Famous Quotes & Sayings

C. S. Lewis

When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft. Protestantism,in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being too much like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all. Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics.

Bertrand Russell

Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as Plato diluted by common sense. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily.

Bertrand Russell

In spreading his ideas, Plato was willing to employ emotional appeals, state propaganda, and the use of force.

Bertrand Russell

Plato has dramatic strength ... but is quite unaware of the strength of the argument against his position ... and allows himself to be grossly unfair in arguing against it.

Bertrand Russell

Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.

Bertrand Russell

That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.

Bertrand Russell

The atomists , unlike Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.

Bertrand Russell

Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two.

Plato

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Al Gore

American democracy has been hacked.

Benjamin Disraeli

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

C. S. Lewis

It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

C. S. Lewis

Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Abraham Lincoln

Elections belong to the people. It's their decision.

Douglas Adams

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

David Lloyd George

No democracy has ever long survived the failure of its adherents to be ready to die for it. My own conviction is this, the people must either go on or go under.

Annette Lu

Taiwan's democracy has grown very fast and we enjoy a certain degree of freedom, as other developed democracies like the United States.

Allen Ginsberg

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

David Hockney

Someone has to speak up. It's a serious subject because really the subject is liberty.

Michael Rosen

On the Statue of Liberty it says, 'Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor yearning for liberty' and that's why we're here.

Lord Shaftesbury

Wit is its own remedy. Liberty and commerce bring it to its true standard. The only danger is the laying an embargo. The same thing happens here as in the case of trade: impositions and restrictions reduce it to a low ebb; nothing is so advantageous to it as a free port.

Ludwig von Mises

Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power.

Ludwig von Mises

The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: 'If you seek his monument, look around.'

Ayn Rand

I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.

Ayn Rand

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.

Ayn Rand

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.

Ayn Rand

What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.