A Quote by Mignon McLaughlin

We have to call it "freedom": who'd want to die for "a lesser tyranny"

Mignon McLaughlin

Quote Topics

Call Die Freedom Lesser Tyranny Want

Quote Author

Mignon McLaughlin
American - Journalist
June 6, 1913 - December 20, 1983

To rail and rant against tyranny is to manifest inferiority, for there is no tyranny but ignorance; to be conscious of one's powers is to lose consciousness of tyranny. Self government is not a remote aim. It is an intimate and inescapable fact. To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it.

E.C. Riegel

They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government.

Thomas Hobbes

We want freedom. We want freedom from the constraints of the cycles of the sun and the moon. We want freedom from drought and weather, freedom from the movement of game, the growth of plants, freedom from control from mendacious popes and kings, freedom from ideology, freedom from want. This idea of freeing ourselves has become the compass of the human journey.

Terence McKenna

Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us, and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South.

George Wallace

Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent - the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.

H. L. Mencken

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

Eric Hoffer

If a man says, "I'll call you," and he doesn't, he didn't forget. . . . he didn't lose your number. . . . he didn't die. He just didn't want to call you.

John Wayne

The freedom to kill is not a true freedom, but a tyranny that reduces human beings to slavery.

Pope Benedict XVI

This is what I call understanding. If you understand, insecurity is an intrinsic part of life - and good that it is so, because it makes life a freedom, it makes life a continuous surprise. One never knows what is going to happen. It keeps you continuously in wonder. Don't call it uncertainty - call it wonder. Don't call it insecurity - call it freedom.

Rajneesh

Freedom is never easily won, but once established, freedom lasts, spreads and chokes out tyranny.

Trent Lott

Freedom is sloppy. But since tyranny's the only guaranteed byproduct of those who insist on a perfect world, freedom will have to do.

Bill Willingham

Behind every specific call, whether it is to teach or preach or write or encourage or comfort, there is a deeper call that gives shape to the first: the call to give ourselves away - the call to die.

Michael Card

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

Walter Bagehot

It is not enough to call yourself a feminist because you are a strong woman. Thatcher was an enemy to feminism, as is Nadine Dorries. Like other liberation movements, feminism has an ideology and a goal. It is not about personal liberty and freedom, but the emancipation from oppression and tyranny for ALL women, whatever our race or class.

Julie Bindel

It's good that the first half of the speech emphasized freedom, because George W. Bush has been the global champion for freedom. As he said, if we don't fight tyranny it will not leave us alone in peace.