“Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.”
Regretful feeling
Regretful Quotes — page 157 of 169
“Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?”
“Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.”
“I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.”
“If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.”
“The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein.”
“The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.”
“I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.”
“To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”
“They who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time accumulating property. The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.”
“I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.”
“I found that competition was supposed to be a menace and that a good manager circumvented his competitors by getting a monopoly by artificial means.”
“Labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth because they take away a man's independence.”
“I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.”
“They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.”
“My businesses are usually built around challenging conventional wisdom, so I tend to gain by taking the other side. It's been very profitable and entertaining for me”
“Linking without permission is stealing. Period, end of story.”
“I think the record industry, by and large what's left of it, is still totally homophobic. I think it's much less so in the film industry now, but the record industry, it's always been a man's world.”
“I regret not getting brutally forthright with human beings a hell of a lot sooner than I did. Civility and obliquity are wasted on people who will not make the effort to be harsher or stricter on their own gooey egos than they are on other people.”
“It is the cruelest of all ironies that moderns imagine themselves to be (abstractly understood) "individuals," because in actuality moderns are "types," abstracted and self-abstractive victims of a process of stereotyping that afflicts even would-be rebels and anarchists.”