“We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism,
1946
“They said, ‘We’re going to build this, and you can’t stop us.’ The bristles went up on the back of a lot of people’s heads, and we thought, ‘Hey, let’s just see what we can do.’”
Dan Coffey, Kansas City Star, October 12, 2015
“Reason, like the Sun, is Common to All; And ’t is for want of examining all by the same Light and Measure, that we are not all of the same Mind: For all have it to that End, though all do not use it So.”
William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, #169
“We started off a group of interested citizens that didn’t like the way things were going, particularly the way taxpayer money was being spent in Kansas City. Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.”
Dan Coffey, Kansas City Star, October 12, 2015
“A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.”
William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, #537
“One cannot live for ever by ignoring the price of coffins.”
Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat
“Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”
William Penn
The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed — we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.
Albert Jay Nock, “On Doing the Right Thing,” The American Mercury (1925).
By ignorance and cupidity, a secret war, fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation, sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its own bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism.
C. -F. Volney, The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires (1793; first English-language edition, 1802)
“Before hastening to secure a possible reward of five taels by dragging an unobservant person away from a falling building, examine well his features lest you find, when too late, that it is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount.”
Ernest Bramah, The Wallet of Kai Lung