By the People Quotes

“All systematic civil disobedience should involve acts that are malum prohibitum: illegal because the state says so, not because they are bad in themselves.”
― Charles Murray, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

“The twin propositions of this book are that we are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it, but that opportunities are opening for preserving the best qualities of the American project in a new incarnation.”
― Charles Murray, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

“I think that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world.… The supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. —ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work. —FRIEDRICH VON HAYEK, The Road to Serfdom A Note on Presentation By”
― Charles Murray, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

“the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world.… The supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. —ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America”
― Charles Murray, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

“I think that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world.… The supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Charles Murray, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

“The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work. —FRIEDRICH VON HAYEK, The Road to Serfdom”
― Charles Murray, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

“Corruption in the political process varies directly with the number and value of things that politicians have to sell. This”
― Charles Murray, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission

“solutions are beyond the reach of the electoral process and legislative process.”
― Charles Murray, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission