It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.
Samuel Adams, from The Advertiser (1748)
Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Autobiographical Notes,” The New Yorker (September 11, 1970)
Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News (23 October 1909)
I found America the friendliest, most forgiving, and most generous nation I had ever visited. We South Americans tend to think of things in terms of convenience, whereas people in the United States approach things ethically. This — amateur Protestant that I am — I admired above all. It even helped me overlook skyscrapers, paper bags, television, plastics, and the unholy jungle of gadgets.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Autobiographical Notes,” The New Yorker (September 11, 1970)
Socialism is but the further screwing up of the State machine to limit the individual.
James Huneker, in Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1913), p. 364.
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” published in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)
It would be easy to point out a paragraph in St. Augustine, or a sentence of Grotius that outweighs in influence the acts of fifty parliaments, and our cause owes more to Cicero and Seneca, to Vinet and Tocqueville, than to the laws of Lycurgus or the five codes of France.
Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer.
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Dead Men’s Dialogue” in Dreamtigers (1960)
The great question is to discover, not what governments prescribe, but what they ought to prescribe; for no prescription is valid against the conscience of mankind.
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” published in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)