Quotation Collection

Man cannot make or invent or contrive principles. He can only discover them and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author. Thomas Paine

• religion
• reason
• principle
• science

It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government. Thomas Paine

• government
• patriotism

Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. 'Leadership qualities' are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders. John Holt

• leadership

Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others. Were your children fated to pass their lives as slaves, you could not too much accustom them to slavery during their childhood; but as they are by and by to be free men, with no one to control their daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still under your eye. Aim, therefore, to diminish the amount of parental government as fast as you can substitute for it in your child’s mind that self-government arising from a foresight of results. Herbert Spencer

• parents
• children
• discipline

In case you're worried about what's going to become of the younger generation, it's going to grow up and start worrying about the younger generation. Roger Allen

• children
• age

However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society where others are free. Thomas Sowell

• liberty
• freedom

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think interior decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. Anna Quindlen

• books
• reading

The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. George Orwell

• law
• free speech
• government
• freedom

The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself. Saint Augustine

• truth