Christian Nestell Bovee Quotes

Let the guarantee of free speech be in every man's determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper declarations. On the other hand, so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.

It was a place that is trying to destroy the individual by every means possible; trying to break his spirit, so that he accepts that he is No. 6 and will live there happily as No. 6 for ever after. And this is the one rebel that they can't break.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

We have the universe to roam in in imagination. It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

One doesn't want one's identity coerced.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Any society where it's a crime or a hassle to be different is a society based on psychological fascism.

If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

It is dangerous to speak the truth to tyrants.

Islam … is a story of the struggle between reason and belief, between consent and authoritarianism, between resistance to tyranny and tyrants.

The removal of a tyrant is not merely justifiable; it is the highest duty of every true revolutionist.

The limits of tyrants are proscribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.

No one can go on being a rebel too long without becoming an autocrat.

I hold a jail more roomy ... than would be the whole world if I were to submit to repression.

Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper hand, they have always fallen. Always.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.