“Freedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. We do not believe in freedom for madmen or children. The necessity of drawing a line between responsible individuals and others is inescapable, yet it means that there is an essential ambiguity in our ultimate objective of freedom. Paternalism is inescapable for those whom we designate as not responsible.”
Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 33
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Milton Friedman158
American economist, statistician, and writer 1912–2006Related quotes
Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana
The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people.
2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)
Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism
Section 2 : The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
Context: If "freedom" means, first of all, the responsibility of every individual for the rational determination of his own personal, professional and social existence, then there is no greater fear than that of the establishment of general freedom. Without a thoroughgoing solution of this problem there never will be a peace lasting longer than one or two generations. To solve this problem on a social scale, it will take more thinking, more honesty and decency, more conscientiousness, more economic, social and educational changes in social mass living than all the efforts made in previous and future wars and post-war reconstruction programs taken together.
George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States
2000s, 2003, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy (November 2003)
David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech to Conservative Party Conference http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/oct/04/conservatives2005.conservatives3 (4 October 2005) <br class="br">2000s, 2005
M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
“We have to learn that freedom imposes responsibilities”
Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader
A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 14
Context: There is no British Government anymore in Ireland. It is gone. It is no longer the enemy. We have now a native government, constitutionally elected, and it is the duty of every Irish man and woman to obey it. Anyone who fails to obey is an enemy of the people and must expect to be treated as such. We have to learn that attitudes and actions which were justifiable when directed against alien administration, holding its position by force, are wholly unjustifiable against a native government which exists only to carry out the people's will, and can be changed the moment it ceases to do so. We have to learn that freedom imposes responsibilities.
Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States
Television interview on MTV's Enough is Enough (19 April 1994) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=49995 <br class="br">1990s <br class="br">Context: When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly. That is, when we set up this country, abuse of people by Government was a big problem. So if you read the Constitution, it's rooted in the desire to limit the ability of — Government's ability to mess with you, because that was a huge problem. It can still be a huge problem. But it assumed that people would basically be raised in coherent families, in coherent communities, and they would work for the common good, as well as for the individual welfare.