Democracies owe their existence to national loyalties — the loyalties that are supposedly shared by government and opposition, by all political parties, and by the electorate as a whole. Wherever the experience of nationality is weak or non-existent, democracy has failed to take root. For without national loyalty, opposition is a threat to government, and political disagreements create no common ground.
~ Roger Scruton
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At whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.
~ Frédéric Bastiat
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We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
~ Marcel Proust
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For some people, social media is inconsequential — a cat photo here, a banana slip TikTok there. For others, it’s all-consuming — a helpless catapult into a slurry of anxiety, self-harm and depression. To each his own internet.
~ Pamela Paul via The New York Times
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It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
~ Jonathan Swift
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Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity.
~ Charles MacKay
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The grapes in Uzbekistan are incredible fruit. They seem to have a life of their own. They’re called “the bridesmaid’s little finger,” and that’s about the size of them. They’re very long, and green, and they’re absolutely the most delicious.
~ Audre Lorde
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The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
~ Desiderius Erasmus
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If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
~ Frédéric Bastiat
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