126
Even the commonest men reserve the violent, the sulky, the undisguisedly selfish side of their character for those who have no power to withstand it.
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127
A man who is morose or violent to his equals, is sure to be one who has lived among inferiors, whom he could frighten or worry into submission.
128
Such increase is destined to keep pace with the growth of our population, until, without a figure of speech, an army of officeholders may be spread over the land.
129
How mighty, as to the outward, is that Power by which they are borne down, and oppressed!
130
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
131
it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government
132
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
133
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
134
The confirmed criminal is as much entitled to redress as his most virtuous fellow citizen; no record of crime, however long, makes one an outlaw.
135
Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.
136
If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
137
the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men
138
A false and a childish sorrow is appeased with as false and as childish a revenge.
139
Anger is not only a vice, but a vice point-blank against nature, for it divides instead of joining
140
If you want liberty you yourselves must strike the blow. If you must be free you must become so through your own effort, through your own initiative.
141
The world does not count races and nations that have nothing.
142
Our first object, then, should be to prevent a breach; our second, to secure that, if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death.
143
The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.
Margaret Chase Smithverified·Declaration of Conscience (remarks in the United States Senate)·June 1, 1950
144
Then let them eat pastry!
Wrongly attributed
Marie Antoinette almost certainly never said this. Rousseau wrote the anecdote in his Confessions about an unnamed great princess; he had drafted the passage by 1767, when Marie Antoinette was eleven years old and still in Austria. The line was attached to her name decades later. Note the wording: this 1782 translation of the Confessions renders the French brioche as pastry; the familiar English form, let them eat cake, is a later translator's choice.
145
Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful
146
Every corps is a chain of despots, who, submitting and tyrannizing without exercising their reason, become dead weights of vice and folly on the community.
147
I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves
148
The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.
149
Why do they expect virtue from a slave, or from a being whom the constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious?
150
Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long in freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.