Encroachment Quotes - Page 2

• That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth

  Edmund Burke

  People, Liberty, Spirit

  Edmund Burke, Arthur P.I. Samuels (2014). “The Early Life Correspondence and Writings of The Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke”, p.338, Cambridge University Press

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• Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence.
  Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.

  Robert Graves

  Humorous, Poetry, Fancy

  "The Crane Bag". Book by Robert Graves. "The Case for Xanthippe", 1969.

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• Family life is an encroachment on private life.

  Karl Kraus

  Life, Family, Privacy

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• Individual liberty, the basic underpinning of American society, requires constant defense against the encroachment of the state.

  Paul Singer

  Liberty, Defense, Individual

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• But while property is considered as the basis of the freedom of the American yeomanry, there are other auxiliary supports; among which is the information of the people. In no country, is education so general - in no country, have the body of the people such a knowledge of the rights of men and the principles of government. This knowledge, joined with a keen sense of liberty and a watchful jealousy, will guard our constitutions and awaken the people to an instantaneous resistance of encroachments.

  Noah Webster

  Education, Country, Men

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• Do the people of this land…desire to preserve those [liberties] protected by the First Amendment… If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanquished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch for a saving hand while yet there was time.

  George Sutherland

  Memories, Hands, Land

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• The preservation of a free government requires not merely that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority and are Tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.

  James Madison

  Rights, Government, Law

  James Madison (1867). “1769-1793”, p.163

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• As compacts, charters of government are superior in obligation to all others, because they give effect to all others. As truths, none can be more sacred, because they are bound, on the conscience by the religious sanctions of an oath. As metes and bounds of government, they transcend all other land-marks, because every public usurpation is an encroachment on the private right, not of one, but of all.

  James Madison

  Religious, Land, Government

  James Madison (1906). “The Writings of James Madison: 1790-1802”

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• Since they are our right, let us be vigilant to preserve them uninfringed, and free from encroachments. If animosities arise, and we should be obliged to resort to party, let each of us range himself on the side which unfurls the ensigns of public good. Faction will then vanish, which, if not timely suppressed, may overturn the balance, the palladium of liberty, and crush us under its ruins.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Crush, Party, Voting

  Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks (1836). “Works: containing several political and historical tracts not included in any former edition ...”, p.281

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• To appeal to contemporary man to revert, in this twentieth century, to a pagan-like nature worship in order to restrain technology from further encroachment and devastation of the resources of nature, is a piece of atavistic nonsense.

  Norman Lamm

  Technology, Men, Order

  Seymour J. Cohen, Norman Lamm (1986). “Faith and doubt: studies in traditional Jewish thought”, Ktav Pub Inc

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• I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations; but, on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have, more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism.

  James Madison

  Believe, Rights, Government

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Equality, Erosion, Liberty

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• Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Freedom, Government, Principles

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.

  Joe Bageant

  Exercise, Doors, Class

  Joe Bageant (2008). “Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War”, p.173, Broadway Books

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• Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Time, Fall, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1003, Delphi Classics

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• The more developed a nation is, the more complete is the independence of the individual, and the safer the individual from encroachments by another.

  Dmitry Pisarev

  Freedom, Independence, Individuality

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• In San Francisco, vulgarity, "bad taste," ostentation are regarded as a kind of alien blight, an invasion or encroachment from outside. In Los Angeles, there is so much money and power connected with ostentation that is no longer ludicrous: it commands a kind of respect. For if the mighty behave like this, then quiet good taste means that you can't afford the conspicuous expenditures, and you become a little ashamed of your modesty and propriety.

  Pauline Kael

  Mean, San Francisco, Invasion

  pauline kael (1965). “i lost it at the movies”

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• The use of the word royalty, as fee to a proprietor for the exploitation of a work or property, derives from the period when the sovereign assumed title to all wealth of the realm. It was the struggle for freedom from these encroachments of the state that chiefly marked the Nineteenth Century, and established everywhere constitutional regimes of limited authority. In the Twentieth Century, however, we have witnessed a gradual and almost unrestricted movement back to state authoritarianism, primarily in the economic sphere, accompanied by the spread of state monopoly and intervention.

  Elgin Groseclose

  Struggle, Sovereign, Spheres

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• Unbounded hopes were placed on each successive extension of the electoral franchise, culminating in the enfranchisement of women.These hopes have been disappointed, because the voters, male and female, being politically untrained and uneducated, have (a) no grasp of constructive measures; (b) loathe taxation as such; (c) dislike being governed at all; and (d) dread and resent any extension of official interference as an encroachment on their personal liberty.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Voting, Liberty, Males

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• Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.

  James Monroe

  Religious, Rights, Government

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• Not even piety will stay wrinkles, nor the encroachments of age, nor the advance of death, which cannot be resisted.

  Horace

  Wrinkles, Age, Piety

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• Nor is any evidence to be found, either in History or Human Nature, that nations are to be bribed out of a spirit of encroachment and aggression, by humiliations which nourish their pride, or by concessions that extend their resources and power.

  James Madison

  Pride, Spirit, Human Nature

  James Madison, David B. Mattern (1997). “James Madison's "Advice to My Country"”, p.16, University of Virginia Press

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• I think the music industry, for instance, is such a huge, multibazillion-dollar industry and it's become very, very savvy. There's a very short grace period in which actual human rebellion or resistance can thrive before it's co-opted by these huge companies. And all of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it's part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general.

  Ani DiFranco

  Thinking, Grace, Dollars

  "Interview: Righteous Babe Ani DiFranco". Interview by Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. September 8, 1999.

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• American special relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia blind us to their dreadful encroachments on human rights, as well as confer impunity on their leaders with respect to accountability for crimes against humanity.

  Richard A. Falk

  Rights, Israel, Leader

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• All of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it's part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general.

  Ani DiFranco

  Thinking, Culture, Youth

  "Interview: Righteous Babe Ani DiFranco". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. September 8, 1999.

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