Society and the World

‘Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens.

It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens.

It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens.

I will have this done, so I order it done; let my will replace reasoned judgement.

I will have this done, so I order it done; let my will replace reasoned judgement.

And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

A Stalin functionary admitted, ‘Innocent people were arrested: naturally—otherwise no one would be frightened. If people, he said, were arrested only for specific misdemeanours, all the others would feel safe and so become ripe for treason.’

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

Generally, nobody behaves decently when they have power.

[Hitler] must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them.

It is an observation no less just than common, that there is no stronger test of a man’s real character than power and authority, exciting, as they do, every passion, and discovering every latent vice.

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

No state, no government exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god’s purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.