Pius XI Quotes

Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge.

The great and the good will decide what is good for us and make sure that we get what is good for us, good and hard.

The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.

Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.

One of the damnable unhappy conditions of life is sometimes Government has to make people be civil.

You might just as well read the Bible to a herd of buffaloes as to those fellows ... but they have a supreme respect for the logic ... embodied in Sharp's rifles .

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual’s private rights.

The more the power of men and women increases, the greater is their responsibility as individuals and as members of the community.

Without respect of my private will, you will give me that counsel you think best.

Let us then, dear friends, forever bow down to the general reason of society.

The compulsions of the law seem to have been provided for those only who require compulsions

He that in the state of Nature would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else

Counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.

The chief duty of governments, in so far as they are coercive, is to restrain those who would interfere with the inalienable rights of the individual.

Society must look upon germ-plasm as belonging to society and not merely to the individual who carries it.

There's no sense that you can knock on your neighbor's door or be part of a local community group, and that's part of your responsibility as a human being.

You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Third, and finally, the educated citizen has an obligation to uphold the law. This is the obligation of every citizen in a free and peaceful society--but the educated citizen has a special responsibility by the virtue of his greater understanding. For whether he has ever studied history or current events, ethics or civics, the rules of a profession or the tools of a trade, he knows that only a respect for the law makes it possible for free men to dwell together in peace and progress.

Freedom & Duty always go hand in hand and if the free do not accept the duty of social responsibility, they will not long remain free.

In a free society, individuals have the right to do right or wrong, as long as they don't threaten or infringe upon the rights or property of others.

Freedom unexercised may be freedom forfeited. The preservation of freedom is in the hands of the people themselves - not of the government.