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| Thomas Sowell | | The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Neither your life nor my life, nor the future of this country, will be affected in the slightest by whether Linda Tripp is naughty or nice. But if any president is able to commit crimes with impunity by using the vast powers and perquisites of his office to cover up, then we will have a danger of corruption and abuse of power that can only grow with the passing years and generations. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | 'What freedom does a starving man have?' The answer is that starvation is a tragic human condition- perhaps more tragic than loss of freedom. That does not prevent these from being two different things. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | To include freedom in the very definition of democracy is to define a process not by its actual characteristics as a process but by its hoped for results. This is not only intellectually invalid, it is, in practical terms, blinding oneself in advance to some of the unwanted consequences of the process. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | 'For every $1.00 major corporations gave to conservative and free-market groups, they gave $4.61 to organizations seeking more government,' according to a study by the Capital Research Center, a Washington think tank. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | To those who feel that their values are THE values, the less controlled systems necessarily present a spectacle of "chaos," simply because such systems respond to a diversity of values. The more successfully such systems respond to diversity, the more "chaos" there will be, by definition, according to the standards of ANY specific set of values- other than diversity or freedom as values. Looked at another way, the more self-righteous observers there are, the more chaos (and "waste") will be seen. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | The death of media influence has been greatly exaggerated. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | The next time somebody in the media denies that there is media bias, ask how they explain the fact that there are at least a hundred stories about the shrinking arctic ice cap for every one about the expanding antarctic ice cap, which has now grown to record size. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other 90 percent of the people? | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with? | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | With all the pious talk about "tolerance" in the media and in academia, there is virtually none for those who challenge the dogmas of political correctness in most of our colleges and universities. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | Journalists cannot serve two masters. To the extent that they take on the task of suppressing information or biting their tongue for the sake of some political agenda, they are betraying the trust of the public and corrupting their own profession. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | One of the most pathetic — and dangerous — signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason. | |
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| Thomas Sowell | | One of the painfully sobering realizations that come from reading history is the utter incompetence that is possible among leaders of whole nations and empires — and the blind faith that such leaders can nevertheless inspire among the people who are enthralled by their words or their posturing. | |
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| Art Spander | | The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid. | |
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| David Spangler | | Lucifer comes to give us the final … Luciferic initiation … that many people now and in the days ahead, will be facing—for it is an initiation into the New Age. … No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian initiation. | |
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| David Spangler (False) | | No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation. | |
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| David Spangler | | Lucifer comes to give to us the final gift of wholeness. If we accept it then he is free and we are free. This is the Luciferic initiation. It is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will be facing, for it is an initiation in the New Age. | |
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| Robert D. Specht | | Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked. | |
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| Albert Speer | | Hitler’s dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. | |
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| Gerry Spence | | Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy’s house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded – after all, the cop was protecting us. | |
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| Gerry Spence | | Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know that government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last, has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed -- first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf. | |
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| Gerry Spence | | While birds can fly, only humans can argue. Argument is the affirmation of our being. It is the principal instrument of human intercourse. Without argument the species would perish.\\
As a subtle suggestion, it is the means by which we aid another.\\
As a warning, it steers us from danger.\\
As exposition, it teaches.\\
As an expression of creativity, it is the gift of ourselves.\\
As a protest, it struggles for justice.\\
As a reasoned dialogue, it resolves disputes.\\
As an assertion of self, it engenders respect.\\
As an entreaty of love, it expresses our devotion\\
As a plea, it generates mercy.\\
As charismatic oration it moves multitudes and changes history.\\
We must argue -- to help, to warn, to lead, to love, to create, to learn, to enjoy justice, to be. | |
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| Gerry Spence | | A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals’ rights – which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state. | |
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| Gerry Spence | | The Internet…has become the voice of the people in the first genuine experiment in democracy yet conducted in America. It stands ready to serve every facet, every faction. | |
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| Gerry Spence | | These are dangerous times. When we are afraid, we want to
be protected, and since we cannot protect ourselves against such
horrors as mass murder by bombers, we are tempted to run to
the government, a government that is always willing to trade the
promise of protection for our freedom, which left, as always,
the question: How much freedom are we willing to relinquish for
such a bald promise?
Already the President was calling for more power, more power
for the FBI. He wanted a thousand more men. And he wanted to
use the army, no less, in situations like Oklahoma City. And he
wanted more power to tap our phones and to invade our privacy.
He wanted express authority from Congress to infiltrate the fringe
groups and, in short, to snoop and to peer and to spy on the
citizenry, especially those who hold different beliefs from those
that flow in the phlegmatic and murky mainstream of America.
But the question remains, will we really be safer with a thousand
more, or even a hundred thousand more FBI agents armed with
even greater power to more easily tap our phone that are already
so easily tapped and to break into our homes that are no longer
safe under the much-mangled exclusionary rule? | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kind to rule, springing out of, and necessarily to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is the same in all cases -- less government. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit? | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. | |
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| Herbert Spencer (Questionable) | | There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is a proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is condemnation before investigation. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making? | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | A man’s liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | For what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? Why should they be educated? What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life -- to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this -- a government ought to mold children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen is and how the child may be molded into one. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth... It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | The liberty the citizen enjoys is to be measured not by governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the paucity of restraints it imposes upon him. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | Liberty is not the right of one, but of all. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom. | |
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| Herbert Spencer | | The greatest of all infidelities is the fear that the truth will be bad. | |
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| Stephen Spender | | What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent. | |
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| Oswald Spengler | | Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom. | |
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| Oswald Spengler | | There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact. | |
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| Baruch Spinoza | | Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them. | |
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| Baruch Spinoza | | He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason. | |
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| Baruch Spinoza | | Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. | |
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| Baruch Spinoza | | The most tyrannical governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his own thoughts. | |
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| Baruch Spinoza | | Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds. | |
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| Baruch Spinoza | | Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another. | |
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| Baruch Spinoza | | Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright. | |
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| Baruch Spinoza | | The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others.
No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develope their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty. | |
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| Lysander Spooner | | A man who is without capital, and who, by prohibitions upon banking, is practically forbidden to hire any, is in a condition elevated but one degree above that of a chattel slave. He may live; but he can live only as the servant of others; compelled to perform such labor, and to perform it at such prices, as they may see fit to dictate. | |
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| Lysander Spooner | | The 'nations,' as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such 'nations.' ... Our pretended treaties, then, being made with no legitimate or bona fide nations, or representatives of nations, and being made, on our part, by persons who have no legitimate authority to act for us, have intrinsically no more validity than a pretended treaty made by the Man in the Moon with the king of the Pleiades. | |
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| Lysander Spooner | | And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived. | |
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| Lysander Spooner | | The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that -- however bloody -- can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave. | |
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| Lysander Spooner | | ...only those who have the will and the power to shoot down their fellow men, are the real rulers in this, as in all other (so-called) civilized countries; for by no others will civilized men be robbed, or enslaved. | |
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| Lysander Spooner | | No government knows any limits to its power except the endurance of the people. | |
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| Lysander Spooner | | If a jury have not the right to judge between the government and those who disobey its laws, the government is absolute, and the people, legally speaking, are slaves. | |