“The legitimacy of authority is tested most when it restrains itself. Emergency powers exercised casually weaken democratic muscle memory. Exceptional measures must remain truly exceptional.”
Related quotes
Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power
Book 1, sec. 55 (10 June 1887) http://nietzsche.holtof.com/Nietzsche_the_will_to_power/the_will_to_power_book_I.htm <br class="br">The Will to Power (1888)
“I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.”
Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Face (1979), Chapter 1 (p. 12)
Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States
1870s, Speech to the Society of the Army of Tennessee (1875)
Context: Let us then begin by guarding against every enemy threatening the perpetuity of free republican institutions. I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics; but it is a fair subject for soldiers in their deliberations to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled in a republic like ours. Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.
“For what else are all these things, except exercises for the reason”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
X, 31
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X
Context: What matter and opportunity [for thy activity] art thou avoiding? For what else are all these things, except exercises for the reason, when it has viewed carefully and by examination into their nature the things which happen in life? Persevere then until thou shalt have made these things thy own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all things its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.
Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter
Said to art critic Riter Fitzgerald, who quoted Eakins in an article in the Philadelphia Item (1895); from Sylvan Schendler, Eakins (1967), ch. 10.
“Nothing stands still, except in our memory.”
Philippa Pearce book Tom's Midnight Garden
Source: Tom's Midnight Garden
“All people are born alike… except Republicans and Democrats.”
Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian
Mimi Abramovitz (1941) non-fiction writer
The existence of a market for labor is one of the distinguishing features of a market economy: workers compete to sell their labor at the most favorable price—meaning, in practice, the highest possible wage. At the same time, however, it is clear that the market for labor is qualitatively different from the market for goods, because workers need to sell their labor to survive.
Joel Blau and Mimi Abramovitz, The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy (Oxford University Press: 2010) p. 68