, even every high school, student. Many of these insights have direct bearing on how well people live. Failing to make them available or shrouding them in a fog of technicalities amounts to abandonment of our responsibility.
John Lachs, A Community of Individuals (2003), p. 11.
Aristotle was once asked what those who tell lies gain by it. Said he, “That when they speak truth they are not believed.”
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.).
When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
Lin Yutang, as quoted in Hard-to-Solve Cryptograms (2001) by Derrick Niederman, p. 96.
Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.
It is not true that the masses are vehemently asking for socialism and that there is no means to resist them. The masses favour socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals. The intellectuals, not the populace, are moulding public opinion. It is a lame excuse of the intellectuals that they must yield to the masses. They themselves have generated the socialist ideas and indoctrinated the masses with them. No proletarian or son of a proletarian has contributed to the elaboration of the interventionist and socialist programmes. Their authors were all of bourgeois background. The esoteric writings of dialectical materialism, of Hegel, the father both of Marxism and of German aggressive nationalism, the books of Georges Sorel, of Gentile and of Spengler were not read by the average man; they did not move the masses directly. It was the intellectuals who popularized them.
The intellectual leaders of the peoples have produced and propagated the fallacies which are on the point of destroying liberty and Western civilization. The intellectuals alone are responsible for the mass slaughters which are the characteristic mark of our century. They alone can reverse the trend and pave the way for a resurrection of freedom.
My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier. . . . I am doing my best to glorify the scamp or vagabond. I hope I shall succeed. For things are not so simple as they sometimes seem. In this present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, probably only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from being lost in serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely upon him.
Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : “The Awakening,” p. 12.