Quotes from FFF

From recent edition of the Email Update from the Future of Freedom Foundation:

Monday, January 26, 2009

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digest his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals [1887]

Friday, January 23, 2009

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America [1835]

Thursday, January 22, 2009

When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot easily be cured of it.

— The New York Times, in a 1909 editorial opposing the very first income tax