#racy

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

Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong… This [is] mostly BS. ↗

— Jeffrey A. Miller

#democracy-fascism #democracy-freedom #democracy-voting #democrats #elections

By creating a society in which all people, of all colors, were granted freedom and citizenship, the Haitian Revolution forever transformed the world. It was a central part of the destruction of slavery in the Americas, and therefore a crucial moment in the history of democracy, one that laid the foundation for the continuing struggles for human rights everywhere. In this sense we are all descendents of the Haitain Revolution, and responsible to these ancestors. ↗

— Laurent Dubois

#haiti #haitian-revolution #human-rights #revolution #freedom

Wenn wir uns der Verfolgung des freien Geistes während der Diktatur besinnen, werden wir die Freiheit jedes Gedankens und jeder Kritik schützen, so sehr sie sich auch gegen uns selbst richten mag." [Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages] ↗

— Richard von Weizsäcker

#democracy #dictatorship #freedom #persecution #politics

Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability. ↗

— Benjamin Harrison

#foreign-relations #government #freedom

The more degrees of freedom there are in practice, the wider the discussion and debate can be. ↗

— Thomas Newkirk

#freedom #ideas #freedom