In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

Alexander Hamilton, American politician

The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom. The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims.

Arthur Miller, Arthur Asher Miller, American author

If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that's okay, he's God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite.

Dennis McKinsey, American author

Imperial Christianity

We are of course a nation of differences.
There are two kinds of restrictions on human liberty - the restraint of law and that of tradition. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten tradition supported by popular opinion.

Carrie Chapman Catt, American women's rights activist

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.’

David Mamet, David Alan Mamet, Jewish American author

See The corruption of the American dream

The worst government is the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when the fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

H. L. Mencken, Henry Louis Mencken, American journalist and social critic

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards
- the things we live by and teach our children -
are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

Walter Elias Disney, American movie producer, director and screenwriter, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter

one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.

That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants.

It is the right which they first of all strike down.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Those who profess to favor freedom,

and deprecate agitation,

are men who want crops without plowing up the earth,

they want rain without thunder and lightning.

Frederick Douglass, African American orator, author and statesman

Any group or 'collective,' large or small,
is only a number of individuals.

A group can have no rights other
than the rights of its individual members.

In a free society, the 'rights' of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking.

A group, as such, has no rights.

The only proper purpose of a government is

to protect a man's rights, which means:

to protect him from physical violence.

The only proper functions of a government are:

the police, to protect you from criminals;

the army, to protect you from foreign invaders;

and the courts, to protect your property

and contracts from breach or fraud by others,

and to settle disputes by rational rules,

according to objective law.

Contradictions do not exist.

Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Live your life as a monument to your soul.

Ayn Rand, Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, Russian Jewish American author