Quote#Freedom
Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it
Quote byLysander Spooner · 1808–1887
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: An Essay on the Trial by Jury (1852), An Essay on the Trial by Jury, Boston, MA: John P. Jewett and Company, Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington (1852) p. 14.
English (original)
Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.
— Lysander Spooner
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Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice. And all talk about them, in matters of government, is mere absurdity.
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The science of mine and thine—the science of justice—is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over …
The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.