Otto Hermann Kahn Quotes

This excessive licence, which the anarchists think is the only true freedom, provides the stock, as it were, from which a tyrant grows.

Millions of people have to restore liberty and have to understand the danger and personal risk they face in a police state.

Freedom can be destroyed, not just by its retraction, but also by its abuse.

Security without freedom means slavery.

Tyranny and anarchy are alike incompatible with freedom, security, and the enjoyment of opportunity.

The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.

Socialism holds nothing but unhappiness for the human race. It destroys personal initiative, wipes out national pride ... and plays into the hands of the autocrats.... Socialism is the end of fanatics, the sophistry of so-called intelligentsia, and it has no place in the hearts of those who would secure and fight for freedom and preserve democracy.

Let no one say ... that radicalism is the exaggeration of liberalism; no, it is its antipodes, its extreme opposite. Radicalism is nothing more than an exaggeration of despotism; and never has despotism taken a more odious form.

it is impossible to preserve freedom anywhere when the zealots take over and the rule of law is ignored

There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

… the mortal enemy of liberty

If you aren't free to protect yourself when the government puts its thumb on that freedom, then you're not free at all.

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

If dictatorship is the concentration of power, freedom consists in its diffusion.

Liberty... is there only when there is no abuse of power.

Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.

There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.

Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.