Q&A page at the Terry Goodkind Official Site http://www.prophets-inc.com/communicate/q_and_a.html
Context: People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.
All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.
Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual.
“MIT is governed by a second, even higher rule: the inalienable right of academic freedom.”
Being Nicholas, The Wired Interview by Thomas A. Bass http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bd1101bn.htm
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Nicholas Negroponte 16
American computer scientist 1943Related quotes
2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A
1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)
Context: If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
2014, Queensland University Address (November 2014)
"Iran President-Elect Wants to Ease Strains With U.S., but Sees No Direct Talks" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/world/middleeast/irans-president-elect-says-he-wants-better-us-ties.html The New York Times, (June 17, 2013)
“For them, having more is an inalienable right.”
Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1, on the oppressors
“Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?”
Book IV, Ch. 4
The History of Tom Jones (1749)
“Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of bondage.”
Source: A Million Little Pieces