“In everything we are destroyers – even in the instruments of destruction to which we turn for relief. The very socialism and internationalism through which our choked spirit seeks utterance, which seem to threaten your way of life, are alien to our spirit's demands and needs. Your socialists and internationalists are not serious. The charm of these movements, the attraction, such as it is, which they exercise, is only in their struggle: it is the fight which draws your gentile radicals.”
You Gentiles (1924) <br class="br">Source: pp. 152-153 https://archive.org/details/you-gentiles-maurice-samuel-1924-217pgs-rel.sml/page/152/mode/1up
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Maurice Samuel1
novelist, translator and lecturer 1895–1972Related quotes
John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law
as reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 29.
Louis Veuillot (1813–1883) French journalist
Misattributed
Original: (fr) Quand je suis le plus faible, je vous demande la liberté parce que tel est votre principe ; mais quand je suis le plus fort, je vous l’ôte, parce que tel est le mien
(fr) Also appears in the form "Quand les libéraux sont au pouvoir, nous leur demandons la liberté, parce que c’est leur principe, et, quand nous sommes au pouvoir, nous la leur refusons, parce que c’est le nôtre"
Misattributed to Veuillot in Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert: "When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."
According to Pierre Pierrard, this was attributed to Veuillot by Montalambert, and Veuillot protested he did not say it.
Alec Douglas-Home (1903–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech to the Lord Mayor's Banquet at Guildhall (11 November 1963), quoted in The Times (12 November 1963), p. 12
Prime Minister
Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet
Letter Eight (12 August 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist
K 42
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)
Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge
“The Spirit of Liberty” - speech at “I Am an American Day” ceremony, Central Park, New York City (21 May 1944).
Extra-judicial writings
Context: What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.
James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher
Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 71–72; As cited in: Stijn Maria Verhagen (2005). Zorglogica’s uit balans. p. 300