“ man who started with the notion that the world owed him a living would once more find, as he does now, that the world pays him its debt in the state prison.”
William Graham Sumner, “The Challenge of Facts” (1914)
“It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”
Voltaire, Zadig (1747)
“The history of civil liberty is made up of campaigns against abuses of taxation. Protectionism is the great modern abuse of taxation; the abuse of taxation which is adapted to a republican form of government. Protectionism is now corrupting our political institutions just as slavery used to do.”
William Graham Sumner, “Protectionism: the -ism which teaches that waste makes wealth” (1888)
“Clever tyrants are never punished.”
Voltaire, Mérope, act V, scene V (1743)
“Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.”
William Graham Sumner, “The Forgotten Man” (1883)
“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”
Voltaire, “Sixième discours: sur la nature de l’homme,” Sept Discours en Vers sur l’Homme (1738)
“If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.”
William Graham Sumner, “The Forgotten Man” (1883)
“Man is free at the instant he wants to be.”
Voltaire, Brutus, Act II, scene I (1730).
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”
“To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.”
Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia 1925.