#racy

But they can rule by fraud, and by fraud eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish the job of killing off the Constitution.' 'What sort of tools?' 'More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason—or are manipulated into reasoning—that the entire population must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can't be trusted. ↗

— Robert Anton Wilson

#freedom #george-dorn #hagbard-celine #oppression #rights

Hespe's mouth went firm. She didn't scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry. ↗

— Patrick Rothfuss

#literacy #relationships #humor

Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home. ↗

— Gore Vidal

#god #liberalism #politics #religion #theocracy

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#democracy #freedom #marxism #radicalism #rebellion

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker ↗

— Malcolm X

#democracy #freedom #history #hope #individualism

Secrecy begets tyranny. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#freedom #freedom

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#dictatorship #fear #freedom #government #independent-thought

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." [The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)] ↗

— William O. Douglas

#first-amendment #freedom #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought #liberty

Corporations are not legal “persons” with constitutional rights and freedoms of their own, but legal fictions that we created and must therefore control. ↗

— Kalle Lasn

#democracy #freedom

Freedom, democracy, and socialism can only ever exist together; it is impossible to have any one without the other two. ↗

— Michel Templet

#politics #socialism #freedom