Imagine losing all your political freedoms. What would it look like? Perhaps you picture the blaze of revolution – a political earthquake, jackboots marching through the streets. That happens, of course. History is full of it.
But the more likely scenario is freedom withering away bit by bit, surrendered on promises of greater security and personal safety. The truth is that many of us are willing to give up our freedoms and quick to trust administrators and experts to act in the greater good. Those less inclined shouldn’t be surprised when a police squad eventually turns up to ask about something you posted online.
The thinkers below understood this: that political freedom is easy to give away and almost impossible to reclaim, especially when it is taken under the auspices of good intentions.
“Of all tyrannies, that exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
– C. S. Lewis
“Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.”
– Friedrich Hayek
“What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it.”
– Thomas Sowel
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.”
– Thomas Paine
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
– Søren Kierkegaard.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
– George Orwell
“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”
– Milton Friedman
“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”
– John Stuart Mill
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
– James Madison
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
– Ronald Reagan
What did I miss?
If you have a favourite quote on freedom and tyranny, drop it in the comments.
And if one of these stood out for you, restack it so others can discover it too.
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By Frederick Alexander
The Gadfly looks at the ideas, institutions, and incentives behind our cultural confusion – who benefits, why it persists, and what it costs.
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This is just the first in a series of posts that I hope will eventually form a useful library of quotes on Substack built around themes and authors.
Coming up soon:
- Quotes on cowardice and conformity
- Quotes on moral courage
- Quotes by Thomas Sowell
- Quotes by Roger Scruton
"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats."
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow