What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and read more

Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.

Man's rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of read more

Man's rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is read more

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our read more

We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Ours is an abiding faith in the cause of human freedom. We know it is God's cause.

Ours is an abiding faith in the cause of human freedom. We know it is God's cause.

Patriotism has its roots deep in the instincts and the affections. Love of country is the expansion of dutiful love.

Patriotism has its roots deep in the instincts and the affections. Love of country is the expansion of dutiful love.

...when we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are read more

...when we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal responsibility. There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement.