Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force — that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever created for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts.
Auberon Herbert, The Voluntaryist Creed, Being the Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at Oxford, June 7, 1906, London.
No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige? It is not the love of truth, but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes parish desire the downfall of parish. Each seeks peace of mind and subserviency rather than the triumph of truth and exaltation of virtue — But these moralities belong, and should be left to the historian, since they are as dull as ditch water.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (1928).
Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.
Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1756.
Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of blood, but are accounted worth it — this appraisement being made by beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed.
From The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).
Let me add, that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
Ben Franklin, letter to the Abbés Chalut and Arnaud (April 17, 1787).
Governors will never be awed by the voice of the people, so long as it is a mere voice, without overt-acts.
Joseph Priestley, Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771), Section II, “Of Political Liberty.”
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
Ben Franklin’s recommended motto for the Great Seal of the United States, August 1776.
All hereditary Government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are heritable property. To inherit a Government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds.
Joseph Priestley, The Rights of Man (1791).
Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.
Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1738.
Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on;
le malheur est qu’il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
From a letter by Hector Berlioz, November 1856, published in Pierre Citron (ed.) Correspondance générale (Paris: Flammarion, 1989) vol. 5, p. 390.