Can liberty be born from the bosom of despots? and shall justice be rendered by the hands of piracy and avarice?
Constantin-François de Chassebœuf (1757–1820), Comte de Volney, The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires: And The Law of Nature, Chapter II (Thomas Jefferson, translator).
Any one can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book Two.
The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
If I am free to be a pitcher or a poet, I am freer than if my options are being a pitcher or a shortstop.
Christine Swanton, Endoxa 15, Freedom: A Coherence Theory (1992), p. 194.
It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.
Moshe ben Maimon (commonly known as Moses Maimònides), Sefer Hamitzvot [Book of the Commandments], commentary on Negative Commandment 290, as translated by Charles B. Chavel (1967).
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
Destutt de Tracy, as quoted by Mme. Victor de Tracy, Death Notice on Destutt de Tracy
It is manifest that, to banish bad sentiments born of oppression and insolence, it is necessary that laws be equal for everyone, and even for everyplace.
(translated by Iris Hartman, 1852).
Patronage is the sword and cannon by which war may be made on the liberty of the human race.
Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
For human nature is strange: the less we are inclined to self-sacrifice, the more we insist on it in others.