Quotes on Religion and Philosophy

Hugo Black:

The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have [to] bare the secrets of government and inform the people.

New York Times, June 30, 1971 (commenting on publication of the Pentagon Papers)

Noam Chomsky:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

The Common Good (1998)

Milton Friedman:

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

Capitalism and Freedom (1962).

Fred Hiatt:

[T]here is a striking similarity between the arguments used to justify anti-miscegenation laws and the arguments put forward today against gay marriage. Tradition, a respect for majority opinion, religion, science, sociology - all were invoked with great somberness and much citation of experts and their research. The prejudice that propped up all the arguments - and, for us, invalidates them - was invisible or inevitable to their proponents. ...Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents, their sentencing judge decreed. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The Washingon Post, in a column on gay marriage. (2003)

Rosa Luxemburg:

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

The Russian Revolution (1922).

George Orwell:

Freedom is the fredom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

1984, Winston Smith writing in his diary.

Paul:

For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else’s conscience?

Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10:29

Arthur Schopenhauer:

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorisms.

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