A Quote by Penn Jillette
The fact that the majority wants something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don't want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, it's not really a very good idea. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up on the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
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Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
[N]o one's ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It's just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred.
The libertarian approach is a very symmetrical one: the non-aggression principle does not rule out force, but only the initiation of force. In other words, you are permitted to use force only in response to some else's use of force. If they do not use force you may not use force yourself. There is a symmetry here: force for force, but no force if no force was used.
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
When a legislature decides to steal some of our rights and plans to use police force to accomplish it, what's the real difference between them and the thief? Darn little! They hide behind the excuse that they're legislating democratically. The fact they do it by a majority vote has no moral significance whatsoever. Numerical might does not constitute right, no more than a lynch mob can justify its act because a majority participated.
I don't want to use the word 'instinct,' but when something good happens - something big or good in my life - I have this sensation that it was inevitable. Anything careerwise, 'Lord of the Rings,' 'Rudy,' or getting married. Which is weird, because you don't ever want to be ungrateful for what you have.
I love being around kids. When I see a kid that wants to talk to me or wants my autograph, I see myself in them. I just want to be a good example and be very approachable and want them to know that I'm just a regular guy, too.
I get up in front of a bunch of kids and say 'Hey, I'm gonna tell you a new story. Who wants to be in a new story?' Well some kid always sticks up their hand and that gives me a name, but it doesn't give me a story. I just say whatever comes to my mind and usually it's not that good. Every once in a while, however, I say something that turns into a really good story.
Obviously, I'm going to be embarrassing to the kid. There's just no way not. I just hope the kid has a really good sense of humor... My husband's very serious - he doesn't find me funny at all - so I'm hoping the kid is like, 'Mom is hilarious!' That'd be really great.
I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood and was raised by a man who did not emote, ever... I always cry at movies, and when I was a kid, I would try to hide it. It wasn't something a kid in Oaklyn, N.J., did. So I have these weird hang-ups about emotions.
No one wants to be the kid who allies with the weird kid.
I wasn't really a dark kid, but I was in my head a lot. I got good grades all through my 16 years of Catholic school, but I was always writing these weird - and, I have to say, really bad - stories, filled with murder.
The Greeks... labored under the delusion that their democracy was a guarantee of peace and plenty, not realizing that unrestrained majority rule always destroys freedom, puts the minority at the mercy of the mob, and works at cross-purposes to the effective use of human energy and individual initiative.
I don't have a formula. Every time an actor wants me to hold their hand, I hold their hand. If they say, "Stay," I say "Okay, respect." You know? "I'm right over here." A kid, if I need to give a line-reading, I'll start acting out the part for the kid and just mimic the kid. You know? Whatever it takes.
The internet's a creepy thing, especially if you have kids. It says something very creepy about the fact that I use the same machine to masturbate with as I use to teach my kid the alphabet.
In the South, prior to the Civil Rights movement and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, democracy was the rule. The majority of people were white, and the white majority had little or no respect for any rights which the black minority had relative to property, or even to their own lives. The majority - the mob and occasionally the lynch mob - ruled.
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