An altar to Liberty was constructed at the dismantled cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris; an inscription “To Philosophy” was carved in stone above the doors — all at “The Festival of Reason” on 20 Brumaire, Year II (November 10, 1793).
Our constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U. S. Senators. There ought to be one day (just one) when there is open season on senators.
Will Rogers, Daily Telegram number 2678 (March 6, 1935).
Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics, Vol. 2, Part V: “Negative Beneficence” (1893), Chapter 1: “The Kinds of Altruism.”
The mental action by which from moment to moment we thus, in ways commonly too rapid to observe, class the objects and acts around, and regulate our conduct accordingly, has been otherwise named by some, and especially by Professor Bain, ‘discrimination.’ Intelligence is, in its every act, carried on by discrimination; and has advanced from its lowest stages to its highest by increasing powers of discrimination. It has done this for the sufficient reason that during the evolution of life under all its forms, increase of it has been furthered by practice or habit as well as by survival of the fittest; since good discrimination has been a means of saving life, and lack of it a cause of losing life.
There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
Herbert Spencer, “The New Toryism,” The Man Versus the State (1884).
If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves?
Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.
Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (1943), p. 292.