“I don't think the average American understands what patriotism truthfully is. That's why when I attack our country or attack the government, it's sometimes looked at as unpatriotic. It's not.”
Courageous feeling
Courageous Quotes — page 257 of 1106
“Coherently democratic authority carries the conviction that true discipline does not exist in the muteness of those who have been silenced but in the stirrings of those who have been challenged, in the doubt of those who have been prodded, and in the hopes of those who have been awakened.”
“Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We're in for a major disaster if it isn't curbed...We have no option. If it isn't controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation and war.”
“Our domestic problems are for the most part economic. We have our enormous debt to pay, and we are paying it. We have the high cost of government to diminish, and we are diminishing it. We have a heavy burden of taxation to reduce, and we are reducing it. But while remarkable progress has been made in these directions, the work is yet far from accomplished.”
“Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don't be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don't hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.”
“What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.”
“The Supreme Court has always been the last bastion of the protection of our freedoms.”
“We must exchange the philosophy of excuse - what I am is beyond my control for the philosophy of responsibility.”
“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
“Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn.”
“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.”
“Government: If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.”
“We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all, but we cannot have freedom without wilderness, we cannot have freedom without leagues of open space beyond the cities, where boys and girls, men and women, can live at least part of their lives under no control but their own desires and abilities, free from any and all direct administration by their fellow men.”
“Freedom cannot be bestowed - it must be achieved.”
“Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.”
“If something's just, I'll let myself be hacked to bits for it.”
“Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion.”
“A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger.”
“The simple act of caring is heroic.”