Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed (London: John Chapman, 1851), Pt. IV, Ch. 30: General Considerations.
Meteors are not needed less than mountains.
Robinson Jeffers, from “Shine, Perishing Republic” (1925).
Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.
William Graham Sumner, “The Forgotten Man” (1883).
The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs … has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689.
The average man is either victorious or defeated and, depending on that, he becomes a persecutor or a victim. These two conditions are prevalent as long as one does not “see.” “Seeing” dispels the illusion of victory, or defeat, or suffering.
Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality (1971).
Democracy is old, very old; it is an attitude of man . . . Democracy is an imminent attitude, but one that has always been in crisis with authoritarianism.
José Mujica (Uruguay’s president, 2010–2015), from “A conversation with President José Mujica, M.R. and H.C. Montevideo,” The Economist (August 2014).
But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953).
Il est dangereux d’avoir raison dans des choses
où des hommes accrédités ont tort.
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
Voltaire, “Catalogue pour la plupart des écrivains français qui ont paru dans Le Siècle de Louis XIV, pour servir à l’histoire littéraire de ce temps,” Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1752).
“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”
The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”