Dorothy Canfield Fisher Quotes

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself. And freedom is worth fighting for. Because it does mean more than unrestricted grabbing.

People are not considerate of others. They tend not to consider themselves as all living together, but see themselves only as individuals.

After I asked him [a student] what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement. No decent society can tolerate that definition.

People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others. The price of democracy is the ongoing pursuit of the common good by all of the people.

I don't think it really serves to make the world a better place, when you're only concerned about yourself.

Why do we have 47 million people without health care? Because America has become about 'me'. What's happened to 'we' as a people? I believe in that and that resonates to most people.

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can't be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people.

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

And this we should believe: that hope and volition can bring us closer to our ultimate goal: justice for all, injustice for no-one.

Abraham Lincoln because he was a man filled with great compassion who believed that all men are created free and equal, and was not afraid to stand on that platform. The way Lincoln lived his life has served me well in mine.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.

No one can build his happiness at the expense of the misery of others

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.

Those words freedom and opportunity do not mean a license to climb upwards by pushing other people down.

Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it do to sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves to each.

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community...Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own

If you ask me what is at the core of what I write, it isn't about 'rights', it's about justice. Justice is a grand, beautiful, revolutionary idea.

There is a difference between being self-interested and being selfish. I will never be selfish.

I'm not too selfish or unselfish.

He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

When there is life and mankind, a person will live striving for good deeds, liberty and a bright life, and wish that goodness and justice will reign in the world.