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"I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though use of violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one has to estimate relative justices. But the use of violence and the creation of some degree of injustice can only be justified on the basis of the claim and the assessment-which always ought to be undertaken very, very seriously and with a good deal of scepticism that this violence is being exercised because a more just result is going to be achieved."
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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
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"Helping othersI order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not."
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"Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes."
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"But as soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in doctrine, as soon as crime reasons about itself, it multiplies like reason itself and assumes all the aspects of the syllogism. Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law."
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"It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society."
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"Calamity with us, is made an excuse for doing wrong. With them, it is erected into a reason for their doing right. This is really the justice of rich to poor, and I protest against it because it is so."
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"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."
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"Kingdom laws are the same for everyone."
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"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
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Personal Development
"What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face? What woman's terms of oppression have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold winds of self-scrutiny?"
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"Actually, Bush, technically speaking, is not really President-because he refused to take the Oath of Office. I don't know how many of you noticed this, but the wording of the Oath of Office is written in the Constitution, so you can't fool around with it-and Bush refused to read it. The Oath of Office says something about, I promise to do this, that, and the other thing, and Bush added the words, so help me God. Well, that's illegal: he's not President, if anybody cares."
Politics
"Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists."
Quality
"You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it."
Argument
"States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions."
People
"In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival."
Survival
"Well before September 11, it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil."
History
"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."
Democracy
"Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle."
Power
"The other day I happened to be reading a careful, interesting account of the state of British higher education. The government is a kind of market-oriented government and they came out with an official paper, a 'White Paper' saying that it is not the responsibility of the state to support any institution that can't survive in the market. So, if Oxford is teaching philosophy, the arts, Greek history, medieval history, and so on, and they can't sell it on the market, why should they be supported? Because life consists only of what you can sell in the market and get back, nothing else. That is a real pathology."
Society
"The ritual denunciation of the so-called 'socialist' states is replete with distortions and often outright lies."
Politics
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