Consent Quotes - Page 19

• Can there be any liberty where property is taken away without consent?

  James Otis

  Freedom, Taken, Liberty

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• The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.

  Alexander Hamilton

  People, Fabric, Empires

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2003). “The Federalist: With Letters of Brutus”, p.106, Cambridge University Press

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• It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

  Nathaniel Borenstein

  Writing, Baghdad, Ethics

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• If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it, whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law and shall chearfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Mean, Political Opinions, Law

  Benjamin Franklin, William Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin ...”, p.304, Printed for H. Colborn

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• To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.

  Clifton Fadiman

  Birthday, Wall, Years

  Clifton Fadiman (1955). “Party of One: The Selectd Writings of Clifton Fadiman”

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• No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.

  Barbara Brown Taylor

  Wise, Spiritual, Missing

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• Once we allow ourselves to do evil so that some perceived good may follow, we allow ever greater evils for the sake of ever more questionable goods, until we consent to the greatest evils for the sake of mere trifles.

  Benjamin Wiker

  Evil, May, Sake

  Benjamin Wiker (2008). “10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help”, p.14, Regnery Publishing

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• Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.

  Jacques Barzun

  Men, Organization, Giving

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• 'All men are created equal', 'government by consent of the governed', 'give me liberty or give me death'. Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Clever

  Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise, March 15, 1965.

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• Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Degrees, Would Be

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• With every decision that anyone makes, the world changes. The decision that we give our consent to is the one that remains in our consciousness, but the one that we didn't make-that alternate world goes on in its own direction. So there's uncountable numbers of alternate "us-es."

  Richard Bach

  Numbers, Giving, Decision

  Interview with Michael Peter Langevin, www.inner-growth.info.

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• I'm against suppression of pornography. If you suppress guns - yes; if you want to suppress poverty - yes. These are the obscenities, the real brutalization of people. I am almost more outraged by ads for blue jeans or cars that sort of blatantly depict women not only as sex objects, but women that look younger than the age of consent, looking like they've just been raped or asking to be raped-utterly passive sex objects.

  Betty Friedan

  Sex, Real, Gun

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• The greatest contributor to the feeling of tension and fear of war arose from the power of the bombing aeroplane. If all nations would consent to abolish air bombardment . . . that would mean the greatest possible release from fear.

  Ernest Rutherford

  War, Mean, Air

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• Except perhaps to our God, we all have a facade, even to our closest friends; some of us even to ourselves. . . . . It may not be good that we have it, but I don't believe the state or anyone else has a right to pierce that facade without the individual's consent.

  Melvin Belli

  Friendship, Believe, Individuality

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• It is certain that the most natural and human government is that of consent, for that binds freely, ... when men hold their liberty by true obedience to rules of their own making.

  William Penn

  Men, Liberty, Obedience

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• My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.

  U.G. Krishnamurti

  Teaching, Use, Want

  U. G. Krishnamurti, Rodney Arms (2002). “The Mystique of Enlightenment: The Radical Ideas of U. G. Krishnamurti”, p.2, Sentient Publications

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• We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

  Ronald Reagan

  Government, People, Growth

  First Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1981

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• I consent Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Constitution, Not Sure

  On the Constitution (1787)

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• Stop entertaining those vain fears. Remember it is not feeling which constitutes guilt but the consent to such feelings. Only the free will is capable of good or evil. But when the will sighs under the trial of the tempter and does not will what is presented to it, there is not only no fault but there is virtue.

  Pio of Pietrelcina

  Faith, Inspiration, Evil

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• At the end of the day, though, the entire basis for consent laws doesn't make sense. We're not old enough to decide if we don't want a baby, but we are old enough to have one?

  Jessica Valenti

  Baby, Law, The End Of The Day

  Jessica Valenti (2014). “Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters”, p.50, Seal Press

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• Transmitting one's flaws [through procreation] to someone else is a crime. I could never consent to give life to someone who would inherent my ailments.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Giving, Flaws, Crime

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• The greatest security we can have in this world that we are in the grace of God, does not consist in the feelings that we have of love to Him, but rather in an irrevocable abandonment of our whole being into His hands, and in a firm resolution never to consent to any sin great or small.

  Francis of Assisi

  Hands, Feelings, Grace

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• What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth but also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on without public consent.

  David R. Brower

  Technology, Growth, Goes On

  Skeptic, July-August 1976.

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• An important book for our times, in which one woman's determination and refusal to consent sets an example of courage and honesty.

  Giles Foden

  Determination, Honesty, Book

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• Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principle motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.

  Simone Weil

  Exercise, Men, Essence

  "The Needs of the Soul (1949)". "The Need for Roots". Book by Simone Weil, p. 97, 1949.

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