Writer's Rights

Over 1600 Selected Quotations On Freedom of Expression,
Censorship, Civil Liberties and Individual Rights
Compiled by Laird Wilcox
Seventh Edition - 2005
ISBN 0-9761337-4-1

Laird Wilcox has published a new version of his "Writer's Rights, Over 1600 Selected Quotations On Freedom of Expression, Censorship, Civil Liberties and Individual Rights", along with four additional books of "Selected Quotations for the Ideological Skeptic". While scanning through the books, the following random quotes caught my eye:

From "Writer's Rights":
The worse the society, the more law there will be. In Hell there will be nothing but law and due process will be meticulously observed.

GRANT GILMORE, New York Times, 23 February 1977.

There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any over-large concentration of like-minded individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

P. J. O'ROURKE, Parliament of Whores, 1991.

Give me six sentences written by the most innocent of men, I will find something in them with which to hang him.

CARDINAL RICHELIEU (1585-1642).

From "Fanaticism, Dogmatism & Ideological Thinking":
There are few catastrophes so great and irremediable as those that follow an excess of zeal.

R. H. BENSON (1871-1914).

Men who have excessive faith in their theories are not only ill-prepared for making discoveries; they also make poor observations.

CLAUDE BERNARD (1813-1878), Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, 1865.

There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed ascendancy over all others.

MILTON R. SAPERSTEIN, Paradoxes of Everyday Life, 1955.

I do not want the liberty of men, nor their equality; I only want my power over them, I want to make them my property, material for enjoyment.

MAX STIRNER (1806-1856), The Ego and His Own, 1845.

From "Political & Social Psychology & Behavior":
The bedfellows politics made are never strange. It only seems that way to those who have not watched the courtship.

MARCEL ACHARD (1900-1974).

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.

SIR RICHARD BURTON (1821-1890).

That all men should be brothers is the dream of men who have no brothers.

CHARLES CHINCHOLLES (1845-1902), Reflections on the Art of Life, 1900.

PDF versions are available for download at the following URLs:

Writer's Rights
Fanaticism, Dogmatism & Ideological Thinking
Political & Social Psychology & Behavior
Propaganda, Persuasion & Deception
Rationality, Rhetoric, Skepticism & Logic