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The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.
The complete collection
The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.
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.
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.
How mighty, as to the outward, is that Power by which they are borne down, and oppressed!
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.
it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government
the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men
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.
Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.
If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Anger is not only a vice, but a vice point-blank against nature, for it divides instead of joining
A false and a childish sorrow is appeased with as false and as childish a revenge.
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.
The world does not count races and nations that have nothing.
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.
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.
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.
Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful
The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.
I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves
Why do they expect virtue from a slave, or from a being whom the constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious?
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.
The many have always been enthralled by the few; and, monsters who have scarcely shown any discernment of human excellence, have tyrannized over thousands of their fellow creatures.