Alexis de Tocqueville

[People] think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience.

The Revolution… was the result of a mature and reflecting preference for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.

I hold it to be… a detestable maxim that, politically speaking, the people have a right to do anything.

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority… averts all dangers from my path… if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.

Popularity may be united with hostility to the rights of the people, and the secret slave of tyranny may be the professed lover of freedom.

To lay down… limits to the action of the government; to confer certain rights on private persons, and to secure to them the undisputed enjoyment of those rights… [are] the main objects.

The business world was pretty upset by the advances in public welfare in the ’60s, in particular by Richard Nixon – it’s not too well understood, but he was the last New Deal president, and they regarded that as class treachery.

The Russian people have their own cultural code, their own tradition.

The most repressive countries in the Middle East are the ones we support. By comparison to Saudi Arabia, Iran looks like Norway…As far as violence in the Middle East is concerned, the Saudi Arabian [and] UAE actions in Yemen, which we’re supporting, are much worse than anything.

If you claim to have a theory that deduces unexpected consequences from nontrivial principles, let’s see it.

The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on – because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.

I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country.

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as [inherently] exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Ah, these diplomats! What chatterboxes! There’s only one way to shut them up – cut them down with machine guns. Bulganin, go and get me one!

If peace is wanted in the region, the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination must be accepted.- Jeremy Corbyn

…I try to keep in mind the principle that one should not try to persuade; rather, to lay out the territory as best one can so that others can use their own intellectual powers to determine for themselves what they think is taking place and what is right or wrong.

In the US, there is basically one party – the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to these policies. As is most of the population.

You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.

In war I would deal with the Devil and his grandmother

I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.