“Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can’t mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.”
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.
I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
— William S Burroughs, The War Universe (1992)
“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed”
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.
Then it is important to strengthen the state governments: and as this cannot be done by any change in the federal constitution…it must be done by the states themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves or by the general
government.
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Archibald Stuart, on the need to defend States’ Rights against the Federal government
I think we can all agree that this is very important.
We need our highest judicial body to stop this childish bickering and get back to debating the kinds of weighty constitutional issues that have absorbed the court in recent years, such as whether a city can legally force an exotic dancer to cover her entire nipple, or just the part that pokes out.
— Dave Barry, Dave Barry is Not Making This Up
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson (1813)
Blackstone’s Ratio, mentioned by Ben Franklin in this quote, identifies why the benefit of the doubt must always be given to the accused, especially if the accusation is really bad.
That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.
— Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan (1785)
When laws are carried out not only for the public good, but also to target and punish, it dos society great harm.
The more numerous the laws,
the more corrupt the government.
— Publius Tacitus, Annals (117 AD)
(Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges)
For why should my freedom be limited by what someone else thinks? Corinthians 10:29
Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there.
It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan.
— Leviticus 25:10
Origin of the Quaker motto that was
inscribed on the Liberty Bell at the suggestion of Isaac Norris
But Now You Know
