Complaining about how much money someone is making is what dirty smear merchants do when, for all their efforts, they can’t think of anything actually wrong with what you’re saying and doing.
Mike Stephenson, aka Doctor Randomercam, in a talk at a men’s rights conference (2019).
Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measure of a Man (1959).
Samuel Adams persevered through life in his Republican principles without any conformity to parties, influence or times. He was feared by his enemies, but too secret to be loved by his friends. He did not put confidence in them. . . He preserved the severity of Cato in his manners, and the dogmatism of a priest in his religious observances.
William Bentley, D. D.,Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts, as redacted by Diane Ackerman, “The Man Who Made a Revolution,” Parade, September 6, 1987. The complete diary entry can be found on Archive.org: The Diary of William Bentley, D.D.: Volume 3, January, 1803 – December, 1810 (Salem, Massachusetts: The Essex Institute, 1911), p. 49.
Early on, he realized that revolutions don’t require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people’s minds.
Diane Ackerman on Samuel Adams (“The Man Who Made a Revolution,” Parade, September 6, 1987), in a quote variants of which are often misattributed to Sam Adams.
Courage, then, my countrymen, our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
Sam Adams, Speech, State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (August 1, 1776).
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1949).
Sadly, I’ve spent the last few years working for Channel One, doing Kremlin propaganda, and I’m very ashamed of this. Ashamed that I allowed lies to be broadcast from TV screens. Ashamed that I allowed others to zombify Russian people. We were silent in 2014 when all this started. We didn’t protest when the Kremlin poisoned Navalny. We just silently watched this inhuman regime at work. And now the whole world has turned its back on us. And the next ten generations won’t wash away the stain of this fratricidal war. We Russians are thinking and intelligent people. It’s in our power alone to stop all this madness. Go protest. Don’t be afraid of anything. They can’t lock us all away.
Marina Ovsyannikova, pre-recorded statement explaining her on-air protest against the invasion of Ukraine.
Le vrai est trop simple, il faut y arriver toujours par le compliqué.
The truth is too simple: one must always get there by a complicated route.
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, aka, George Sand, Letter to Armand Barbès, (May 12, 1867), published in Georges Lubin (ed.) Correspondance (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1964-95) vol. 20, p. 412; Bruce Kajewski Traveling with Hermes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992) p. 32.
The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another.
Ilana Mercer, reported in “Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go Poof,” WorldNetDaily.com, January 3, 2014.
Our Taiwan road is “a road of democracy, a road of freedom, a road of human rights, and a road of peace for Taiwan.” Taiwan is our country. Our country should not be bullied, dwarfed, marginalized, and localized.
Speech (August 5, 2002), by Chen Shui-bian, former president of Taiwan (2000-2008).