Voluntary Quotes
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The militia is a voluntary force not associated or under the control of the States except when called out; a permanent or long standing force would be entirely different in make-up and call.
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More Voluntary Quotes
Collectivists would have you believe that individualism is merely another word for selfishness, because individualists oppose welfare and other forms of coercive redistribution of wealth, but just the opposite is true. Individualists advocate true charity, which is the voluntary giving of their own money, while collectivists advocate the coercive giving of other people's money; which, of course, is why it is so popular.
g. edward griffon— The Chasm: The Future Is Calling (Part One) (2003–2009)
The idea of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussia. The real Prussian spirit means a synthesis between restraint and freedom, between voluntary subordination and conscientious leadership, between pride in oneself and consideration for others, between rigor and compassion. Unless a balance is kept between these qualities, the Prussian spirit is in danger of degenerating into soulless routine and narrow-minded dogmatism.
henning von tresckow— 1943, at his sons' confirmation at Potsdam Garrison Church. Michael Balfour, Withstanding Hitler, 1988, p130
Proudhon was a voluntary hermit in the political world of the nineteenth century. He sought no followers, indignantly rebuffed suggestions that he had created as system of any kind, and almost certainly rejoiced in the fact that he accepted the title anarchist in virtual isolation.
George Woodcock— Prologue (Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962))
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.
— Mahatma Gandhi, "An Autobiography OR The story of my experiments with truth", Chapter 27, Recruiting Campaign, from a leaflet urging Indians to serve with the British Army in World War II. [5]
One difference between libertarianism and socialism is that a socialist society can't tolerate groups of people practicing freedom, but a libertarian society can comfortably allow people to choose voluntary socialism. If a group of people — even a very large group — wanted to purchase land and own it in common, they would be free to do so. The libertarian legal order would require only that no one be coerced into joining or giving up his property.
david boaz— "The Coming Libertarian Age" in Cato Policy Report (January/February 1997)
There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity.
paul bourget— Ch. 5 "Countess Steno"
Work is the best and worst of all things; the best of it is voluntary, the worst of it is servile.
Émile chartier— Happy Farmers
Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.
w. edwards deming— Deming: The Way We Knew Him (1995)
— Note: This quote is often cited as “Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.”
Addiction may be something to which some of us are predisposed, like diabetes, rather than a voluntary behavior — but it’s also reversible. A "disease model" of alcoholism and other addictions in no way diminishes our personal accountability once we know the facts. It simply suggests how hard recovery will be, and how much help we need.
john leonard— "Can't Get Enough," New York Magazine (23 May 1998)
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
ludwig von mises— Chapter XX: Interest, Credit Expansion, The Trade Cycle, § 8 : The Monetary or Circulation Theory of the Trade Cycle
Some communities will be abandoned, others will struggle along, others will split, others will flourish, gain members, and be duplicated elsewhere. Each community must win and hold the voluntary adherence of its members. No pattern is imposed on everyone, and the result will be one pattern if and only if everyone voluntarily chooses to live in accordance with that pattern of community.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Design Devices and Filter Devices, p. 316
In a free system any large, popular, revolutionary movement should be able to bring about its ends by such a voluntary process. As more and more people see how it works more and more will wish to participate in or support it. And so it will grow, without being necessary to force everyone or a majority or anyone into the pattern.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopian Means and Ends, p. 327
Devotion to GOD is still a voluntary thing; hence the differences of attainment among Christians.”
james hudson taylor— (J. Hudson Taylor. Separation and Service: Or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. London: Morgan & Scott, n.d., 13.)
The rule of our policy is that nothing should be done by the state which can be better or as well done by voluntary effort; and I am not aware that, either in its moral or even its literary aspects, the work of the state for education has as yet proved its superiority to the work of the religious bodies or of philanthropic individuals . Even the economical considerations of materially augmented cost do not appear to be wholly trivial.
william ewart gladstone— Liberal Manifesto (September 1885)
A confession is wholly and incontestably voluntary only if a guilty person gives himself up to the law and becomes his own accuser.
robert h. jackson— Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 161 (1944).
A familiar question for Australians is how much we are a product of our circumstances, and how much we are what we have made ourselves to be. In truth, by the act of migration the country was made: by that voluntary act and by the emigrants' ambitions it was built.
paul keating— Address to the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of parliament of the Republic of Ireland, 20 September, 1993.
An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to make him behave. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation with the right of secession. The individual or the family or the small group as a unit instead of the State.
— Ammon Hennacy, in The Book of Ammon (1965), p. 31
If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
Milton Friedman— Milton Friedman, Free to Choose (1980), Chapter 1
The American Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939) believed that maximum individual liberty would be assured where the free market was not hindered or controlled by the State and monopolies. The affairs of society would be governed by myriad voluntary societies and cooperatives, by, as he aptly put it, “un-terrified” Jeffersonian democrats, who believed in the least government possible. Since World War II this tradition has been reborn and modified in the United States as anarcho-capitalism or libertarianism.
— Levy, Carl. "Anarchism", under the "Anarcho-individualism" heading, Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2006
Largely due to the path breaking work of Murray Rothbard, 20th century individualist anarchism is no longer inherently suspicious of profit-making practices, such as charging interest. Indeed, it embraces the free market as the voluntary vehicle of economic exchange. But as individualist anarchism draws increasingly upon the work of Austrian economists such as Mises and Hayek, it draws increasingly farther away from left anarchism.
— McElroy, Wendy. Anarchism: Two Kinds (Presenting as being a form of, or related to, individualist anarchism)
Workers are propertyless and forced to wage labor because they cannot finance their self-employment: the state monopoly over money is the problem. Let the people issue their own private, fiduciary moneys and the choice between working for an employer or for oneself will become entirely voluntary. This is the individual anarchism (or anarco-capitalism) championed by Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker in America and Gustave de Molinari in France.
— Ferrero, Manuel. A Rational Theory of Socialist Public [2]
One difference between libertarianism and socialism is that a socialist society can't tolerate groups of people practicing freedom, but a libertarian society can comfortably allow people to choose voluntary socialism. If a group of people even a very large group wanted to purchase land and own it in common, they would be free to do so. The libertarian legal order would require only that no one be coerced into joining or giving up his property.
— David D. Boaz, in "The Coming Libertarian Age" in Cato Policy Report (January/February 1997)
The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions and ideas become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use.
— Louis Brandeis, (International News Service v. Associated Press, 1918).
It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic . Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash.
— Karl Hess, in Mostly on the Edge: An Autobiography, Prometheus Books, 1999, p.322
Thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers.
john milton— John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book III, line 37.
A political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups.
— "Anarchism" Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Anarchism … may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.
— Benjamin Tucker, in State Socialism and Anarchism : How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ (1888)
