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John
Quincy ADAMS on U.S. foreign policy"[America]
goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher
to the freedom and
independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She
will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the
benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under
other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence,
she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of
interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume
the colors and usurp the standard of freedom."
-- John Quincy Adams, Speech before the House of Representatives, July 4, 1821;
quoted in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Editors), The Idea of America (Les Belles Lettres, 2003), p. 237.
"All and everybody, this is
my claim, fifty feet on the gulch, cordin to Clear Creek District Law, backed
up by shotgun amendments."
-- Quoted in John Umbeck, "Might Makes Rights: A Theory of the Formation
and Initial Distribution of Property Rights", Economic Inquiry, Vol. 19 (January 1981), p. 50; from C. Shinn, Land
Laws of Mining Districts (John Hopkins
University Press, 1984), p. 558.
"And, lastly, to vindicate
these rights, when actually violated and attacked, the subjects of England are
entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of
justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and
parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and
using arms for self preservation and defense."
-- Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 17th edition, 1966, Vol.
1., Chap.1).
Russel BOUCHARD on the French Canadian tradition to keep and bear
arms
"Les armes à feu, celles
d'épaule plus spécifiquement, ont acquis une certaine noblesse dans l'histoire
canadienne, car elles ont assuré, sans conteste, la poursuite de l'exploitation
et de la mise en valeur d'un territoire sauvage, vaste et jusqu'alors inviolé.
De 1534 jusqu' 1979 (!), leur importance ne se dément pas; elles dépassent,
en
fait, le niveau de simple objet d'utilité quotidienne, pour devenir un
véritable phénomène de civilisation. De tout temps et de tout horizon,
le
Canadien a été placé directement en contact avec les armes à feu
et il
est
difficile de l'imaginer autrement. Encore aujourd'hui d'ailleurs, ce symbole
de
liberté reste intimement lié aux grands espaces et la tolérance
de la
société. Il singularise l'Amérique d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. Ici
en
Nouvelle-France, plaisons-nous à le répéter, ce ne sont pas uniquement
l'armée
et la noblesse qui ont la possibilité et le privilège de pouvoir porter
des
armes. La coutume canadienne plusieurs fois séculaire reconnaît à ous
le droit
légal et moral d'acquérir une arme à feu en vue d'une utilisation
libre
et non
contraignante."
Firearms, especially long guns, occupy a noble place in Canadian history
since they are no doubt responsible for the exploitation of a vast and wild
territory that had long remained untouched. From 1534 until 1979 (!), the
importance of firearms remained uncontested. More than a simple tool of
everyday life, they became truly a phenomenon of civilization. At all times and
whoever he was, the Canadian was directly in contact with firearms, and he
cannot be imagined otherwise. Even today, this symbol of liberty remains
intimately related to wide, open spaces, and to a tolerant society. It is the
distinctive mark of today's and yesterday's America. Here, in New France, let's
repeat it, it is not only soldiers and nobles who have the possibility or
privilege to bear arms. Century-old Canadian customs recognize equally to
everybody the legal and moral right to acquire a firearm and to use it freely
and noncoercively.
-- Russel Bouchard, Les armes à feu en Nouvelle-France (Montréal: Éditions du Septentrion, 1999),
p. 11.
Randolph BOURNE on war
"War is the health of the
State."
-- Randolph Bourne, The State (1918),
available at http://www.slip.net/~knabb/CF/bourne.htm.
James
BOVARD on democracy"Democracy must be something
more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
-- James Bovard, Lost Rights. The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin's Press: New York, 1994), p. 333.
Buy
Lost Rights. The Destruction of American Liberty at Amazon.com.
By the same author, see also Freedom
in Chains : The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press: New York, 2000).
"Tax limits, or fiscal
constraints generally, can be expected to curb government's appetites to the
extent that the utility function of governmental decision makers contains
arguments for privately enjoyable 'creature comforts,' for final end items of
consumption. Such constraints become much less effective, and may well be evaded,
if the motive force behind governmental action is 'do-goodism.' The licentious
sinners we can control; the saintly ascetics may destroy us."
-- Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, The Power to Tax : Analytical
Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 166; available at http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv9Contents.html
(visited January 29, 2003).
"In this and other respects, my analysis lends potential support to modern-day anarchists, who dely the legitimacy of much of the action implemented by the governmental-bureaucratic apparatus."
-- James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1975, p. 84; reproduced at http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv7toc.html#The%20Limits%20of%20Liberty:%20Between%20Anarchy%20and%20Leviathan.
"By the time of the Enlightenment, the secular nation-state had almost reached its maturity, and nationalism, the sense of nationhood, was a more or less natural repository for the sentiments of those persons for whom God had died. For many, the state, as the collectivity, moved into the gap left by the demise of the church's parental role. ... The death of God and the birth of the national state, and especially in its latter-day welfare state form, are two sides of the coin of history in this respect."
-- James Buchanan, "Afraid To Be Free: Dependency ad Desideratum", Public Choice, No. 124 (2005), p. 25.
"The great inlet by which a
colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to
determine concerning the happiness of another."
-- Edmund Burke, quoted by Lord Acton in Lectures on the French Revolution
(London: 1910), in J. Rufus Fears (Ed.), Selected Writings of Lord Acton,
Vol. 1: Essays in the History of Liberty (Indianapolis:
LibertyClassics, 1985), p. 206.
"I think that every true
reformer, every real friend of liberty, will agree with me in saying that if we
must erect safeguards, they should be rather for the security of the individual
than of the mass, and that our chiefest care must be to train the majority to
respect the rights of the minority, to prevent the claims of the few from being
trampled under foot by the caprice or passion of the many."
-- Richard Cartwright in the Legislative Assembly, Canada, March 9, 1865;
reproduced in Janet Ajzenstat, Paul Romney, Ian
Gentles, and William D. Gairdner (Eds.), Canada's Founding Debates
(Toronto: Stoddart, 1999), p. 19.
"By Liberty I understand the
Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the
Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the
Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him
from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man's honest Industry are
the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is
his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the
above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private
Actions and Property."
-- Thomas Gordon, Letter 62 (1722) of Cato's Letters (1720-1723), quoted by Ronald Hamowy, "Cato's
Letters, John Locke, and the Republican Paradigm", in Edward J. Harpham
(Ed.), John Locke's Two
Treatises of Government: New Interpretations (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992),
p. 157.
Buy
Cato's Letters at Amazon.com.
"Demandez-vous d'abord,
Messieurs, ce que de nos jours un Anglais, un Français, un habitant
des États-Unis de l'Amérique, entendent par le mot de liberté?
C'est pour chacun le droit de n'être soumis qu'aux lois, de ne pouvoir ni
être arrêté, ni détenu, ni mis àmort, ni maltraité d'aucune
manière,
par l'effet de la volonté arbitraire d'un ou de plusieurs individus. C'est
pour chacun le droit de dire son opinion, de choisir son industrie et de
l'exercer; de
disposer de sa propriété, d'en abuser même; d'aller, de venir,
sans en obtenir la permission, et sans rendre compte de ses motifs ou de
ses démarches.
C'est, pour chacun, le droit de se réunir à d'autres individus, soit
pour conférer
sur ses intérêts, soit pour professer le culte que lui et ses associés
préfèrent,
soit simplement pour remplir ses jours et ses heures d'une manière plus
conforme à ses inclinations, à ses fantaisies. Enfin, c'est le droit,
pour chacun, d'influer sur l'administration du gouvernement, soit par la
nomination
de tous ou de certains fonctionnaires, soit par des représentations, des
pétitions, des demandes,
que l'autorité est plus ou moins obligée de prendre
en considération. Comparez maintenant cette liberté à celle
des anciens."
Celle-ci consistait à exercer collectivement, mais directement, plusieurs
parties de la souveraineté tout entière, à délibérer,
sur la place publique, de la guerre et de la paix, à conclure avec les étrangers
des traités
d'alliance,
à voter les lois, à prononcer les jugements, à examiner les comptes,
les
actes, la gestion des magistrats, à les faire comparaître devant tout un
peuple, à les
mettre en accusation, à les condamner ou à les absoudre; mais en même
temps que c'était là ce que les anciens nommaient liberté,
ils admettaient, comme compatible avec cette liberté collective, l'assujettissement
complet de l'individu à l'autorité de l'ensemble."
First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a
citizen of the United States of America understand today by the word 'liberty'.
For each of them it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be
neither arrested, detained, put to death of maltreated in any way by the
arbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is the right of everyone to
express their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to dispose of
property, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and without having
to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone's right to
associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to
profess the religion which they or their associates prefer, or even simply to
occupy their days or hours in a way which is more compatible with their
inclinations or whims. Finally, it is everyone's right to exercise some
influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or
particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which
the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed. Now compare this
liberty with that of the ancients.
The latter consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of
the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and
peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in
pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of
the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in
accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients
called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the
complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community.
-- Benjamin Constant, "De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle
des modernes" (1819), in De la liberté chez les Modernes (Paris: Librairie Générale Française,
1980), pp. 494-495; English translation: "The Liberty of the Ancients
Compared with that of the Moderns" (1819), in Benjamin Constant, Political
Writings, Edited by Biancamaria Fontana
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 310-311.
Buy
Political Writings at Amazon.com.
crits
politiques en vente chez Amazon France.
"No duty, however, binds us
to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in
our being..."
-- Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
(1810) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), p. 401-402.
"Thus arbitrary power will
have divided men of superior intelligence into two groups: the former will be
seditious, the latter corrupt..."
-- Benjamin Constant, The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (1814),
reprinted in Political Writings, translated and edited by Bancamaria
Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 126. Later
editions than the 1814 one had "despotism" instead of "abitrary
power."
"It is a misfortune that we
offer the guilty the chance of impunity, but it is not nearly as bad as
delivering the good man to the vengeance of the oppressor."
-- Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments
(1810) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), p. 160.
"The revolution is ... the
blow dealt ... agains the counter force of tyranny, which has never entirely
recovered from the blow, but which from then till now has gone on remolding and
regrappling the instruments of governmental power, that the Revolution sought
to shape and hold as defenses of liberty."
-- Voltairine de Cleyre, "Anarchism and American Traditions," Mother
Earth, 1909; reproduced in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Eds.), The
Idea of America (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), p. 223.
"In the process of helping
some (perhaps most) people to more utility and justice, the sate imposes on
civil society a system of interdictions and commands."
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State (Oxford:
Basic Blackwell, 1985), p. 123.
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The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"People who live in states
have as a rule never experienced the state of nature and vice-versa, and have no practical possibility of moving from
the one to the other ... On what grounds, then, do people form hypotheses about
the relative merits of state and state of nature? ... My contention here is
that preferences for political arrangements of society are to a large extent
produced by these very arrangements, so that political institutions are either addictive like some drugs, or allergy-inducing like some others, or both, for they may be one thing
for some people and the other for others."
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State
(Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1985), p. 18 and 20.
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The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"Self-imposed limits on
sovereign power can disarm mistrust, but provide no guarantee of liberty and
property beyond those afforded by the balance between state and private
force."
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State [1985]
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), p. 205.
Buy
The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"... the smaller is the
domain where choices among alternatives are made collectively, the smaller will
be the probability that any individual's preference gets overruled."
-- Anthony de Jasay, Against Politics: On Government, Anarchy, and Order
(London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 49.
"Having
gathered all power to itself, [the State] has become the sole focus of all
conflict, and it must construct totalitarian defences to match its total
exposure."
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State [1985]
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), p. 287.
Buy
The State at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise en vente chez Amazon France.
-- Anthony de Jasay, The State [1985]
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), p. 103.
Buy The
State at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"La démocracie, telle que
nous l'avons pratiquée, centralisatrice, réglementeuse et absolutiste,
apparaît
donc comme la période d'incubation de la tyrannie."
Democracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making, absolutist shape which
we have given to it is, it is clear, the time of tyranny's incubation.
-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa
croissance [1945] (Paris: Hachette, 1972),
p. 36; English translation: On Power: The Natural History of Its
Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993),
p. 15.
Du
Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance en vente chez Amazon
France.
Available
in English at Amazon.com.
"The more one considers the
matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a
redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined,
than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State."
-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution [1952] (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1990),
p. 72.
Buy
The Ethics of Redistribution at Amazon.com.
" La croissance de son
autorité [l'autorité de l'État] apparaît aux individus
bien moins comme une entreprise continuelle contre leur liberté que comme
un effort destructeur des dominations auxquelles ils sont assujettis. [...]
Où est
le terme? [...] C'est la pleine liberté de chacun à l'égard de toutes
autorités
familiales et sociales, payée d'une entière soumission à l'État."
The growth of its authority [the state's authority] strikes private
individuals as being not so much a continual encroachment of their liberty as
an attempt to put down the various petty tyrannies to which they have been
subjected. ... Where will it end? ... In each man's absolute freedom from every
family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete
submission to the state.
-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance [1945] (Paris: Hachette, 1972), pp. 271 and
279; English translation: On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), pp. 143 and 187.
Du
Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance en vente chez Amazon
France.
Available
in English at Amazon.com.
So far the debasement of the electors and the degradation of the assembly are only accidental. They are to become by progressive stages systematized. Syndicates of interests and ambitions will soon take shape which, regarding the assembly as a mere adjunct of Power and the people as a mere cistern for the assembly, will devote themselves to winning votes for the installation of tame deputies who will bring back to their masters the price for which they have ventured everytning, the command of society."
L'avilissement de l'électeur et l'abaissement de l'élu ne sont encore qu'accidentels. Ils vont progressivement devenir systématiques. Des syndicats d'intérêt et d'ambions se formeront qui, regardant l'assemblée commeune simple attributrice du Pouvoir et le peuple comme un simple remplisseur de l'assemblée, s'ingénieront à capter les suffrages pour investir des députés dociles, qui rapporteront à leurs maîtres l'enjeu de toute l'opération, le commandement de la Société.
Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance [1945] (Paris: Hachette, 1972), p. 440; English translation: On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), p. 299.
"Aucun roi n'a disposé d'une
police comparable celle des démocraties modernes."
No absolute monarch ever had at his disposal a police force comparable to
those of modern democracies.
-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du
Pouvoir. Histoire naturelle de sa croissance [1945] (Paris: Hachette,
1972), p. 49; English translation: On Power: The Natural History of
Its Growth (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), p. 23.
"Mais c'est plaisir de
considerer qu'est ce qui leur revient de ce grand tourment, et le bien quils
peuvent attendre de leur peine et de leur miserable vie. Volontiers le peuple
du mal quil souffre, n'en accuse point le tiran, mais ceux qui le gouvernent:
ceus la les peuples, les nations, tout le monde a l'envi iusques aus paisans,
iusques aus laboureurs ils scavent leurs noms, ils dechifrent leurs vices,
ils amassent sur eus mille vilenies, mille maudissons; toutes leurs oraisons,
tous
leurs veus sont contre ceus la; tous leurs mal heurs, toutes les pestes,
toutes les famines ils les leur reprochent; et si quelque fois il leur font
par
apparence quelque honneur, lors mesmes ils les maugreent en leur coeur, et
les ont en horreur plus estrange que les bestes sauvages. Voila la gloire,
voila
lhonneur quils recoivent de leur service envers les gens, desquels quand
chacun auroit une piece de leur corps, ils ne seroient pas ancore, ce leur
semble,
assés satisffaits, ni a demi saoulés de leur peine, mais certes ancore
apres quils sont morts, ceus qui viennent apres ne sont jamais si paresseus
que le
nom de ces mangepeuples ne soit noirci de l'encre de mille plumes, et leur
reputation deschirée dans mille livres, et les os mesmes par maniere de dire
trainés par la postérité, les punissans ancore apres leur mort
de leur meschante vie."
However, there is satisfaction in examining what they get out of all this
torment, what advantage they derive from all the trouble of their wretched
existence. Actually the people never blame the tyrant for the evils they
suffer, but they do place responsibility on those who influence him; peoples,
nations, all compete with one another, even the peasants, even the tillers of
the soil, in mentioning the names of the favorites, in analyzing their vices,
and heaping upon them a thousand insults, a thousand obscenities, a thousand
maledictions. All their prayers, all their vows are directed against these
persons; they hold them accountable for all their misfortunes, their
pestilences, their famines; and if at times they show them outward respect, at
those very moments they are fuming in their hearts and hold them in greater
horror than wild beasts. This is the glory and honor heaped upon influential
favorites for their services by people who, if they could tear apart their
living bodies, would still clamor for more, only half satiated by the agony
they might behold. For even when the favorites are dead those who live after
are never too lazy to blacken the names of these people-eaters with the ink of
a thousand pens, tear their reputations into bits in a thousand books, and
drag, so to speak, their bones past posterity, forever punishing them after
their death for their wicked lives.
-- Estienne de la Boétie, Discours de la servitude volontaire (1574-1576), in Oeuvres complètes
d'Estienne de la Boétie, Vol. 1,
William Blake and Co. Edit., 1991, p. 96; English translation: The
Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.
Discours
de la servitude volontaire en vente chez Amazon France.
Available
in English at Amazon.com, with an introduction by Murray Rothbard.
"Au-dessus de ceux-là
s'élève un pouvoir immense et tutélaire, qui se charge seul
d'assurer leur jouissance et de veiller sur leur sort. Il est absolu, prévoyant,
régulier
et doux. Il ressemblerait à la puissance paternelle si, comme elle, il avait
pour objet de préparer les hommes à l'âge viril; mais il ne cherche,
au contraire, qu'à les fixer irrévocablement dans l'enfance; il aime
que les citoyens se réjouissent pourvu qu'ils ne songent qu'à se réjouir.
Il travaille volontiers à
leur bonheur; mais il veut en être l'unique agent et le seul arbitre; il
pourvoit à leur sécurité, prévoit et assure leurs besoins,
facilite leurs plaisirs, conduit leurs principales affaires, dirige leur
industrie,
règle
leurs successions, divise leurs héritages; que ne peut-il leur ôter
entièrement
le trouble de penser et la peine de vivre ?"
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes
upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate.
That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like
the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare
men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they
think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly
labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their
necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns,
directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all
the trouble of living?
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, De la dmocratie en Amérique, Vol.
2 (1840), Part 5, Chap. 6 (Paris: Laffont, 1986), p. 648; English translation
reproduced
in William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux (Eds.), The Idea of America
(Belles Lettres, 2003), p. 84.
"After having thus
successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and
fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole
community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated
rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most
energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man
is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it
to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not
destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses,
enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to
nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the
government is the shepherd."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1899), Chap. 6; available
at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch4_06.htm
(visited December 22, 2002).
"Quand donc je refuse d'obéir à une
loi injuste, je ne dénie point àla majorité le droit
de commander; j'en appelle seulement de la souveraineté du peuple à la
souveraineté du genre humain.
Il y a des gens qui n'ont pas craint de dire qu'un peuple, dans les objets
qui n'intéressaient que lui-même, ne pouvait sortir entièrement
des limites de la justice et de la raison, et qu'ainsi on ne devait pas craindre
de donner tout pouvoir à la majorité qui le représente.
Mais c'est là un langage d'esclave."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, Livre I [1835], Partie 2, Chapitre 7, section 2.
De
la Démocratie en Amérique en vente chez Amazon France.
Available
in English at Amazon.com.
"Any one having a white
face, and being so disposed, could stop us, and subject us to examination. ...
When I get there [in Pennsylvania], I shall not be required to have a pass; I
can travel without being disturbed."
-- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave, Written by Himself [1845]
(Toronto: New American Library, 1968), p. 77 and 93-94.
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave et
Amazon.com.
Also
available in French at Amazon.fr.
"... and in thinking of my
life, I almost forgot my liberty."
-- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave, Written by Himself [1845]
(Toronto: New American Library, 1968), p. 103.
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave et
Amazon.com.
Also
available in English at Amazon.fr.
"Let us render the tyrant no
aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our
flying brother."
-- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave, Written by Himself [1845]
(Toronto: New American Library, 1968), p. 106.
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave et
Amazon.com.
Also
available in English at Amazon.fr.
"[U]n anarchiste est un
libéral intransigeant."
An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal.
-- mile Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvime sicle, Vol. 1 (Paris: Socit Franaise d'Imprimerie et de
Librairie, c. 1898), p. 226.
"Those who would give up
essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither
Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, quoted in Suzy Platt, Respectfully Quoted: A
Dictionary of Quotations (Barnes and Noble,
1993), p. 201.
David
FRIEDMAN on firearms, dissuasion and crime"Suppose one little old lady
in ten carries a gun. Suppose that one in ten of those, if attacked by a
mugger, succeeds in killing the mugger instead of being killed by him -- or
shooting herself in the foot. On average, the mugger is much more likely to win
the encounter than the little old lady. But -- also on average -- every hundred
muggings produces one dead mugger. At those odds, mugging is an unprofitable
business -- not many little old ladies carry enough money to justify one chance
in a hundred of being killed getting it. The number of muggers declines
drastically, not because they have all been killed but because they have,
rationally, sought safer professions."
-- David Friedman, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (New York: Harper, 1996), p. 299.
Buy
Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life at Amazon.com.
"If, for example, existing
government intervention is minor, we shall attach a smaller weight to the
negative effect of additional government intervention. This is an important
reason why many earlier liberals, like Henry Simons, writing at a time when
government was small by todayÕs standards, were willing to have government
undertake activities that todayÕs liberals would not accept now that government
has become so overgrown."
-- Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1962), p. 32.
"'Poor old man,' Mrs Everest
wrote, 'have you tried the heroin I got you -- get a bottle of Elliman's
embrocation & rub your face when you go to bed & tie your sock up over
your face, after rubbing for 1/4 of an hour, try it and I am sure it will do
you good.'"
-- Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life
(London: Heinemann, 1991), p. 27.
"That autumn [1890, when
Churchill was 15] he began to smoke, provoking further criticism. 'Darling
Winston,' his mother wrote in September, 'I hope you will try & not smoke.
If only you knew how foolish & how silly you look doing it you would give
it up, at least for a few years.' There was to be an inducement to giving up
smoking. 'I will get Papa to get you a gun and a pony.' Churchill deferred to
his mother's advice. He would give up smoking 'at any rate for six months'. ...
'The two brothers [Churchill and his younger borther] have been happy as kings
riding and shooting', Lady Randolph wrote..."
-- Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life
(London: Heinemann, 1991), pp. 25 and 28.
"The [classical] liberal, of
course, does not deny that there are some superior people -- he is not an
egalitarian -- but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these
superior people are."
-- Friedrich Hayek, "Why I Am Not a Conservative," postcript to The
Constitution of Liberty [1960] (Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1972), p. 402.
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The Constitution of Liberty at Amazon.com.
"It is indeed probable that
more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to
stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil."
-- F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1972), p. 146.
"[I]t is not the source but
the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary."
-- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1944), p. 71.
"It used to be the boast of
free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there
was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders. It is
doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today."
-- F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1972), p. 208.
" But though the concepton of a 'value to
society' is sometimes carelessly used even by economists, there is strictly no
such thing and the expression implies the same sort of anthropomorphism or
personification of society as the term 'social justice'. Services can have
value only to particular people (or an organization), and any particular
service will have very different values for different members of the same
society. To regard them differently is to treat society not as a spontaneous order
of free men but as an organization whose members are all made to serve a single
hierarchy of ends. This would necessarily be a totalitarian system in which
personal freedom would be absent."
-- F.A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and
Liberty, vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago : University of Chicago Press,
1976), pp. 75-76.
Stephen
HALBROOK on Nazi gun controls"Such questions have never
been discussed in scholarly publications because the Nazi laws, policies, and
practices have never been adequately documented. The record establishes that a
well-meaning liberal republic would enact a gun control act that would later be
highly useful to a dictatorship."
-- Stephen P.Halbrook, "Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German
Jews, Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2000), pp. 483-535; available at http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/article-nazilaw.pdf.
By this author, see That
Every Man Be Armed : The Evolution of a Constitutional Right and Target
Switzerland : Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II. Available
at Amazon.com.
"The Good Society is one in which the chances of anyone selected at random are likely to be as great as possible."
-- Friedrich Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 132.
"Is life so dear, or peace
so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me
liberty or give me death!."
-- Patrick Henry, Speech of March 23, 1775, reproduced at www.law.ou.edu/hist/henry.html.
"If we cannot learn, if the
only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us
multiply punishments, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official
spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings -- as
in one country they propose to do -- in our House of Commons, scrutinize
visitors under official microscopes, request them, as at Vienna, and I think
now at Paris also, to be good enough to leave their greatcoats in the
vestibules ... I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an
evil time."
-- Auberon Herbert, "The Ethics of Dynamite", Contemporary Review, May 1894; reproduced in The Right and
Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays by Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1978), p. 226.
Buy
The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State at Amazon.com.
"And what sort of
philosophical doctrine is this -- that numbers confer unlimited rights, that
they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights
in others. ... How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two
men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two
men, and make them as if they had never existed. ... It is not possible to
suppose, without absurdity, than a man should have no rights over his own body
and mind, and yet have a 1/10,000,000th share in unlimited rights over all
other bodies and minds?"
-- Auberon Herbert, "The Ethics of Dynamite", Contemporary Review, May 1894; reproduced in The Right and
Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays by Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1978), pp.
202-203.
Buy
The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State at Amazon.com.
"If government half a
century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be
the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing
for ourselves."
-- Auberon Herbert, "State Education: A Help or Hindrance", Fornightly
Review, July 1880; reproduced in The
Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays by Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1978), p. 77.
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The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State at Amazon.com.
"... every tax or rate,
forcibly taken from an unwilling person, is immoral and oppressive."
-- Auberon Herbert, "The Principles of Voluntaryism" [1897],
reproduced in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other
Essays by Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis:
Liberty Classics, 1978), p. 393.
Buy
The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State at Amazon.com.
"God forbid we should ever
be 20 years without such a rebellion ... what country can preserve it's
liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people
preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. ... The tree of liberty
must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and
tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Smith, November 13, 1787; reproduced in
Thomas Jefferson, Writings (The Library
of America, 1984), p. 911.
"The spirit of resistance to
government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always
kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be
exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787; reproduced in
Thomas Jefferson, Writings (The Library
of America, 1984), p. 889-890.
"Les femmes sont tout à
fait compétentes pour assurer leur légitime défense, pourvu que
la loi ne les transforme pas en criminelles si elles emploient des moyens
efficaces à cette
fin."
Women are quite able to see to their own defence, as long as the law does
not transform them into criminals if they take effective measures to do so.
-- Claire Joly, Marie Latourelle, Maryse Martin, and Karen Selick,
"Testostérone et contrôle des armes" , Le Devoir, February 19, 1999, p. A-11; reproduced on this
site in the original French
version, and in an English
translation.
"The issue isn't gun control
but state control -- obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run
amok. ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end
up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties."
-- George Jonas, "The Issue Isn't Gun Control but State Control", National
Post, July 23, 2003, p. A-15.
"The inhabitant of London
could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products
of the whole earth
he could at the same time and by the same means adventure
his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprise of any quarter of the
world
he could secure forthwith, if he wished, cheap and comfortable means of
transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality
"
-- John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1919), p. 11.
"We live in an age of "policy wonks" who judge programs by their effect on productivity, or output, or work effort. Wonkian analysis uses the jargon of economics while ignoring its content. Economists view the wonks' fixation on output as a bizarre and unhealty obsession. Wonks want Americans to die rich; economists want Americans to die happy."
-- Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life (New York: Free Press, 1993), p. 44.
"Et pour tuer le temps, en
attendant la mort,
Je fume au nez des dieux de fines cigarettes."
And to kill time while awaiting death,
I smoke slender cigarettes thumbing my nose to the gods.
-- Jules Laforgue, "La cigarette" (1880), quoted by Richard Klein, Cigarettes
are Sublime (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 1993), pp. 57-58; French translation: De la cigarette... (Paris: Seghers, 1995).
Buy
Cigarettes are Sublime at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise et version
originale anglaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"Sir, rebellion is always an evil, it is always an offence against the positive law of a nation; it is not always a moral crime."
-- Sir Wilfrid Laurier, quoted in O.D. Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfred Laurier (1921), Vol. 1 (Toronto: McClellan & Stewart. 1965), p. 92.
"The Care therefore of every
man's Soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself. But what if he
neglect the Care of his Soul? I answer, What if he neglects the Care of his
Health, or of his Estate, which things are nearlier related to the Government
of the Magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express
Law, That such an one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as
is possible, that the Goods and Health of Subjects be not injured by the Fraud
and Violence of others; they do not guard them from the Negligence or
Ill-husbandry of the Possessors themselves."
-- John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration [1689], Edited and Introduced by James H. Tully (Hacklett Publishing
Company, 1983), p. 35.
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A Letter Concerning Toleration at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise et version
originale anglaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"If the innocent honest Man
must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands
upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the
World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be
maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors."
-- John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government [1690], #228 (Lasslet Edition, Cambridge University
Press, 1960), p. 465.
Buy
Second Treatise
of Civil Governement at Amazon.com.
"... whenever the Legislators
endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power,
they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon
absolved from any farther Obedience ... [Power then] devolves to the People,
who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of
a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety
and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society."
... quand les lgislateurs
s'efforcent de ravir et de dtruire les choses qui appartiennent en propre au
peuple, ou de le rduire dans l'esclavage, sous un pouvoir
arbitraire, ils se mettent dans l'tat de guerre avec le peuple qui, ds lors,
est absous et exempt de toute sorte d'obissance leur gard, et a le droit de
recourir ce commun refuge que Dieu a destin pour tous les hommes, contre la
force et la violence. [...] [Le pouvoir] est dvolu au peuple qui a le droit de
reprendre sa libert originaire, et par l'tablissement d'une nouvelle autorit
lgislative, tel qu'il jugera propos, de pourvoir sa propre conservation et
sa propre sret, qui est la fin qu'on se propose quand on forme une socit
politique.
-- John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government [1690], #222 (Lasslet Edition, Cambridge University
Press, 1960), p. 460-461; French translation by David Mazel (1691): Trait
de gouvernement civil (Paris:
Garnier-Flammarion, 1984), pp. 348-349.
Buy
Second Treatise
of Civil Governement at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise et version
originale anglaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"If the rest of the country
had adopted right-to-carry concealed-handgun provisions in 1992, about 1,500
murders and 4,000 rapes would have been avoided."
-- John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun
Control Laws (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998), p. 159.
Buy More
Guns, Less Crime (2nd Edition) at
Amazon.com.
Also
available in English at Amazon France.
"Ignorantque datos, ne
quisquam serviat, enses."
And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man
from slavery.
-- Lucanus (A.D. 39-65), De Bello Civili (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1988),
IV, 579, p. 216.
"Perhaps it is a universal
truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against
danger, real or apprehended, from abroad."
-- James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798; reproduced in Jack N.
Rakove (Ed.), James Madison: Writings (New York: Literary Classics of
the United States, 1999), p. 588.
"The internal effects of a
mutable policy are [...] calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty
itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men
of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or
so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed before they
are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what
the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow."
-- "Federalist" # 62, in The Federalist (Indianapolis: Modern Library and National Foundation for Education in
American Citizenship, n.d.), p. 406.
"It was during the
eighteenth century -- a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances
within the English constitution -- that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view
of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed
to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate
check on tyranny."
-- Joyce Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American
Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1994), p. 128.
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To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right at
Amazon.com.
"The right of ordinary
citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and
least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to
their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between
the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his
government."
-- Joyce Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American
Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1994), p. IX.
Buy
To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right at
Amazon.com.
Patrick
McGOOWAN ("The Prisoner") on numbering people"I am not a number, I am a
free man!"
-- Number Six, The Prisoner, 1968, the
famous TV series.
Available at Amazon.com for zone 1: Set 1
(DVDs), Set 1
(VHS), complete
collection (DVDs).
Version franaise en vente chez Amazon France (zone 2): complete
collection (DVDs).
"Over himself, over his own
body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 9.
Buy
On Liberty at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"... when a City shall be as
it were besieged and blocked about, her navigable river infested, inroads and
incursions round, defiance and battle oft rumoured to be marching up even to
her walls and suburb trenches, that then the people, or the greater part, more
than at other times, wholly taken up with the study of highest and most
important matters to be reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading,
inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before
discoursed or written of ..."
-- John Milton, Aeropagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing, to the Parliament of England (1644), available at http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1209&Itemid=99999999.
"It is impossible to
understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the
fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An
economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is
always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his
objections are well-founded, the more they hate him."
-- Ludwig von Mises, Human Action. A Treatise on Economics (1949), Third Revised Edition (San Francisco: Fox
& Wilkes, 1963), p. 67.
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Human Action. A Treatise on Economics at Amazon.com.
"Violent resistance against
the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to
break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so
narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from
those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery
of state."
-- Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism. The Classical Tradition (1927), Fourth American Edition
(Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996), p. 59,
available at http://www.mises.org/liberal.asp.
Buy
Liberalism. The Classical Tradition at Amazon.com.
"We believe that human
happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government."
-- Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal
Interpretation (New York: Broadway Books,
1997), p. xi.
"It is interesting to
observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude
towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward
the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. ... it does not appear to
have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the
State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that
claimed his allegiance."
-- Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State,
c. 1935 (Delavan: Hallberg, 1983), p. 34.
Buy
Our Enemy, the State at Amazon.com.
"The socialist society would
have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults."
-- Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p.163.
"Sometimes, when leading families or merchants organized a government for their city, they not only provided for some power sharing through voting but took pains to reduce the probability that the government's chief executive could assume autocratic power. For a time in Genoa, for example, the chief administrator of the government had to be an outsider -- and thus someone with no membership in any of the powerful families in the city. Moreover, he was constrained to a fixed term of office, forced to leave the city after the end of his term, and forbidden from marrying into any of the local families. In Venice, after a doge who attempted to make himself autocrat was beheaded for his offense, subsequent doges were followed in official processions by a sword-bearing symbolic executioner as a reminder of the punishment intended for any leader who attempted to assume dictatorial power."
-- Mancur Olson, Power and Prosperity. Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 39.
"From the foregoing account it will be seen that in Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions, above a very low level, was well-night impossible. It was of course possible to utter heresies of a very crude kind, a species of blasphemy. It wold have been possible, for example, to say Big Brogher is ungood. But this statement, which to an orthodox ear merely conveyed a self-evident absurdity, could not have been sustained by reasoned argument, because the necessary words were not available."
-- George Orwell, "The Principles of Newspeak", in 1984 (1949) (New York: Signet Classic, 1977), p. 309.
Georges
ORWELL on the importance of common peoples having guns"In such a force,
cooperation among different parts of society would replace the traditional
reliance on upper-class leadership, and a large, well-armed popular militia
would act as a sort of insurance policy against government tyranny at home. At
the end of an article on the Home Guard in Tribune, Orwell wrote: 'That rifle hanging on the wall of
the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is
our job to see that it stays there.'"
-- Michael Shelden, Orwell: The Authorized Biography (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), p. 328.
Buy
1984 at Amazon.com.
Traduction
franaise et version
originale anglaise en vente chez Amazon France.
"Like various other words in the B vocabulary [in Newspeak], duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment."
-- George Orwell, "The Principles of Newspeak", in 1984 (1949) (New York: Signet Classic, 1977), p. 308.
"It was always the women,
and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents to the Party,
the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of
unorthodoxy."
-- George Orwell, 1984 (1949) (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1987),
p. 12.
" L'individualisme est une
doctrine qui, au lieu de subordonner l'individu à la collectivité,
pose en principe que l'individu a sa fin en lui-même; qu'en
fait et en droit il possède
une valeur propre et une existence autonome, et que l'idéal social
est le plus complet affranchissement de l'individu. L'individualisme
ainsi compris est la
même chose que ce qu'on appelle encore la philosophie sociale
libertaire."
-- Georges Palante, L'individualisme aristocratique, Paris, Belles Lettres, 1995, pp. 135-136.
L'individualisme
aristocratique en vente chez Amazon France.
"... in all countries where
personal freedom is valued, however much each individual may rely on legal
redress, the right of each to carry arms -- and these the best and the sharpest
-- for his own protection in case of extremity, is a right of nature indelible
and irrepressible, and the more it is sought to be repressed the more it will
recur."
-- James Paterson, Commentaries on the Liberty of the Subject and the Laws
of England Relating to the Security of the Person, (London, 1877), Vol. 1, p. 441; quoted in Joyce Malcolm, To
Keep and Bear Arms. The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp.
169-170.
Buy
To Keep and Bear Arms. The Origins of an Anglo-American Right at
Amazon.com.
"L'homme vivant sous la
servitude des lois prend sans s'en douter une âme d'esclave."
The man who lives under the servitude of laws takes, without being aware of
it, the soul of a slave.
-- Georges Ripert, Le Déclin du Droit. Etude sur la législation
contemporaine (Paris: Librairie
Générale de
Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1949), p. 94.
Le
Déclin du Droit. Etude sur la législation contemporaine en
vente chez Amazon France.
"En présence d'une aussi étroite réglementation, l'homme peut-il encore se dire libre pour cette raison que la tyrannie qu'il subit est celle de la loi? Sans doute l