Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally: a crowd of authors that all is now right: and I, that all will be right.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), chapter one.
To violate its own laws is a special privilege of absolute monarchy.
Edmond About, The Roman Question (1859), H. C. Coape, translator.
The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent.
Anders Chydenius, The National Gain (1765), §20.
“I grant you . . . that the Pope ought to be independent. But could he not be so at a somewhat less cost? Is it absolutely necessary that 3,124,668 men should sacrifice their liberty, their security, and all that is most precious to them, in order to secure the independence which makes us so happy and so proud? The Apostles were certainly independent at a cheaper rate, for they did nobody harm.
Edmond About, The Roman Question (1859), H. C. Coape, translator.
Anders Chydenius, Thoughts on the Natural Rights of Servants and Peasants (1778).
The exercise of one coercion always makes another inevitable.
The person who sent me here has been arrested. Now I’m going home.
What Svinhufvud said to the Tomsk, Siberia, police station attendant after news of the February Revolution reached him in his forced exile from what was then still the Grand Duchy of Finland.
This discipline of the understanding reflects infinite credit upon the nineteenth century. If posterity does us justice, it will be grateful to us therefor. It will see that instead of cutting one another’s throats about theological questions, we have surveyed lines of railway, laid telegraphs, constructed steam-engines, launched ships, pierced isthmuses, created sciences, corrected laws, repressed factions, fed the poor, civilized barbarians, drained marshes, cultivated waste lands, without ever having a single dispute as to the infallibility of a man.
Edmond About, The Roman Question (1859), H. C. Coape, translator.
Privacy is the foundation of all other rights. Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Chapter 4.
It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
Revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
John Milton, Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England (1644).