A Quote by Bernard Bailyn
What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or right.
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One’s life, liberty and the products of one’s labor were not intended to be up for grabs by grubby, greedy majorities. Contra classical natural law theory, legal positivism equates justice with the law of the state. However, from the fact that most Americans want others to fund or subsidize their health care, it does not follow that they have such a right. A need is not a right.
The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.
Government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of the government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state.
Liberty, whether natural, civil, or political, is the lawful power in the individual to exercise his corresponding rights. It is greatly favored in law.
[P]erfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he . . . introduces confusion and disorder into society . . . [thus] where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.
Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of ... the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and ernter into another.... Now what liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?
I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.
As the law minister, I had ensured that the government's right to natural resources was protected. The result was evident. The honourable Supreme Court gave the landmark decision in RIL vs RNRL case that the government is the owner of all natural resources.
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever is the opposite of a bird of prey must be good," there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument-though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb.
As an element in human progress, the right of private property, in importance, has taken first and almost only place in the current systems of law and of political economy. While admitting its great importance, we cannot conceal the fact that the writers on those subjects have wholly failed to distinguish between its use and its abuse, or to recognize its rational and equitable limits.
A victim is a victim is a victim. We should stop setting up standards that say we will have one standard of law enforcement for one group of victims but not for another.
It is left... to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. ... Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself. ... The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave. ... I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. ... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
The law of right-left symmetry was used in classical physics but was not of any great practical importance there. One reason for this derives from the fact that right-left symmetry is a discrete symmetry, unlike rotational symmetry, which is continuous.
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