Free Society Quotes - Page 8

• Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.

  Natan Sharansky

  Answers, Dissent, Determine

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• I'm basically a libertarian. I don't want to restrict anyone from doing anything unless it's going to harm me. I don't want [to] pass a law stopping someone from smoking. It's just too dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society. Since we are genetically so diverse and our brains are so different, we're going to have different aspirations.

  James D. Watson

  Law, Smoking, Brain

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• The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.

  Dana Gioia

  Art, Real, Successful

  Commencement speech, Stanford University, June 17, 2007.

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• In a free society, every opportunity comes with three obligations. First, you must seize it. You must mold it into a work that brings value to others. Second, you must live it. Opportunity is nurtured only by action. Third, you must defend the freedom to pursue opportunities. You must embrace these three obligations as if the future of the United States depended on it. In fact, it does.

  Roberto Goizueta

  Work, Opportunity, Mold

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• An armed society is a free society.

  Howie Carr

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• A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of
  leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.

  Eric Hoffer

  Order, Intellectual, Economy

  Eric Hoffer (1963). “The Ordeal of Change”

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• True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.

  Eric Hoffer

  Loyalty, Individual, Believer

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• For loving, working, and creative people to throw off the yoke of power it is necessary to abolish power itself, not merely to make the yoke comfortable. Where some have power, others do not, and the two classes persist. A free society is where all have power-power over and responsibility for their own lives, power and reason to respect the lives of others. This is also a society without classes, a society of human beings, not rulers and the ruled.

  Karl Hess

  Responsibility, Class, Two

  Karl Hess (1975). “Dear America”, William Morrow &Company

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• I came to the United States because I valued living as a free person, one who is able to advocate in a democratic society. Unfortunately, the U.S. has been turning into a less free society, a police and surveillance state, especially after 9/11.

  Sami Al-Arian

  Surveillance State, Police, Able

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• Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Agreement, Individual Choice

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.385, Penguin

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• A theory deeply etched in our law [is that] a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.

  Clarence Thomas

  Rights, Law, Justice

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• Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole the church, party, nation and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society .

  Eric Hoffer

  Loyalty, Party, Faithful

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• In a free society, a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.

  Barney Frank

  Hurt, Government, People

  "CNN Newsroom" with Don Lemon, Kyra Phillips, transcripts.cnn.com. July 30, 2008.

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• The stakes are geopolitical in nature and I believe that democracies are - people want to live in free societies, democracies are the best way to do that, and that if people see democracies in the neighborhood, they'll demand the same thing.

  George W. Bush

  Believe, People, Democracy

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• In a free society, the “vision thing” is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a “visionary” bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government [...] the poorer and less free the people.

  Ilana Mercer

  Government, People, Vision

  "His Rhetoric, Our Reality". original.antiwar.com. January 26, 2005.

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• The one important distinction between the two factors of production is that in a free society, ownership of the human factor, labor, cannot be concentrated while ownership of the non-human factor, capital, can be.

  Louis O. Kelso

  Wisdom, Two, Important

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• I'm embarrassed for us as a free society that we actually want people punished for saying things we don't like.

  Jim Norton

  People, Want, Embarrassed

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• In a free society we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior, but if we're civilized people we publicly criticize that and don't belong to those groups or associate with those people.

  Rand Paul

  People, Abhorrent, Groups

  "Rand Paul on Civil Rights: Private Restaurants Wouldn’t Have To Serve Martin Luther King" by Taylor Marsh, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 19, 2010.

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• True prosperity can only come from a healthy economy and sound money. That can only be achieved in a free society.

  Ron Paul

  Healthy, Sound, Prosperity

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• Terrorism thrives on a free society. The terrorist uses the feelings in a free society to sap the will of civilization to resist. If the terrorist succeeds, he has won and the whole of free society has lost.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Civilization, Feelings, Sap

  Margaret Thatcher (1997). “The collected speeches of Margaret Thatcher”, HarperCollins

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• I worry very much about kids growing up in a society where they think: "I'm not going to talk about this issue, read this book or explore this idea because someone may think I'm a terrorist." That's not the kind of free society I want for our children.

  Bernie Sanders

  Children, Growing Up, Book

  FaceBook post by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Jan 04, 2016

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• If you live in a free market and a free society, shouldn't you have the right to know what you're buying? It's shocking that we don't and it's shocking how much is kept from us.

  Robert Kenner

  Buying, Free Market, Ifs

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• As a great democratic society, we have a special responsibility to the arts. For art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color. What freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and a spirit which finds its greatest flowering in the free society. I see of little more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than the full recognition of the place of the artist.

  John F. Kennedy

  Music, Country, Art

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• The terrorists believe that free societies are essentially corrupt and decadent and, with a few hard blows, they can force us to retreat. They are mistaken.

  George W. Bush

  Believe, Blow, Retreat

  George W. Bush's address to the Nation in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. June 28, 2005.

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• Because federal hate crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society.

  Ron Paul

  Hate, Law, Crime

  "Unconstitutional Legislation Threatens Freedoms" by Ron Paul, May 9, 2007.

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