The truth is, the person who pretends to advise, does, in that particular, exercise a superiority over us, and can have no other reason for it, but that, in comparing us with himself, he thinks us defective either in our conduct or our understanding. For these reasons, there is nothing so difficult as the art of making advice agreeable; and indeed all the writers, both ancient and modern, have distinguished themselves among one another, according to the perfection at which they have arrived in this art.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-10-17), The Spectator, No. 512
(Source)
Quotations about:
paternalism
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Tolerance is a better guarantee of freedom than brotherly love; for a man may love his brother so much he feels himself thereby appointed his brother’s keeper.
Everett Dean Martin (1880-1941) American educator, minister, writer, lecturer
Liberty (1930)
(Source)
It is not the idea as such which the censor attacks, whether it be heresy or radicalism or obscenity. He attacks the circulation of the idea among the classes which in his judgment are not to be trusted with the idea.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
Men of Destiny, ch. 8 “The Nature of the Battle Over Censorship,” sec. 2 (1927)
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“Come on, now. Home we go and a nice cuppa,” said Mr. Butler, who was convinced that tea was the cure for most female ills, from miscarriage to bankruptcy.
Kerry Greenwood (b. 1954) Australian author and lawyer
Phryne Fisher, Book 5, The Green Mill Murder (1993)
Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
William Godwin (1756-1836) English journalist, political philosopher, novelist
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 1 (1793)
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It will not do to diminish personal responsibility: do not give money and teach the man to expect it. Do not give him a Bible, or a genius, to think for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1846, undated)
