“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts” — Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics, Book II.

“I count myself among those politicians who operate from conviction. For me, pragmatism is not enough. Nor is that fashionable word ‘consensus’. When I asked one of my Commonwealth colleagues at this Conference why he kept saying that there was a ‘consensus’ on a certain matter, another replied in a flash ‘consensus is the word you use when you can't get agreement’! To me consensus seems to be—the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects. It’s the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’”? — British PM Margaret Thatcher, in a speech at Monash University, 6 October 1981.

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves” — William Pitt (the Younger), British Prime Minister at the age of 24 and for all but three of the next 23 years until his death in 1806 at the age of 46. He was also Chancellor of the Exchequer for most of his time as P.M. This remark is from a speech in the House of Commons (18 November, 1783).

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around” — Leo Buscaglia.

“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings” — Lutheran theologian and anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Letters and Papers from Prison.

“The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather ‘What can I and my compatriots do through government’ to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp” — economist Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Introduction.

"A right, in the abstract, is a fact; it is not a thing to be given, established, or conferred; it is. Of the exercise of a right, power may deprive me; of the right itself, never!" -- Michigan-born anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre in "The Economic Tendency of Freethought" (1890).

“Because there is no precisely defined and widely agreed upon definition of fairness, what the term has come to mean in economic policy-making is that those with political power can restrict the options of individuals and enterprises, in order to produce whatever end result those in power choose to call ‘fair’" — economist Thomas Sowell in Basic Economics, 4th ed. (2010), Ch. 24. “Non-Economic” Values.

“Why can't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?” — singer, actor and comedian Jimmy Durante.

“If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there” — baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.

“From my upbringing and the Bible I learned people should stand up for rights just as the children of Israel stood up to the Pharaoh” — civil rights activist Rosa Parks, pivotal figure in the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott. She also said, “I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”

“No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles” — American patriot George Mason of Virginia.

“Too often what are called ‘educated’ people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years” — economist Thomas Sowell in “Random Thoughts,” May 01, 2007.

“The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionaries are philosophers and saints” — historians Will and Ariel Durant in The Lessons of History (1968)‎.

“[T]he most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity” — Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit author J. R. R. Tolkien in a letter to his son Christopher Tolkien (29 November, 1943).

"Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man--in temperament, character, and capacity--and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so." He also wrote, "Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery" — libertarian thinker Frank Chodorov.

“I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom. Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder. Yet in essence, that is what you have asked our loved ones to do, through an ill-contrived and totally naive campaign against the Second Amendment” — actor and past NRA president Charlton Heston in a speech to the National Press Club (14 September 1997).

“Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty” — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,

“There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than is required to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure…A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state” — philosopher Isabel Paterson, author of The God of the Machine.

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business” — longshoreman and philosopher Eric Hoffer. For more on him, see https://bit.ly/2MNgRTh and https://bit.ly/2Nmkg0p.