Naomi Wolf Quotes

Communist countries consider all people, even their own, as secondary and only of value as they serve the state. Nevertheless those of us who live in democratic countries are always shocked and angered by the apparent indifference that a Communist regime has for what happens to individuals

The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government.

This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him.

Liberalism is the transformation of mankind into cattle.

Where are the heroes and the saints, who keep a clear vision of man's greatest gift, his freedom, to oppose not only the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also the dictatorship of the benevolent state, which takes possession of the family, and of the indigent, and claims our young for war?

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group - whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called 'the common good'.

At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man...is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person's benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.

It seems self-evident that we should want people to be free, to be able to play an active part in making decisions about matters of concern to them, to the largest possible extent.

It is a natural impossibility for any man to make a binding contract, by which he shall surrender to others a single one of what are commonly called his 'natural, inherent, inalienable rights.'

We decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves over and above the whole nation.

The more laws that governments pass, the less individual freedom there is. Any student of history will tell you that. Totalitarian countries ban pretty much everything.

The whole American experiment has been predicated on giving individuals as much control over their own lives as possible.

We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.

Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

Within the Russian system, everything depends on the character of those few who hold full power in their hands. The position of the individual within present-day Russia has been described as follows: far-reaching economic security by sacrificing personal liberty.

No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature.

Freedom Party International believes that the purpose of government is to protect every individual's fundamental freedoms, not to restrict them.

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

I believe in defending democracy by preserving democracy, not by descending to the use of the same weapons used in dictatorships, whether of the Nazi or Communist stripe.

I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.

People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.

… the unfortunate but inevitable connection between the word “socialism” and the unmitigated crucifixion of Civil Liberties in the East [Eastern Europe dominated by the Russian Communist Party.