Robert H. Jackson Quotes

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

Every kind and degree of evil of which mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government.

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day.

There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.

The record of Arab regimes is disgraceful and outrageous … worse than that of the occupier or the colonialist.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Absolute power should never be trusted to man. It has perverted the wisest heads, and corrupted the best hearts in the world. I should be afraid to commit my property, liberty and life to a body of angels for one whole year.

I don’t care about human rights, believe me. There is no due process in my mouth.

When a government forcibly holds enough people indefinitely without trial, it evokes the kinds of raids, detention, and abuses of power associated with authoritarian states - or darker periods in American history.

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.

Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.

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

The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.

A country that goes out of its way to imprison the innocent has no business preaching democracy to the world.

Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.

No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine

The erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.

In most of history, societies have not been free. It's a very rare society that is free. The default condition of human societies is tyranny.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

Wrong people are wrong because they use their freedom to deny it to others.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Dictators cause the world's worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris.

And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force.