All revolutions...have been led by persons who knew oppression well, but not on their own skin.

All revolutions...have been led by persons who knew oppression well, but not on their own skin.

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these read more

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.

Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.

It seems that an essential condition for crises is to be found in the existence of a highly developed system read more

It seems that an essential condition for crises is to be found in the existence of a highly developed system of communications and the spreading of a homogenous mentality over vast areas.But when the hour and the right material are at hand, the contagion spreads with the speed of electricity over hundreds of miles, and affects the most diverse populations, which hardly know each other. The message flies through the air and they all suddenly agree on that one issue, if only a sulky admission that "there's got to be a change.".

This current administration cannot even bring home a soldier from Iraq and they talk about putting a man on the read more

This current administration cannot even bring home a soldier from Iraq and they talk about putting a man on the moon.. didn't the Democrats whose candidates were elected in the last
3 presidential elections do that?

Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the read more

Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. read more

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.