Quotes about privilege (948 quotes, page 8)

“If I wanted, I could have changed cars on a daily basis. I could drink selected French Champagne everyday. When thousands of people would queue-up to enter the grounds of the Imperial Palace I had unfettered access to the Emperor. I chose to forfeit these privileges and opportunities and decided to free my people and country from darkness, poverty and underdevelopment. I had no other ambition.”

Mengistu Neway (1919–1961) Commander of the Ethiopian Imperial Bodyguard

As quoted by Dr. Yacob Haile-Mariam (January 2007) Open Letter to the People of Ethiopia and the Judges

People , Cars , Drink , Change

“Motherhood and all the sentimentality that goes with Mother's Day was not congenial to the Greek mind. They were a remarkably unsentimental people; they had no particular reverence for children, nor did they regard them as a special and privileged portion of society. It would not have occurred to them to erect a vast temple to Mickey Mouse. They left that for us.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

The Noble Greeks.

Children , People

“Hard systems thinking is also accused of conservatism. It privileges the values and interests of its clients and customers, and lends its apparent expertise to their realization. It thus gives the facade of objectivity to changes that help to secure the status quo. In general terms, despite its many strengths and achievements, hard systems thinking is today thought of as having a limited domain of application.”

Mike Jackson (1951) systems scientist

Michael C. Jackson (2007) Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers. p. 62

Thinking , Change , Help

“Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man’s existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.”

Lewis H. Morgan (1818–1881) United States ethnologist

As quoted in Friedrich Engels's Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm

People , Age , Education , Law

“And therefore, Sire, altho' I am ready, so far as is in me, to dedicate the place for the Cistercian monks at Meynan, yet I could not do it without the full assent of the bishop and of his chapter, and of the parson of the place, who, with plenty of other people, have a very great horror of the approach of the forsaid monks. For though they may be good men, if God please, still they are the hardest neighbours that prelates and parsons could have. For where they plant their foot, they destroy towns, take away tithes, and curtail by their privileges all the power of prelacy.”

John Peckham (1227–1292) Archbishop of Canterbury

Footnote: Mr. Martin [editor] remarks upon this letter: "The avarice of the Cistercians had already been noticed by Richard I., who, when accused of having at home three daughters whom he loved more than the grace of God, viz., Pride, Luxury, and Avarice, replied: 'No, they are no longer at home. My daughter Pride I have married to the Templars, Luxury to the Black Monks, and Avarice to the White Monks.'" (Pref. to Vol. II., Peckham's Register p. lviii.)
Letter DLIV (June 14, 1284) Archbishop Peckham to King Edward I., from (Charles Trice Martin, ed.) Registrum epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham: Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis quoted in Georg Herzfeld (ed.) An Old English Martyrology (1900)

Men , God , People

“Preaching the gospel is not easy in a church defined by the denominational interests of status-seeking clergy and laypersons. Doing Christian theology is difficult in a seminary or university determined by the academic interests of privileged professors and students. Speaking the truth can be politically dangerous in a society defined according to the socio-economic interests of the rich. Preaching the gospel, doing Christian theology, and speaking the truth are interrelated, and neither can be correctly understood apart from the liberation struggles of the poor and marginalized.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. v

Truth , Universe

“Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body's yoke, but is subject to that of society.”

Émile Durkheim book Suicide

Suicide (1897)

Feeling , Parting

“Develop your personality, so that you may leave your individual mark in whatever sphere you are privileged to serve”

Bidhan Chandra Roy (1882–1962) Former Chief Minister of West Bengal, India

Convocation address to the students in 1956 in page=89
Remembering Our Leaders: Mahadeo Govind Ranade by Pravina Bhim Sain

Personality

“The small and imperfect mixture of representative government in England, impeded as it is by other branches, aristocratical and hereditary, shows yet the power of the representative principle towards improving the condition of man. With us, all the branches of the government are elective by the people themselves, except the judiciary, of whose science and qualifications they are not competent judges. Yet, even in that department, we call in a jury of the people to decide all controverted matters of fact, because to that investigation they are entirely competent, leaving thus as little as possible, merely the law of the case, to the decision of the judges. And true it is that the people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, because the only honest, depositories of the public rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government. Hereditary bodies, on the contrary, always existing, always on the watch for their own aggrandizement, profit of every opportunity of advancing the privileges of their order, and encroaching on the rights of the people.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1820s, Letter to A. Coray (1823)

People , Law , Decision , Science

“The provision of basic services to the people is not a privilege. Nor is it a charitable act. The people already paid for the services via the high taxes.”

Miguna Miguna (1962) lawyer, author and columnist

Facebook post in response to detractors, https://www.facebook.com/GovernorMigunaMiguna/posts/562185893970795, 2016
2016

People

“During the war of the Revolution, and in 1788, the date of the adoption of our national Constitution, there was but one State among the thirteen whose constitution refused the right of suffrage to the negro. That State was South Carolina. Some, it is true, established a property qualification; all made freedom a prerequisite; but none save South Carolina made color a condition of suffrage. The Federal Constitution makes no such distinction, nor did the Articles of Confederation. In the Congress of the Confederation, on the 25th of June, 1778, the fourth article was under discussion. It provided that 'the free inhabitants of each of these States — paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted — shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.' The delegates from South Carolina moved to insert between the words 'free inhabitants' the word 'white', thus denying the privileges and immunities of citizenship to the colored man. According to the rules of the convention, each State had but one vote. Eleven States voted on the question. One was divided; two voted aye; and eight voted no. It was thus early, and almost unanimously, decided that freedom, not color, should be the test of citizenship.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

War , Justice , Color , Question

“Here is how I describe the concept of privilege to skeptics: Do you believe that marginalized/minority groups face discrimination and are disadvantaged as a result? If the answer is yes, then another equally valid way of describing the same situation is to say that dominant/majority groups are relatively advantaged in comparison. “Privilege” simply refers to those advantages. One of the reasons why activists frame such matters in terms of privilege is to illustrate how *all of us* are impacted by unjust hierarchies and systems, even if it is not always apparent to us.”

Julia Serano (1967) transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans-bi activist, and biologist

Leftist Critiques of Identity Politics (2018)

Way

“The House of Lords have only been tolerated all these years because they were thought to be in a comatose condition which preceded dissolution. They have got to dissolution now. That this body, utterly unrepresentative, utterly unreformed, should come forward and claim the right to make and unmake Governments, should lay one greedy paw on the prerogatives of the sovereign and another upon the established and most fundamental privileges of the House of Commons is a spectacle which a year ago no one would have believed could happen; which fifty years ago no Peer would have dared suggest; and which two hundred years ago would not have been discussed in the amiable though active manner of a political campaign, but would have been settled by charges of cavalry and the steady advance of iron-clad pikemen.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 46
Early career years (1898–1929)

Housing

“The government of the Israelites was a Federation, held together by no political authority, but by the unity of… faith and founded not on physical force but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120 families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before the law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community that it was resisted by Samuel… The throne was erected on a compact; and the king was deprived of the right of legislation among a people that recognised no lawgiver but God, whose highest aim in politics was to… make its government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the sanctions of heaven. The inspired men who rose in unfailing succession to prophesy against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the laws, which were divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed… to the healing forces that slept in the uncorrupted consciences of the masses. Thus the… Hebrew nation laid down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won—the doctrine of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development… and the principle that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code which was not made by man. The operation of these principles… occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Source: The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Men , God , People , Family

“On a purely intellectual level, how does allowing China to constantly rig trade in its favor advance the core conservative goal of making markets more efficient? Markets do not run better when manufacturing shifts to China largely because of the actions of its government. Nor do they become more efficient when Chinese companies are given special privileges in global markets, while American companies must struggle to compete with unfairly traded goods.”

Robert Lighthizer (1947) US Trade Representative

LIGHTHIZER: Donald Trump is no liberal on trade http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/9/donald-trump-is-no-liberal-on-trade/ (May 9, 2011)

“As someone who's had the privilege of leading the human genome project, I've had the opportunity to study our own DNA instruction book at a level of detail that was never really possible before. It's also now been possible to compare our DNA with that of many other species. The evidence supporting the idea that all living things are descended from a common ancestor is truly overwhelming. I would not necessarily wish that to be so, as a Bible-believing Christian. But it is so. It does not serve faith well to try to deny that.”

Francis S. Collins (1950) Geneticist; Director of the National Institutes of Health

"God Is Not Threatened by Our Scientific Adventures" http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Science-Religion/2006/08/God-Is-Not-Threatened-By-Our-Scientific-Adventures.aspx, interview by Laura Sheahen, Beliefnet (undated)

Books , Faith , Idea , Support

“You may recall that a few weeks ago, President Obama came to this chamber, and he addressed the chamber on health care before a joint session of the House and the Senate. During that session I was privileged to be here, and I saw my colleagues on the far side of the aisle, the Republicans, waving pieces of paper during his speech, and I was wondering what they were. I couldn’t imagine — it almost seemed like they wanted President Obama’s autograph. I just didn’t get it. I heard from one of my colleagues that this is what they called the Republican health care plan. I went over, after the speech was over, I picked up a copy that was lying down on the Republican side, and it turns out that the Republicans’ health care plan was a blank piece of paper. I inquired further, trying to find out exactly what the Republicans’ health care plan is. And it’s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America.”

Alan Grayson (1958) American politician

2009

Health , Imagination , Lying , Housing

“Something there is that can refresh and revivify older people: joy in the activities of the younger generation—a joy, to be sure, that is clouded by dark forebodings in these unsettled times. And yet, as always, the springtime sun brings forth new life, and we may rejoice because of this new life and contribute to its unfolding; and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be. There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond reach of the hand of fate and of all human delusions. And such eternals lie closer to an older person than to a younger one oscillating between fear and hope. For us, there remains the privilege of experiencing beauty and truth in their purest forms.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to Queen Mother Elizabeth of Belgium (20 March, likely 1936), written to her when she was depressed over the recent death of her husband and daughter-in-law, p. 51
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Life , Fate , People , Truth

“By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

"The Challenge of Renewal"
The Conduct Of Life (1951)

Success

“Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support the greater it curtails human freedom.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Bible and the Schools‎ (1966), p. 58
Other speeches and writings

Support , Freedom

“Unfairness existed, it always had and it always would, and the miracle, to Sharpe's eyes, was that some men like Hill and Wellesley, though they had become wealthy and privileged through unfair advantages, were nevertheless superb at what they did. […] Sharpe did not care that Sir Arthur Wellesley was the son of an aristocrat and had purchased his way up the ladder of promotion and was as cold as a lawyer's sense of charity. The long-nosed bugger knew how to win and that was what mattered.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 234
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Havoc (2003)

Men , Way , Sense

“Some years ago when I visited the British Army Museum in London, I was impressed by the way in which the history of the British Army was presented. Basically the display briefly and succinctly gave for each war involving the British Army the immediate and more remote causes of the war, British casualties, and the outcome, politically, territorially, economically, and the like. As I went through the display covering centuries of English history in a few minutes, I was struck by what perhaps should have been obvious from the outset. The history of the British Army also chronicles the history of Great Britain. And so it is in our own case- the history of the U. S. Army is inseparable from the history of the United States. We who have been or are privileged now to serve in the American Army should keep that fact in mind.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 209

War , Way , History

“For truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and in all sorts.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Truth , Time

“Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 18, "We Abandon Hope"

Men , Food , Suffering , Water

“Indian spirituality, proclaimed that the true Godhead was beyond number and count; that it had many manifestations which did not exclude or repel each other but included each other, and went together in friendship; that it was approached in different ways and through many symbols; that it resided in the hearts of its devotees. Here there were no chosen people, no exclusive prophethoods, no privileged churches and fraternities and ummas. The message was subversive of all religions based on exclusive claims.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Ram Swarup, introduction to Mohammed and the Rise of Islam by D.S. Margoliouth, New Delhi, Reprint, 1985 and 1995, p. xix.

Friendship , People , Religion , Way

“It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Ch. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=omwRAAAAYAAJ&q=%22It+is+the+province+of+knowledge+to+speak+and+it+is+the+privilege+of+wisdom+to+listen%22&pg=PA264#v=onepage and The Atlantic Monthly October 1872 http://books.google.com/books?id=psqcIq5UxYkC&q=%22It+is+the+province+of+knowledge+to+speak+and+it+is+the+privilege+of+wisdom+to+listen%22&pg=PA427#v=onepage
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)

Wisdom , Knowledge , Wise

“The explanation for capturing the vessel is perhaps to be found in Barroes’ remark: ‘It is true that there does exist a common right to all to navigate the seas and in Europe we recognize the rights which others hold against us; but the right does not extend beyond Europe and therefore the Portuguese as Lords of the Sea are justified in confiscating the goods of all those who navigate the seas without their permission.’ Strange and comprehensive claim, yet basically one which every European nation, in its turn, held firmly almost to the end of Western supremacy in Asia. It is true that no other nation put it forward so crudely or tried to enforce it so barbarously as the Portuguese in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but the principle that the doctrines of international law did not apply outside Europe, that what would be barbarism in London or Paris is civilized conduct in Peking (e. g. the burning of the Summer Palace) and that European nations had no moral obligations in dealing with Asian peoples (as for example when Britain insisted on the opium trade against the laws of China, though opium smoking was prohibited by law in England itself) was pact of the accepted creed of Europe’s relations with Asia. So late as 1870 the President of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce declared: ‘China can in no sense be considered a country entitled to all the same rights and privileges as civilized nations which are bound by international law.’ Till the end of European domination the fact that rights existed for Asians against Europeans was conceded only with considerable mental reservation. In countries under direct British occupation, like India, Burma and Ceylon, there were equal rights established by law, but that as against Europeans the law was not enforced very rigorously was known and recognized. In China, under extra‑territorial jurisdiction, Europeans were protected against the operation of Chinese laws. In fact, except in Japan this doctrine of different rights persisted to the very end and was a prime cause of Europe’s ultimate failure in Asia.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

People , Law , Failure , Sense

“Serious reflexion about one's own character will often induce a curious sense of emptiness; and if one knows another person well, one may sometimes intuit a similar void in him. (This is one of the strange privileges of friendship.)”

Iris Murdoch Sartre: Romantic Rationalist

Source: Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), Ch. 8, p. 119

Friendship , Sense , Personality

“Once a person acknowledges that they possess some form of privilege, they are more likely to accept the reality that they are not in any way objective about the form of marginalization in question”

Julia Serano (1967) transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans-bi activist, and biologist

Leftist Critiques of Identity Politics (2018)

Way , Question , Reality , Personality

“Shall we then, I ask you, even for a moment, be hopeless of our great cause? I feel almost ashamed even to argue it to such a meeting as this. I call to mind where I am, and who are those whom I see before me. Am I not in the town of Birmingham—England's central capital; and do not these eyes look upon the sons of those who, not thirty years ago, shook the fabric of privilege to its base? Not a few of the strong men of that time are now white with age. They approach the confines of their mortal day. Its evening is cheered with the remembrance of that great contest, and they rejoice in the freedom they have won. Shall their sons be less noble than they? Shall the fire which they kindled be extinguished with you? I see your answer in every face. You are resolved that the legacy which they bequeathed to you, you will hand down in an accumulated wealth of freedom to your children. As for me, my voice is feeble. I feel now sensibly and painfully that I am not what I was. I speak with diminished fire; I act with a lessened force; but as I am, my countrymen and my constituents, I will, if you will let me, be found in your ranks in the impending struggle.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (27 October 1858) referring to the Reform Crisis, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 272-273.
1850s

Men , Children , Age , Feeling

“If I am elected President, I will work with anyone who sincerely wants to get this country moving again. I will listen to any idea that is offered in good faith and intended to help solve our problems, not make them worse. I will seek the counsel of members of Congress from both parties in forming government policy before I ask them to support it. I will ask Democrats to serve in my administration. My administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability. I will hold weekly press conferences. I will regularly brief the American people on the progress our policies have made and the setbacks we have encountered. When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them. I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

[Text of McCain's Speech on First-Term Goals, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/15/text_of_mccains_vision_of_2013.html, washingtonpost.com, 2008-05-15, 2008-06-01]
2000s, 2008

People , Faith , Error , Idea

“No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendants with a thousandshares ofGeneral Motors or General Electric.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXXV, Section 3, p. 394

“And now, as a result of honoring our commitment to our gallant allies, that man Roosevelt has sought from the U. S. Congress a declaration of war not only against England and France but also against the Confederate States of America. His servile lackeys, misnamed Democrats, have given him what he wanted, and the telegraph informs me that fighting has begun along our border and on the high seas. Leading our great and peaceful people into war is a fearful thing, not least because, with the great advances of science and industry over the past half-century, this may prove the most disastrous and terrible of all wars, truly a war of the nations: indeed a war of the world. But right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for those things we have always held dear in our hearts: for the rights of the Confederate States and of the white men who live in them; for the liberties of small nations everywhere from outside oppression; for our own freedom and independence from the vicious, bloody regime to the north. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and fortunes, everything we are and all that we have, with the pride of those who know the day has come when the Confederacy is privileged to spend her blood and her strength for the principles that gave her birth and led to her present happiness. God helping us, we can do nothing else. Men of the Confederacy, is it your will that a state of war should exist henceforth between us and the United States of America?" "Yes!”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

The answer roared from Reginald Bartlett's throat, as from those of the other tens of thousands of people jamming the Capitol Square. Someone flung a straw hat in the air. In an instant, hundreds of them, Bartlett's included, were flying. A great chorus of "Dixie" rang out, loud enough, Bartlett thought, for the damnyankees to hear it in Washington.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 33

Men , God , War , People

“The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy—but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

“Broadband and digital services will no longer be a luxury item - a scarce commodity - to be rationed amongst the privileged few”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

In Ambani bets on 4G broadband in India, but risks abound, 23 June 2013, 17 December 2013, CNBC http://www.cnbc.com/id/100837027,

“As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end. Democracy is a high privilege, but it is also a heavy responsibility whose shadow stalks, although you may never walk in the sun.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech in Chicago, Illinois (29 September 1952)

Law , Democracy , Sun

“This proposed monopoly of political and economic power [in the form of the Dictatorship of the proletariat] was designed to do many things for the good of humanity, but experience has proven them to be false dreams. For example, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was designed to spread the enjoyment of wealth among the people by abolishing private property and putting all means of production in the hands of the government. Why did they want to do this? They said it was to prevent all property and wealth from falling into the hands of private capitalists. But what happened when the Communists attempted to do this in Russia? It destroyed what little division of wealth there was and sent the economy hurtling back in the direction of feudalism - an economic system under which a few privileged persons dispense the necessities of life by arbitrary determination while at the same time dictating the way in which all important phases of life shall be lived by the citizens.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Life , People , Dreams , Way

“A second justification for corporate taxation is that the corporation receives a number of special privileges from society, the most important of which is limited liability of the stockholders. The corporation tax can be viewed as a user fee for this benefit.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 17, The Corporation Tax, p. 399

“Any officer given the money to buy promotion and lucky enough to possess relations who could put him in the way of advancement was bound to rise, but even the less fortunate men who resented Wellesley's privileges were forced to admit that the young Colonel had a natural and chilling authority, and maybe, some thought, even a talent for soldiering. He was certainly dedicated enough to his chosen trade if that was any sign of talent.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, commenting on Colonel Arthur Wellesley, p. 103
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Men , Money , Way , Nature

“The H-1B visa racket is, however, a taxpayer-subsidized, grant of government privilege. Duly, profits remain private property. The costs of accommodating an annual human influx are socialized, borne by the bewildered community.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“ Why Tax Breaks Won’t Stop High-Tech, H-1B Human Trafficking https://constitution.com/tax-breaks-wont-stop-high-tech-h-1b-human-trafficking/,” Constitution.com, November 16, 2017.”
2010s, 2017

Communication

“The party which Lenin forged and led was really not a party, in the customary sense of the word. It was more of an ‘order,’ in the sense in which Hitler called his National-Socialist Party ‘ein Orden,’ bound by the members’ unshakable loyalty to their leader and one another, but subject to no other principle and responsible to no other constituency. Genuine political parties strive to enlarge their membership, whereas these pseudo-parties—the Bolshevik one first, and the Fascist and the Nazi ones later—were exclusive in that they treated membership as a privilege, restricting it to persons who met certain ideological as well as class or racial criteria. Elements regarded as unworthy were purged.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1995), pp. 38-39

Sense , Personality , Loyalty

“It is now spring of the year, and you have all had the privilege of being taught the way of God; and now you may all go home and be faithful with your hands. Every faithful man will go forth and put up his fences in season, and will plow his ground in season, and put his crops into the ground in season; and such a man may with confidence look for a blessing.”

Ann Lee (1736–1784) English Shaker leader

The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875)

God , Faith , Way , Home

“The officers of Colonel Hand's regiment are here, with enlisting orders. The officers of the Pennsylvania regiments think it a grievance (such of them as are commissioned for the new establishment), that officers of other regiments should have the privilege of enlisting their men before they get orders. I have stopped it until I learn your Excellency's pleasure. Governor Ewing is very much opposed to it.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (7 October 1776)

Men , Pleasure , Thinking , Learning

“To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality – wasn’t an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and dreary lives. ‘A rich emotional life,’ she’d written, ‘is a privilege reserved only for the daring few’.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter

Life , Joy

“My dad was a corporal in the U. S. Army and served during World War II. He was born in 1920 and knew oppression. Yet, when he sat me down on the steps of our home, 651 Kennesaw Ave NE in Atlanta, he shared with me that there was no greater honor or privilege, than to wear the uniform of these United States. Perhaps that's why his first and middle sons, along with his grandson, are all U. S. combat veterans, just like Dad.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Message from a non-oppressed black man to Colin Kaepernick (28 August 2016)

War , World , Home

“They have not enjoyed the educational and political privileges of the Han chinese, and they are in many respects primitive. But they know the meaning of fidelity, and if I say 'do this, although it means death,' they cheerfully obey.”

Ma Fuxiang (1876–1932) Chinese politician

In the Land of the Laughing Buddha – The Adventures of an American Barbarian in China, Upton Close, 2007, READ BOOKS, 271, 1-4067-1675-8, 440, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=DpQa22PJutwC&dq=arab+mercenaries+china&q=They+have+not+enjoyed+the+educational+and+political+privileges+of+the+Han+chinese%2C+and+they+are+in+many+respects+primitive#v=snippet&q=They%20have%20not%20enjoyed%20the%20educational%20and%20political%20privileges%20of%20the%20Han%20chinese%2C%20and%20they%20are%20in%20many%20respects%20primitive&f=false,

Death , Education

“The higher culture of the West—whose moral, aesthetic, and intellectual values industrial society still professes—was a pre-technological culture in a functional as well as chronological sense. Its validity was derived from the experience of a world which no longer exists and which cannot be recaptured because it is in a strict sense invalidated by technological society. Moreover, it remained to a large degree a feudal culture, even when the bourgeois period gave it some of its most lasting formulations. It was feudal not only because of its confinement to privileged minorities, not only because of its inherent romantic element (which will be discussed presently), but also because its authentic works expressed a conscious, methodical alienation from the entire sphere of business and industry, and from its calculable and profitable order.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 58

World , Business , Sense

“I had letters, last night, from South Carolina, which indicate a great disgust between the State and the Congress. They think themselves neglected. There is a large number of public vessels now on pay in the harbour, loaded with rice, which want to sail; but the State is so much soured, that they will not grant exclusive privileges to the Continental vessels from the embargo. The express is waiting.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (26 April 1779)

Thinking , Waiting , Night

“It is my opinion, that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of Government and legislation whatsoever. The colonists are the subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen… The Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power… When, therefore, in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax, what do we do? We, your Majesty's Commons for Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty,— what? Our own property?— No! We give and grant to your Majesty, the property of your Majesty's Commons of America… The distinction between legislation and taxation is essentially necessary to liberty… There is an idea in some, that the colonies are virtually represented in this House… Is he represented by any knight of the shire, in any county in this kingdom?… Or will you tell him that he is represented by any representative of a borough?— a borough which perhaps its own representatives never saw.— This is what is called the rotten part of the constitution. It cannot continue a century. If it does not drop, it must be amputated… I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to let themselves be made slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest… The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when were they made slaves?”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons on the Stamp Act (14 January 1766), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 71-6.

People , Feeling , Idea , Nature

“The capture of this man was crucial to the rise of a free Iraq. It marks the end of the road for him, and for all who bullied and killed in his name. For the Baathist holdouts largely responsible for the current violence, there will be no return to the corrupt power and privilege they once held. For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, this event brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Remarks on the Capture of Saddam Hussein (December 2003)

Women , Men , Secret

“Next we have Obama's murderous use of America's military young for his and his party’s partisan political purposes. He kept U. S. soldiers in Iraq, a war which should never have been started, long after he had announced the war was un-winnable but just long enough to pile up heaps of dead and maimed American youngsters in order to make their withdrawal timely and useful for electoral purposes. Now we see Obama and his team keeping U. S. troops in Afghanistan long after he decided to surrender to the Islamists in that that war, and thereby knowingly enhance the strength, lethality, self-confidence, and ambitions of America’s most dangerous enemies by returning to them their key safe haven. Our troops are the cream of America's young and they ought not to be used by any president as if he was their owner. Obama, however, seems to regard them, as he does the unborn, as chattel to be disposed of as he and his advisers see fit to advance Democratic Party political prospects. Finally, we have Obama and his advisers seeking to financially enslave this generation of young Americans, and each generation that follows it, in order to pay for his health care program. Obama and his lieutenants are starting slow in this area, but the evidence of coming coercion, beyond the mandatory fine young people pay if they prove not to be servile, can be seen in West Virginia, where university students reportedly will not be allowed to matriculate unless they enroll in Obama Care This amounts to a 4-year term of indentured service for the privilege of paying extortionate tuition for a mediocre education offered by anti-American ideologues of Obama’s stripe. And make no mistake, these young people are not being threatened and ultimately coerced to forfeit their salary, savings, and future for the elderly and sick. They are being used to fund health care for the core groups, dare I say 'plantations', of the Democratic Party.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention.
2010s

War , People , Health , Education

“It is a royal privilege to do good and be ill spoken of.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 3; quoted also by Marcus Aurelius, vii. 36
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

“How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Book II, ch. 3.
Knickerbocker's History of New York http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13042 (1809)

Men , God , Family

“To those privileged ones -- among whom we count ourselves -- the high-resounding "isms" to which their contemporaries ask them to give their allegiance are all equally futile: bound to be betrayed, defeated, and finally rejected by men at large, if containing anything really noble; bound to enjoy, for the time being, some sort of noisy success, if sufficiently vulgar, pretentious, and soul-killing to appeal to the growing number of mechanically conditioned slaves that crawl about our planet, posing as free men; all destined to prove, ultimately, of no avail.”

Savitri Devi book The Lightning and the Sun

The Lightning and the Sun (Calcutta: Temple Press, 1958, p. 3, http://www.vaidilute.com/books/savitri/savitri-01.html)

Men , Soul , Time , Success

“A Marshal of France is a fine fellow, second only to the Emperor, and he wore a dark blue uniform edged with golden leaves, and his collar and shoulders were heavy with gilt decorations. A Marshal of France was given privileges, riches, and honour, but they had to be earned by answering the difficult questions.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 238
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

Question

“Strange as it sounds, although Man thought himself hardly treated in respect to freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, Man was in action much the superior of God, whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under restraints that Man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas did not allow God even an undetermined will; he was pure Act, and as such he could not change. Man alone was, in act, allowed to change direction. What was more curious still, Man might absolutely prove his freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his life, he could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being done for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a single instant his continuous action. If Man had the singular fancy of making himself absurd,— a taste confined to himself but attested by evidence exceedingly strong,— he could be as absurd as he liked; but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict himself, which is one of Man's chief pleasures. While Man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an unlimited freedom to be wicked,— a privilege which, as both Church and State bitterlly complained and still complain, he has outrageously abused,— God was Goodness and could be nothing else. […] In one respect, at least, Man's freedom seemed to be not relative but absolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space or time or order or object or sense; but God's thought was his act and will at once; speaking correctly, God could not think, he is. Saint Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, as Abélard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of a divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. The atmosphere of Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, and its pure ether shuts out the corruption and pollution to come,— the Valois and Bourbons, the Occams and Hobbes's, the Tudors and the Medicis of an enlightened Europe.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Life , God , Pleasure , Idea

“It (North America) has drawn heavily from the strength of each community of its people to build the richest and the most powerful nations on earth. You are privileged and fortunate to be in a land that recognises and rewards individual talent and enterprise.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Message to the California Fiji Festival 2005

People , Communication

“It is, I know, for I have experienced it perhaps twice in my life, an awful privilege to be too much loved and perhaps the kindest thing I ever did in my life was never to let Matthew know to what degree he had destroyed my peace and my happiness.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

Love , Life , Peace , Happiness

“Many dogs, cats and horses are loved and cherished, and are even mourned when they die. But pigs, chickens, calves and other animals grown in factory farms are treated in the most brutal and exploitative way, devoid of all affection. They are units in a production line; their only purpose is to produce the maximum amount of food at the minimum cost. Factory farms epitomize the mechanistic spirit. … To justify this treatment, the less-favoured animals have to be regarded as inferior, unworthy of any sentimental attachment. A terrible conflict arises if the exploited animals are considered to have any value in themselves. One way to avoid this conflict is to keep the privileged and the exploited animals in separate categories in our minds. … But if emotions spill over from pets to other animals, there is trouble. People become vegetarians, or even animal rights activists.”

Rupert Sheldrake (1942) English biochemist, author and parapsychological researcher

Seven Experiments That Could Change the World (London: Fourth Estate, 1994), p. 24.

Love , People , Food , Dogs

“What we are fighting, in Islamist extremism, is an ideology. It is an extreme doctrine. And like any extreme doctrine, it is subversive. At its furthest end it seeks to destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric realm. And it often backs violence to achieve this aim – mostly violence against fellow Muslims – who don’t subscribe to its sick worldview. But you don’t have to support violence to subscribe to certain intolerant ideas which create a climate in which extremists can flourish. Ideas which are hostile to basic liberal values such as democracy, freedom and sexual equality. Ideas which actively promote discrimination, sectarianism and segregation. Ideas – like those of the despicable far right – which privilege one identity to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of others. And ideas also based on conspiracy: that Jews exercise malevolent power; or that Western powers, in concert with Israel, are deliberately humiliating Muslims, because they aim to destroy Islam. In this warped worldview, such conclusions are reached – that 9/11 was actually inspired by Mossad to provoke the invasion of Afghanistan; that British security services knew about 7/7, but didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash. And like so many ideologies that have existed before – whether fascist or communist – many people, especially young people, are being drawn to it. We need to understand why it is proving so attractive.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Hostility , People , Exercises , Democracy

“I have long since believed that in spite of all the vigilance that can be infused into post commanders, the special regulations of the Treasury Department have been violated, and that mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders. So well satisfied have I been of this that I instructed the commanding officers at Columbus to refuse all permits to Jews to come South, and I have frequently had them expelled from the department, but they come in with their carpet-sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it. The Jews seem to be a privileged class that can travel anywhere. They will land at any woodyard on the river and make their way through the country. If not permitted to buy cotton themselves, they will act as agents for someone else, who will be at military post with a Treasury permit to receive cotton and pay for it in Treasury notes which the Jew will buy up at an agreed rate, paying gold.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Letter to C. P. Wolcott, Assistant Secretary of War, Washington (17 December 1862).
1860s

Way , Travel , Country

“Kevin Kruse in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America details how industrialists in the 1930s and 1940s poured money and resources into an effort to silence the social witness of the mainstream church, which was home to many radicals, socialists and proponents of the New Deal. These corporatists promoted and funded a brand of Christianity—which is today dominant—that conflates faith with free enterprise and American exceptionalism. The rich are rich, this creed goes, not because they are greedy or privileged, not because they use their power to their own advantage, not because they oppress the poor and the vulnerable, but because they are blessed. And if we have enough faith, this heretical form of Christianity claims, God will bless the rest of us too. It is an inversion of the central message of the Gospel. You don’t need to spend three years at Harvard Divinity School as I did to figure that out.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Suicide of the Liberal Church", January 24, 2016 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_suicide_of_the_liberal_church_20160124

Money , God , Books , School

“My family and I left Yokohoma in June, 1939, in time for me to enter the Army War College in what turned out to be the last class before the school closed for World War II. As we left Japan, I would have said that war between the two countries was certainly possible but I had no premonition that it was only two years away. On the opening day of the war college, a number of senior officers from the War Department attended to welcome the new class. The first man to speak I had never seen before, but he was just as impressive at first glance as he remained in my eyes in later life- George Marshall, the new Army Chief of Staff. What he said that day I do not remember, but the way he said it, I do. General Marshall never spoke anywhere without receiving the undivided attention of every listener to the words of a man who obviously knew what he was talking about. One could never imagine questioning the accuracy of his facts or challenging the soundness of his conclusions on any subject he undertook to discuss. He did not give the impression of great brilliance of mind, as General MacArthur did, but of calm strength and unshakeable will. I was to owe much to him- my service on his staff at the outbreak of the war, later the command of a division in Europe, and assignment as the Superintendent of West Point following the war. Bu my greatest privilege was the opportunity to see General Marshall in action at close range at the outbreak of World War II.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 37

Life , War , World , School

“I think the idea of white privilege is absolutely reprehensible. And it's not because white people aren't privileged. You know, we have all sorts of privileges, and most people have privileges of all sorts, and you should be grateful for your privileges and work to deserve them, I would say. But, the idea that you can target an ethnic group with a collective crime, regardless of the specific innocence or guilt of the constituent elements of that group, there is absolutely nothing that's more racist than that. It's absolutely abhorrent.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Strengthen the Individual: Q & A Parts I & II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UL-SdOhwek&t=52m14s
Other

People , Idea , Thinking

“It's for you, not for me. You don't do anything for me. You do meditation, you do it for yourself. You get helped by that. There is no pay, nothing I am getting out of it. It's for you. If it's your privilege, if it's your convenience, you do it. It's for you, not for me. Go ahead, do meditation and you will see and you'll really, really observe how beautiful this Knowledge is.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

San Francisco, California, July 1, 1972:
1970s

Beauty , Knowledge , Help

“De Bellaigue is at pains to portray Mossadegh as — in the words of the jacket copy — “one of the first liberals of the Middle East, a man whose conception of liberty was as sophisticated as any in Europe or America.” But the trouble is, there is nothing in Mossadegh’s career — spanning half a century, as provincial governor, cabinet minister, and finally prime minister — to portray him as even remotely a lover of liberty. De Bellaigue quotes Mossadegh as saying that a trusted leader is “that person whose every word is accepted and followed by the people.” To which de Bellaigue adds: “His understanding of democracy would always be coloured by traditional ideas of Muslim leadership, whereby the community chooses a man of outstanding virtue and follows him wherever he takes them.” Word for word, that could have been the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s definition of a true leader. Mossadegh also made a habit of appearing in his street meetings with a copy of the Koran in hand. According to de Bellaigue, Mossadegh liked to say that “anyone forgetting Islam is base and dishonourable, and should be killed.” During his premiership, Mossadegh demonstrated his dictatorial tendency to the full: Not once did he hold a full meeting of the council of ministers, ignoring the constitutional rule of collective responsibility. He dissolved the senate, the second chamber of the Iranian parliament, and shut down the Majlis, the lower house. He suspended a general election before all the seats had been decided and chose to rule with absolute power. He disbanded the high council of national currency and dismissed the supreme court. During much of his tenure, Tehran lived under a curfew while hundreds of his opponents were imprisoned. Toward the end of his premiership, almost all of his friends and allies had broken with him. Some even wrote to the secretary general of the United Nations to intervene to end Mossadegh’s dictatorship. But was Mossadegh a man of the people, as de Bellaigue portrays him? Again, the author’s own account provides a different picture. A landowning prince and the great-great-grandson of a Qajar king, Mossadegh belonged to the so-called thousand families who owned Iran. He and all his children were able to undertake expensive studies in Switzerland and France. The children had French nannies and, when they fell sick, were sent to Paris or Geneva for treatment. (De Bellaigue even insinuates that Mossadegh might have had a French sweetheart, although that is improbable.) On the one occasion when Mossadegh was sent to internal exile, he took with him a whole retinue, including his cook… As a model of patriotism, too, Mossadegh is unconvincing. According to his own memoirs, at the end of his law studies in Switzerland, he had decided to stay there and acquire Swiss citizenship. He changed his mind when he was told that he would have to wait ten years for that privilege. At the same time, Farmanfarma secured a “good post” for him in Iran, tempting him back home.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Myths of Mossadegh" https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/302213/myths-mossadegh/page/0/1, National Review (June 25, 2012).

Pain , Children , People , Family

“The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress reflection and the experience of life. That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes — the legal subordination of one sex to the other — is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.”

John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 1

Life , Sex , Perfection

“The King had every privilege except that of being at ease. Pompadour provided the atmosphere in which that final luxury was possible. She did not do this, as anyone who thinks about the matter for twenty seconds will know, by twenty years of rapt contemplation of the ceilings of Versailles. Indeed, Pompadour was not a physically ardent woman, and love-making tired her. After about eight years of their association Louis XV did not sleep with her… But it was to Pompadour that he talked, and it was to Pompadour that he listened.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Madame de Pompadour.

Love , Thinking , Sleep

“The unsound convert takes Christ by halves. He is all for the salvation of Christ, but is not for sanctification. He is for the privileges, but does not appropriate the person of Christ.”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: An Alarm to the Unconverted aka A Sure Guide to Heaven (first published 1671), P. 45.

Christ , Personality

“I know of no privileged class of society, and I do not know an esquire has any privileges a yeoman has not.”

Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden (1762–1832) British barrister and judge, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench

Case of Edmonds and others (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 889.

“So black people, you are subjects of white people. Even under ANC, even under the so-called democracy, you are subject, you are servant of white people. No white man will be served by me. I do not serve white masters. … I am here to disturb the white man's peace. … The white man has been too comfortable for too long. We are here unashamedly to disturb the white man's peace, because we have never known peace. We don't know what peace looks like. … They have been swimming in a pool of privilege. They have been enjoying themselves because they always owned our land. We, the rightful owners, our peace was disturbed by white man's arrival here. They committed a black genocide. They killed our people during land dispossession. … They found peaceful Africans here. They killed them. They slaughtered them like animals. We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now. What we are calling for is for peaceful occupation of the land. And we don't owe anyone apology about that. … Revolution is about making those who are comfortable uncomfortable. … Revolution is about disturbing the peace of those who are swimming in a peaceful environment through exploitation of the working class. … Our strategic objective is the defeat of white monopoly capital. And that defeat […] means the ownership of property must change and be transferred into the hands of the people. Their mines must be nationalized, the banks must be nationalized, the land must be expropriated without compensation. … But white minority be warned, we will take our land no matter what.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

To EFF supporters after appearing in the Newcastle Magistrates court on 7 November 2016, for allegedly contravening the Riotous Assemblies Act, “We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now.” Malema http://www.thesouthafrican.com/we-are-not-calling-for-the-slaughtering-of-white-people-at-least-for-now-malema/, Ezra Claymore, The South African, 8 November 2016, and a video https://twitter.com/tshidi_lee/status/795572416290443264/video/1 by Matshidiso Madia. See also: Malema addresses supporters after appearing in court, 7 November 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjBi3z-1yAs, SABC News, YouTube

People , Peace , Democracy , Change

“Justice is closely connected to respect for rights. Modern writers discuss both subjects together with no suggestion that one might discuss one with the other. It was not always so. Greek political theory and Roman Law had sophisticated ideas about justice in its various aspects, but did not embrace our conception of individual rights. This may seem counter-intuitive. How could a society recognize someone as the owner of a piece of property without acknowledging an individual right? How does legitimate one-man rule, monarchy, differ from its illegitimate parody, tyranny, unless the lawful king has a right to the authority he exercises that the tyrant does not?
The answer is that property and authority were defined by law rather than our notion of individual rights. To own property was to be the person to whom the law accorded the privileges and immunities that locally defined ownership. To be a legitimate ruler was to be the person the law designated to rule. It is a commonplace that ancient notions of law accorded far more power over property to the family and other groups than modern notions of private property do. Even under the Roman Law, where ownership had an 'absolute' and sovereign character, property was not understood in the modern way; when the law told the judge to give a man his ius, this primarily meant that he should be treated as the law required. The 'subjective' understanding of rights, whereby the right-holder may stand on his rights or not as he chooses, was not a Roman notion.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

Justice (1993)

Family , Justice , Law , Way

“But secession struck to an even deeper level, to the very roots of popular government. The seceding states made their bolt for the door not in response to invasion or military occupation or internal taxation, but because their favored candidates did not win a presidential election. The genius of popular government was wound around the twin propositions that majorities have the privilege of winning, and that minorities have the obligation to be cooperative losers. Secession was a declaration of non-cooperation with a national vote, and since the United States in 1860 was virtually the only large-scale example of a successful popular democracy, the threat that the American republic would fracture over a lost election seemed to call into question the entire workability of popular government.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2000s, States' Rights and Wrongs (2008)

Democracy , Question , Success

“Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: […].”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

XLIV
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

Books , Exercises , Reading

“Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons (10 May 1928)
Later life

“There is no higher honor than to serve free men and women, no greater privilege than to labor in government beneath the Great Seal of the United States and the American flag.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

George Bush: "Remarks to Members of the Senior Executive Service," January 26, 1989. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16628&st
Address to the Senior Executive Service (1989)

Women , Men

“Allied Troops are counterattacking in force. We continue to hold Bastogne. By holding Bastogne we assure the success of the Allied Armies. We know that our Division Commander, General Taylor, will say: Well Done!
We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas.”

Anthony McAuliffe (1898–1975) American general

US 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge (22 December 1944), as quoted in Gen. McAuliffe’s Christmas message, Battle of the Bulge http://www.mtdemocrat.com/opinion/gen-mcauliffes-christmas-message-battle-of-the-bulge-1944-dec-24/

Love , Home , Success , Christmas

“Probably there is no department of science, no form o humanity, in which greater advances have been made of late years, than in the medical and moral management of the insane. When we contrast the spacious and airy apartments of the insane. When we contrast the spacious and airy apartments and the grounds of our asylums, with the dark, and narrow, and dirty cells, in which, twenty years ago, the best accommodated of these poor creatures were immured - their neat and confortable dress, with their former rags and nakedness - their wholesome food, with their former rags and nakedness - their wholesome food, their former rations - and abovel all, the kindness and affection which is shown to them noew, with their ulter neglect in the days when they were executed from the privileges and society of men, we find ourselves shuddering at the thought of what we have seen, and lost in admiration of what we now see.
Wherever the Christian religion exists, we find the same rapid advances making towards the accomplishment of the great purposes of humanity. It seems as if the miracles of our Saviour were meant as protoypes of what his religion was to accomplish. It is by the influence of this religion of the march of science and philosophical discovery, that, by all Christian nations, the winds and the waves have been rebuked - that man is enabled to ride out the storm upon the ocean, as if it were hushed, and, like Peter of old, to walk upon the sea as on dry land.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). The Western Journal of the Medical & Physical Sciences http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=gtpXAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Volume 7, p. 618

Men , Religion , Food , Science

“In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly toward the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. A familiar story!”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter III: The Other Earth; 2. A Busy World (pp. 30-31)

Life , Pain , World

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

“The Meaning of a Liberal Education”, Address to the New York City High School Teachers Association (9 January 1909)
1900s

Education , Personality

“I felt a real Christian satisfaction in the fact that, if there were no other, there was one man who (several years before existence set the race another lesson to learn) made a practical effort on a small scale to learn the lesson of loving one’s neighbor and alas! Got at the same time a frightful insight into what an illusion Christendom is, and (a little later, to be sure) an insight also into what a situation the simpler classes suffered themselves to be seduced by paltry-newspaper writers, whose struggle or fight for equality (since it is in the service of a lie) cannot lead to any other result but to prompt the privileged classes in self-defence to stand proudly aloof from the common man, and to make the common man insolent in his forwardness.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, The Point of View for My Work as an Author (1848), p. 49

Love , Lie , Effort , Suffering

“There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

"The Plutonian Fire" http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/o_henry/243/
The Voice of the City (1908)

Men

“The only potential immigrants who still have that frontier spirit are South-African farmers. But American and European elites are uninterested in refugees who are ACTUALLY and actively being killed-off. That would be too much like preserving 'white privilege.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trashing Populism: Dim-Bulb Academic Vs. Deplorables," https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2018/04/13/trashing-populism-dimbulb-academic-vs-deplorables-n2470579 Townhall.com, April 18, 2018
2010s, 2018

“You may take from me, Sir, the privileges and emoluments of place, but you cannot, and you shall not, take from me those habitual and warm regards for the prosperity of Great Britain which constitute the honour, the happiness, the pride of my life, and which, I trust, death alone can extinguish.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

"The War Speeches of William Pitt", Oxford University Press, 1915, p. 7
Speech in the House of Commons, 21 February 1783, on the peace treaty with the United States. Pitt, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, knew the government would lose the vote and he would have to resign.

Life , Death , Happiness

“In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own. When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right. Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order. We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death. And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due… He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968.
Other

Death , Men , Law , Dreams

“A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Way

“I rejoice that I have lived to see this day, when the colored people of this favored land, by law, have equal privileges with the most favored.”

Thomas Garrett (1789–1871) American abolitionist

Letter published in The Liberator, when the 15th Amendment passed on March 30, 1870, as quoted in Station Master on the Underground Railroad : The Life and Letters of Thomas Garrett (2005) by James A. McGowan, p. 194
Context: I rejoice that I have lived to see this day, when the colored people of this favored land, by law, have equal privileges with the most favored. And I have faith to believe that ere long equal justice will be granted to the poor Indians and the Chinese.

People , Law , Color

“Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people.”

Albert Camus book The Stranger

The Stranger (1942)
Context: I don't know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. I grabbed him by the collar of his cassock. I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy.
He seemed so certain about everything, didn't he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head. He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who'd come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too. <!-- translated by Matthew Ward

People

“Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Context: Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect.

Life , Children

“The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992
Context: Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must—namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.

Communication , Question

“There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to be the happy privilege of private life, and this is one.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Addressing the House of Commons after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1 May 1865).
1860s
Context: There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to be the happy privilege of private life, and this is one. Under any circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe at Washington; under any circumstances we should have shuddered at the means by which it was accomplished. But in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments, there is something so homely and innocent, that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind.
Whatever the various and varying opinions in this House, and in the country generally, on the policy of the late President of the United States, all must agree that in one of the severest trials which ever tested the moral qualities of man he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength. …When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds. But it is one of our duties to reassure them under unreasoning panic and despondency. Assassination has never changed the history of the world. I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all around me. But even the costly sacrifice of a Caesar did not propitiate the inexorable destiny of his country.

Life , Feeling , Happiness

“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 1. Of the Nature of Flatland
Context: I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows — only hard and with luminous edges — and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe": but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things.

World , Nature , Happiness

“Robert Ingersoll preferred to every political and social honor the privilege of freeing humanity from the shackles of bondage and fear. He knew no holier thing than truth.”

Alice Moore Hubbard (1861–1915) American activist

Introduction.
An American Bible (1912)
Context: Robert Ingersoll preferred to every political and social honor the privilege of freeing humanity from the shackles of bondage and fear. He knew no holier thing than truth. He preferred using his own reason to receiving popular applause or approbation. His keen wit, clear brain and merciless sarcasm uncrowned the King of Superstition and made him a puppet in the court of reason.

Truth , Fear

“It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them. In this beneficent work, sections and races should be forgotten and partisanship should be unknown.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Inaugural address (1881)
Context: It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them. In this beneficent work, sections and races should be forgotten and partisanship should be unknown. Let our people find a new meaning in the divine oracle which declares that "a little child shall lead them," for our own little children will soon control the destinies of the Republic.

Education , Intelligence

“Dealing with answered questions is the privilege of brains constructed like a cow's stomach, which, as we know, is built to digest cud.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.
The same is true of what we write: it walks and it talks, but it can be dead-alive or alive-alive. What is truly alive stops before nothing and ceaselessly seeks answers to absurd, "childish" questions. Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken — errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs. And if answers be impossible of attainment, all the better! Dealing with answered questions is the privilege of brains constructed like a cow's stomach, which, as we know, is built to digest cud.

Question

“There is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country, and which must always operate as an obstacle to the granting of favors to new comers. This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Letter written as Secretary of State under President James Monroe (1819), as quoted in "What John Quincy Adams Said About Immigration Will Blow Your Mind" by D.C. McAllister, in The Federalist (18 August 2014) http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/18/what-john-quincy-adams-said-about-immigration-will-blow-your-mind
Context: There is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country, and which must always operate as an obstacle to the granting of favors to new comers. This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights. Privileges are granted by European sovereigns to particular classes of individuals, for purposes of general policy; but the general impression here is that privileges granted to one denomination of people, can very seldom be discriminated from erosions of the rights of others. [Immigrants], coming here, are not to expect favors from the governments. They are to expect, if they choose to become citizens, equal rights with those of the natives of the country. They are to expect, if affluent, to possess the means of making their property productive, with moderation, and with safety;—if indigent, but industrious, honest and frugal, the means of obtaining easy and comfortable subsistence for themselves and their families. They come to a life of independence, but to a life of labor—and, if they cannot accommodate themselves to the character, moral, political, and physical, of this country, with all its compensating balances of good and evil, the Atlantic is always open to them, to return to the land of their nativity and their fathers.

Country

“It must be the hope of every American citizen to maintain here as a permanent establishment, and as a perpetual inheritance for Americans of the future, the full measure of benefits and advantages which our people have been privileged to enjoy. It is our earnest wish to cooperate and to help in every possible way in restoring the unfortunate countries of the Old World. We want to help them to rid themselves of the bad traditions, the ancient animosities, the long established hostilities. We want our America to continue an example and a demonstration that peace, harmony, cooperation and a truly national patriotic sentiment may be established and perpetuated on an American scale.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)
Context: It must be the hope of every American citizen to maintain here as a permanent establishment, and as a perpetual inheritance for Americans of the future, the full measure of benefits and advantages which our people have been privileged to enjoy. It is our earnest wish to cooperate and to help in every possible way in restoring the unfortunate countries of the Old World. We want to help them to rid themselves of the bad traditions, the ancient animosities, the long established hostilities. We want our America to continue an example and a demonstration that peace, harmony, cooperation and a truly national patriotic sentiment may be established and perpetuated on an American scale. We believe our first great service to the Old World will be in proving this. And in proving it, we shall be doing the things that will best equip us, spiritually and materially, to give the most effective help toward relieving the suffering nations of the Old World.

Hostility , People , World , Peace

“In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. But his kingship is kingship over nothing. It brings no powers and privileges, only loss of faith and exhaustion of the power to act. Its world is a world without values.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter one, The Country of the Blind, referencing a quote by Desiderius Erasmus.
Context: He alone is aware of the truth, and if all men were aware of it, there would be an end of life. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. But his kingship is kingship over nothing. It brings no powers and privileges, only loss of faith and exhaustion of the power to act. Its world is a world without values.

World , Faith , Loss , Country

“All that brave Athenian talk about democracy applied only to a privileged few.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

40 min 35 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Backbone of Night [Episode 7]
Context: But why had science lost its way in the first place? What appeal could these teachings of Pythagoras and Plato have had for their contemporaries? They provided, I believe, an intellectually respectable justification for a corrupt social order. The mercantile tradition that had led to Ionian science also led to a slave economy. You could get richer if you owned a lot of slaves. Athens in the time of Plato and Aristotle had a vast slave population. All that brave Athenian talk about democracy applied only to a privileged few.

Democracy

“Majorities are notoriously irresponsible. After irreparable damage had been done the only remedy that the people would have would be the privilege of trying to defeat such a majority at the next election. Every minority body that may be weak in resources or unpopular in the public estimation, also nearly every race and religious belief, would find themselves practically without protection, if the authority of the Supreme Court should be broken down and its powers lodged with the Congress.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)
Context: Somewhere must be lodged the power to declare the Constitution. If it be taken away from the Court, it must go either to the executive or the legislative branch of the Government. No one, so far as I know, has thought that it should go to the Executive. All those who advocate changes propose, I believe, that it should be transferred in whole or in part to the Congress. I have a very high regard for legislative assemblies. We have put a very great emphasis upon representative government. It is the only method by which due deliberation can be secured. That is a great safeguard of liberty. But the legislature is not judicial. Along with what are admitted to be the merits of the question, also what is supposed to be the popular demand and the greatest partisan advantage weigh very heavily in making legislative decisions. It is well known that when the House of Representatives sits as a judicial body, to determine contested elections, it has a tendency to decide in a partisan way. It is to be remembered also that under recent political practice there is a strong tendency for legislatures to be very much influenced by the Executive. Whether we like this practice or not, there is no use denying that it exists. With a dominant Executive and a subservient legislature, the opportunity would be very inviting to aggrandizement, and very dangerous to liberty. That way leads toward imperialism. Some people do not seem to understand fully the purpose of our constitutional restraints. They are not for protecting the majority, either in or out of the Congress. They can protect themselves with their votes. We have adopted a written constitution in order that the minority, even down to the most insignificant individual, might have their rights protected. So long as our Constitution remains in force, no majority, no matter how large, can deprive the individual of the right of life, liberty or property, or prohibit the free exercise of religion or the freedom of speech or of the press. If the authority now vested in the Supreme Court were transferred to the Congress, any majority no matter what their motive could vote away any of these most precious rights. Majorities are notoriously irresponsible. After irreparable damage had been done the only remedy that the people would have would be the privilege of trying to defeat such a majority at the next election. Every minority body that may be weak in resources or unpopular in the public estimation, also nearly every race and religious belief, would find themselves practically without protection, if the authority of the Supreme Court should be broken down and its powers lodged with the Congress.

People

Quotes about privilege page 8

Quotes about privilege
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