Category: Thought

The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.

Nicholas Black Elk [Hehaka Sapa], The Sacred Pipe : Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (1953), as told to Joseph Epes Brown.

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.

Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).

[C]an you expect Liberty to undo in a moment what Oppression has been doing for ages?

Voltairine de Cleyre, The Economic Tendency of Freethought (1890).

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765).

A gun is not an argument.

Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).

Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that “It is not Philip, but Philip’s gold that takes the cities of Greece.”

Plutarch’s Lives: “Aemilius,” sec. 12.

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

Plutarch’s Lives: “Sertorius,” sec. 16.

The rights of individuals ought to be the primary object of all government, and cannot be too securely guarded by the most explicit declarations in their favor.

Mercy Otis Warren, Observations on the New Constitution (1788).

Those animals which are incapable of making covenants with one another, to the end that they may neither inflict nor suffer harm, are without either justice or injustice. And those tribes which either could not or would not form mutual covenants to the same end are in like case. 

Epicurus, Principal Doctrines (Robert Drew Hicks, trans.), no. 32.

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.

Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1689), Ch. 3, Sect. 11.