Category: Thought

“As self-love, impetuous and improvident, is ever urging man against his equal, and consequently tends to dissolve society, the art of legislation and the merit of administrators consists in attempering the conflict of individual cupidities, in maintaining an equilibrium of powers, and securing to every one his happiness, in order that, in the shock of society against society, all the members may have a common interest in the preservation and defence of the public welfare.”

C. F. Volney, The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires (1793; first English-language edition, 1802)

“A forest bird never wants a cage.”

Henrik Ibsen, The Master Builder (1892), Hilda, Act III.

Is the majority morally supreme, or are there moral rights and moral laws, independent of both majority and minority, to which, if the world is to be restful and happy, majority and minority must alike bow?

“Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual.”

Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (1885)

“The nature of man is indivisible; you cannot cut him across, and give one share of him to the state and leave the other for himself.”

Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (1885)

“A man can only learn when he is free to act.”

Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (1885)

“He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.”

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Ethics: Data of Ethics, § 72, pp. 193-194

“For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood.”

Magna Carta Libertatum, Clause 20.

“The basis of a democratic state is liberty.”

Aristotle, Politics, Book Six.

“When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.”

Aristotle, Politics, Book Eight.