The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth … It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths.
Tag: Herbert Spencer
(1820-1903) British author, economist, philosopher
Don’t fear the truth
The greatest of all infidelities is the fear that the truth will be bad.
Vote for freedom
If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?
Socialism involves slavery
All socialism involves slavery … That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is — How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?
It’s the result, not the intention
A man’s liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
Taxes diminish freedom
We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.
Republican government
The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.
Civilization
Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
Foolish endeavor
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.