Quotes about security
page 10

“The story begins with a somewhat disgruntled hero, who perceived of the world as populated with stupid people, everywhere committing the environmental fallacy. The fallacy was a case not merely of the “mind’s falling into error,” but rather of the mind leading all of us into incredible dangers as it first builds crisis and then attacks crisis.
Like all heroes, this one looked about for resources, for aids that would help in a dangerous battle, and he found plenty of support – in both the past and the present. It won’t hurt to summarize the story thus far. If the intellect is to engage in the heroic adventure of securing improvement in the human condition, it cannot rely on “approaches,” like politics and morality, which attempt to tackle problems head-on, within the narrow scope. Attempts to address problems in such a manner simply lead to other problems, to an amplification of difficulty away from real improvement. Thus the key to success in the hero’s attempt seems to be comprehensiveness. Never allow the temptation to be clear, or to use reliable data, or to “come up to the standards of excellence,” divert you from the relevant, even though the relevant may be elusive, weakly supported by data, and requiring loose methods.
Thus the academic world of Western twentieth century society is a fearsome enemy of the systems approach, using as it does a politics to concentrate the scholars’ attention on matters that are scholastically respectable but disreputable from a systems-planning point of view.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 145; cited in C. WEST CHURCHMAN: CHAMPION OF THE SYSTEMS APPROACH http://filer.case.edu/nxb41/churchman.html, 2004-2007 Case Western Reserve University

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Robert Harris photo
Richard Stallman photo

“The use of “hacker” to mean “security breaker” is a confusion on the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that meaning, and continue using the word to mean someone who loves to program, someone who enjoys playful cleverness, or the combination of the two.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"The GNU Project", originally published in Open Sources (1998) http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html
1990s

Colin Wilson photo
James Hudson Taylor photo

“The highest service demands the greatest sacrifice, but it secures the fullest blessing and the greatest fruitfulness.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(J. Hudson Taylor. Separation and Service: Or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. London: Morgan & Scott, n.d., 15-16).

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood photo
Mary Wollstonecraft photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
S. M. Krishna photo

“We have to look at the Iran issue beyond the issue of energy trade. In the first place, we have to think about the security and stability in the Gulf region. India has vital stakes in the Gulf region. Six million Indians live and work in the Gulf region and beyond. It is one of the critical destinations of our external trade -- over $100 billion in exports, and over 60% of oil imports, and a major source of remittances.”

S. M. Krishna (1932) Indian politician

Declining Hillary Clinton's request that India should stop trading with Iran, and describing the need of Iran for India, 9 May, 2012. http://www.iranwatch.org/government/US/DOS/us-dos-remarkssecretaryclinton-and-indianexternalaffairsminister-050812.htm

Warren Farrell photo
Mick Mulvaney photo
George W. Bush photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Peace has an economic foundation to which too little attention has been given. No student can doubt that it was to a large extent the economic condition of Europe that drove those overburdened countries headlong into the World War. They were engaged in maintaining competitive armaments. If one country laid the keel of one warship, some other country considered it necessary to lay the keel of two warships. If one country enrolled a regiment, some other country enrolled three regiments. Whole peoples were armed and drilled and trained to the detriment of their industrial life, and charged and taxed and assessed until the burden could no longer be borne. Nations cracked under the load and sought relief from the intolerable pressure by pillaging each other. It was to avoid a repetition of such a catastrophe that our Government proposed and brought to a successful conclusion the Washing- ton Conference for the Limitation of Naval Armaments. We have been altogether desirous of an extension of this principle and for that purpose have sent our delegates to a preliminary conference of nations now sitting at Geneva. Out of that conference we expect some practical results. We believe that other nations ought to join with us in laying aside their suspicions and hatreds sufficiently to agree among themselves upon methods of mutual relief from the necessity of the maintenance of great land and sea forces. This can not be done if we constantly have in mind the resort to war for the redress of wrongs and the enforcement of rights. Europe has the League of Nations. That ought to be able to provide those countries with certain political guaranties which our country does not require. Besides this there is the World Court, which can certainly be used for the determination of all justifiable disputes. We should not underestimate the difficulties of European nations, nor fail to extend to them the highest degree of patience and the most sympathetic consideration. But we can not fail to assert our conviction that they are in great need of further limitation of armaments and our determination to lend them every assistance in the solution of their problems. We have entered the conference with the utmost good faith on our part and in the sincere belief that it represents the utmost good faith on their part. We want to see the problems that are there presented stripped of all technicalities and met and solved in a way that will secure practical results. We stand ready to give our support to every effort that is made in that direction.”

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

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Grant Morrison photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Ron Paul photo
James Buchanan photo

“All agree that under the Constitution slavery in the States is beyond the reach of any human power except that of the respective States themselves wherein it exists. May we not, then, hope that the long agitation on this subject is approaching its end, and that the geographical parties to which it has given birth, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, will speedily become extinct? Most happy will it be for the country when the public mind shall be diverted from this question to others of more pressing and practical importance. Throughout the whole progress of this agitation, which has scarcely known any intermission for more than twenty years, whilst it has been productive of no positive good to any human being it has been the prolific source of great evils to the master, to the slave, and to the whole country. It has alienated and estranged the people of the sister States from each other, and has even seriously endangered the very existence of the Union. Nor has the danger yet entirely ceased. Under our system there is a remedy for all mere political evils in the sound sense and sober judgment of the people. Time is a great corrective. Political subjects which but a few years ago excited and exasperated the public mind have passed away and are now nearly forgotten. But this question of domestic slavery is of far graver importance than any mere political question, because should the agitation continue it may eventually endanger the personal safety of a large portion of our countrymen where the institution exists. In that event no form of government, however admirable in itself and however productive of material benefits, can compensate for the loss of peace and domestic security around the family altar. Let every Union-loving man, therefore, exert his best influence to suppress this agitation, which since the recent legislation of Congress is without any legitimate object.”

James Buchanan (1791–1868) American politician, 15th President of the United States (in office from 1857 to 1861)

Inaugural address (4 March 1857).

Ramsay MacDonald photo
Roger Wolcott Sperry photo
Gabrielle Giffords photo

“It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I got to see firsthand the sacrifices that Israelis make in the name of security because of the dangerous state of affairs there. I will always be a strong supporter of Israel.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

Of her first visit to Jerusalem Israel National News 1/8/2011 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141607#.UWvtlaLvuvU

El Lissitsky photo
Kelli Ward photo
L. Frank Baum photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
John Lehman photo
Harold Wilson photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Will Eisner photo
Mohamed Nasheed photo

“Do not consider either the security of your personal lives or the transitory happiness of your wives, husbands, children, parents and relatives; for the security of all of your children and their children is in jeopardy.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

After his arrest, and getting dragged into court, quoted on The guardian, "Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed jailed for 13 years" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/14/former-maldives-president-mohamed-nasheed-jailed-for-13-years, March 14, 2015.

Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Learned Hand photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Shimon Peres photo
George W. Bush photo
Bukola Saraki photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Alan Hirsch photo

“Nowadays we raise our children in a cocoon of domesticated security, far from any sense of risk or adventure.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 141

Bernice King photo
Felix Adler photo
Andy Kessler photo

“When someone pukes up a stock, it's not hard to miss. Mispriced securities all over the table. And we are there with a barf bag, collecting all we can.”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part I, Raising Funds, Making Your Month, p. 33.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

Margaret Chase Smith photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Abigail Adams photo
George Henry Lewes photo

“Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

On Actors and the Art of Acting (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1875) p. 60

Abu Bakr photo
William Westmoreland photo
Ernst Kaltenbrunner photo

“All offices of the SD and the security police are to be informed that pogroms of the populace against English and American terror-fliers were not to be interfered with; on the contrary, this hostile mood is to be fostered.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

Quoted in "Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg" by Whitney R. Harris - Law - 1954 - Page 235

George W. Bush photo
Howard Dean photo

“The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put the interests of his political party ahead of America's security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Libby: Bush himself authorized leak on Iraq http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12187153/ (April 6, 2006)

Ben Jonson photo

“Where dost thou careless lie,
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps, doth die;
And this security,
It is the common moth,
That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

XXIII, An Ode, to Himself, lines 1-6
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

John Rabe photo

“We should give priority to legislation concerning social security.”

Raid Jahid Fahmi (1950) Iraqi politician

Interview with Al Jazeera (25 May 2018)

Ilana Mercer photo

“A natural-rights libertarian values the life of the innocent individual. Only by protecting each individual's rights—life, liberty and property—can the government legitimately enhance the wealth of the collective. Only through fulfilling its night watchman role can government legitimately safeguard the wealth of the nation. For each individual, secure in his person and property, is then free to pursue economic prosperity, which redounds to the rest.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

Barcelona and Beyond: How Politicians & Policy Wonks Play God With Your Life http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/21/barcelona-and-beyond-how-politicians-wonks-play-god/, Daily Caller, August 21, 2017.
Barcelona and Beyond: How Politicians & Policy Wonks Play God With Your Life http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/08/barcelona_and_beyond_how_politicians_and_policy_wonks_play_god_with_your_life_.html,  American Thinker, August 20, 2017.
2010s, 2017

Thomas Carlyle photo

“I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Letter to Goethe, (1828).
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Tawakkol Karman photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“The NSA is to the Stasi what a bad hotel is to a maximum security prison.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Source: 2010s, Winter is Coming (2015), p. 223

Thomas Jefferson photo

“The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, boni judicis est ampliare juris-dictionem. We shall see if they are bold enough to take the daring stride their five lawyers have lately taken. If they do, then, with the editor of our book, in his address to the public, I will say, that "against this every man should raise his voice," and more, should uplift his arm. Who wrote this admirable address? Sound, luminous, strong, not a word too much, nor one which can be changed but for the worse. That pen should go on, lay bare these wounds of our constitution, expose the decisions seriatim, and arouse, as it is able, the attention of the nation to these bold speculators on its patience. Having found, from experience, that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scare-crow, they consider themselves secure for life; they sculk from responsibility to public opinion, the only remaining hold on them, under a practice first introduced into England by Lord Mansfield. An opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates, by a crafty chief judge, who sophisticates the law to his mind, by the turn of his own reasoning”

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

Letter http://books.google.com/books?vid=0Fz_zz_wSWAiVg9LI1&id=vvVVhCadyK4C&pg=PA192&vq=%22impeachment+is+an+impracticable+thing%22&dq=%22jeffersons+works%22 to Thomas Ritchie (25 December 1820)
1820s

Gebran Tueni photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“We do not want a united Germany. This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Talking to Mikhail Gorbachev at a luncheon meeting in Moscow in September 1989 https://web.archive.org/web/20170524105058/http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/How-Margaret-Thatcher-pleaded-with-Gorbachev-not-to-let-the-Berlin-Wall-fall-out-of-london/article16514846.ece
Third term as Prime Minister

Herman Kahn photo

“However, even those who expect deterrence to work might hesitate at introducing a new weapon system that increased the reliability of deterrence, but at the cost of increasing the possible casualties by a factor of 10, that is, there would then be one or two billion hostages at risk if their expectations fail. Neither the 180 million Americans nor even the half billion people in the NATO alliance should or would be willing to design and procure a security system in which a malfunction or failure would cause the death of one or two billion people. If the choice were made explicit, the United States or NATO would seriously consider "lower quality" systems; i. e., systems which were less deterring, but whose consequences were less catastrophic if deterrence failed. They would even consider such possibilities as a dangerous degree of partial or complete unilateral disarmament, if there were no other acceptable postures. The West might be willing to procure a military system which, if used in a totally irrational and unrealistic way, could cause such damage, but only if all of the normal or practically conceivable abnormal ways of operating the system would not do anything like the hypothesized damage. On the other hand, we would not let the Soviets cynically blackmail us into accommodation by a threat on their part to build a Doomsday Machine, even though we would not consciously build a strategic system which inevitably forced the Soviets to build a Doomsday Machine in self-defense.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Ulysses S. Grant photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Lester B. Pearson photo
George W. Bush photo
Gustave de Molinari photo

“Everywhere, men resign themselves to the most extreme sacrifices rather than do without government and hence security, without realizing that in so doing, they misjudge their alternatives.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 20

Calvin Coolidge photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“What men build, in the name of security, is built of straw.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Sand Dabs, Five"
Winter Hours (1999)

Clement Attlee photo

“The Question of sovereignty is often raised. I am one of those who believe that in a modern world one has to give up a great deal of sovereignty. I am prepared to give up sovereignty to the world, but not to a selected number of European countries. That is not giving up something for world security; it is giving something up to sectional interests.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/nov/08/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (8 November 1962).
1960s

Julian of Norwich photo
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo

“Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects…What, though you march form town to town, and from province to province; though you should be able to enforce a temporary and local submission, which I only suppose, not admit—how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress, to grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in numbers, possessing valour, liberty, and resistance? This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen: it was obvious, from the nature of things and of mankind; and, above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America, is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money, in England: the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English constitution: the same spirit which established the great, fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent.”

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

This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America; who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen.
Speech in the House of Lords (20 January 1775), 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. 134-6.

G. K. Chesterton photo
Merrill McPeak photo
Thiruvalluvar photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Eugene Kaspersky photo

“We as a security company are not able to develop true endpoint security for iOS. That will mean disaster for Apple. … when it happens it will be the worst-case scenario because there will be no protection. The Apple SDK won't let us do it.”

Eugene Kaspersky (1965) Russian specialist in the information security field

Eugene Kaspersky frustrated by Apple’s iOS AV ban http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/22/kaspersky_ios_antivirus in The Register (22 May 2012)

George William Curtis photo

“Up to this time, as I believe, slavery had been let alone, as it claimed to be, in good faith. Up to this time it is clear enough in our history that there was no general perception of the terrible truth that slavery was a system aggressive in its very nature, and necessarily destructive of Constitutional rights and liberties. Up to this time there had been a general blindness to the fact that, under the plea, which was allowed, that it was a local and State institution, slavery had acquired an absolute national supremacy, and if not checked would presently declare itself in national law as the national policy. I think that the eyes of the people were opened rather by the frank statements and legislative action in Congress of the slave party; by the speeches of Mr. Calhoun, filtered through lesser minds and mouths than his; at last by the events in Kansas forcing every man to consider whether, while we had let slavery alone, it had also let us alone; and forcing him to see that its hand was already upon the throat of freedom in this country. I think that by the cuts of the slave party, not by the words of the technical abolitionists, the country was at last aroused. The moral wrong and the political despotism of the system were at last perceived, and a reconstruction of political parties was inevitable. For in human society, while the individual conscience is the steam or motive power, political methods are the engine and the wheels by which progress is effected and secured.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Alan Greenspan photo

“Intensive research in recent years into the sources of economic growth among both developing and developed nations generally point to a number of important factors: the state of knowledge and skill of a population; the degree of control over indigenous natural resources; the quality of a country's legal system, particularly a strong commitment to a rule of law and protection of property rights; and yes, the extent of a country's openness to trade with the rest of the world. For the United States, arguably the most important factor is the type of rule of law under which economic activity takes place. When asked abroad why the United States has become the most prosperous large economy in the world, I respond, with only mild exaggeration, that our forefathers wrote a constitution and set in motion a system of laws that protects individual rights, especially the right to own property. Nonetheless, the degree of state protection is sometimes in dispute. But by and large, secure property rights are almost universally accepted by Americans as a critical pillar of our economy. While the right of property in the abstract is generally uncontested in all societies embracing democratic market capitalism, different degrees of property protection do apparently foster different economic incentives and outcomes.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Alan Greenspan (2004) The critical role of education in the nation's economy.
2000s

Nayef Al-Rodhan photo
James Comey photo
Scott Ritter photo
James Connolly photo
Tom Tancredo photo
Ann Coulter photo

“Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Vegan computer geeks for Dean
2003-12-10
Townhall
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2003/12/11/vegan_computer_geeks_for_dean/page/full/
2003

James Anthony Froude photo
Ibrahim of Ghazna photo
Lysander Spooner photo
Ilya Prigogine photo
Sam Manekshaw photo

“One thing remains the same, your task and your duty. You are required to ensure the security of this country against any offence. What is that means for you? That means, that you should have to fight, a fight to win. There is no roof for losers, if you loose don't come back.”

Sam Manekshaw (1914–2008) First Field marshal of the Indian Army

During Speech at Passing Out Parade of Indian Military Academy A Soldier's Duty http://worldofdefense.blogspot.in/2011/05/soldiers-duty-field-marshal-sam.html