RIGHTS OF MAN
TO BE LEFT ALONE
Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.
AQUINAS, ST. THOMAS, Summa Theologica
[T]he right to peaceably dispose of one’s property surely includes the right to trade, throw, or gamble it away. The Founding Fathers understood this. As Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence by day, he related in the evening by betting on backgammon, cards, and bingo. Benjamin Franklin...printed a good portion of the colonies’ playing cards. George Washington regularly bet on horses, gambled in card games, and bought lottery tickets. He also managed public lotteries, as did Franklin and John Hancock. Apparently, some notable Founders regarded gambling as part of their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.
BELL, TOM W., Gambler’s Web, Reason, October 1999
[The] right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
BRANDEIS, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE LOUIS, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)
If you don't have the right to do something wrong [to yourself], you don't have any rights at all.
BURNS, GENE, Speech at Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass., September 29, 1996
The concept of "privacy" encompasses many ideas relating to the proper and improper use and abuse of information about people within society. Privacy protects information not only because it would cause others to think less of the person at issue, but also simply to give us all breathing room: "Society involves a great deal of friction," Solove writes, "and we are constantly clashing with each other. Part of what makes a society a good place in which to live is the extent to which it allows people freedom from the intrusiveness of others. A society without privacy protection would be suffocation, and it might not be a place in which most would want to live."
DEAN, JOHN W., Why, Even If You Have Nothing To Hide, Government Surveillance Threatens Your Freedom
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
DOUGLAS, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE WILLIAM O., Public Utilities Commission v. Pollack
Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?
[T]hat which we call sin in others is experiment for us.
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, Essays, Second Series, 1844
Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another. The exercise of the natural rights of every man, has no other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other man the free exercise of the same rights; and these limits are determinable only by the law.
FRANCE, NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, (1789)
Privacy is as necessary as company; you can drive a man crazy by depriving him of either.
HEINLEIN, ROBERT A., Time Enough for Love
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own particular ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.
JAMES, WILLIAM, What Makes a Life Significant
The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, October 1776
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Bill for Religious Freedom, 1779
No loss by flood and lightening, no destruction of cities and temples by hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.
When are people going to learn that outlawing the ownership of objects will not prevent them from being owned by people who still want them? If that were the case, there wouldn’t be any marijuana, LSD, cocaine, or heroin left in this country.
No one can imagine himself free if his communion with his fellows is interrupted or submitted to surveillance.
LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter IX
The associative principle...[t]he freer a nation, the more developed we find it in larger or smaller spheres; and the more despotic a government is, the more actively it suppresses all associations.
LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XII
Liberty of communion is one of the first requisites of freedom. Wherever, therefore, a government struggles against liberty...[n]ot only is liberty of the press abolished, but all communion is watched over...The spy, the mouchard, the dilater, the informer, the sycophant, are sure accompaniments of absolutism.
LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XXIII
[I]nterference and dictation are the essence of absolutism.
LIEBER, FRANCIS, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853), Chapter XXIII
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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.
I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights.
[R]eflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant-society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it- its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries... It leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 1
[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted...in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 1
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others... Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 1
[S]ociety has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 3
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim we something better than customary.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 3
It is individuality that we war against: we should think we have done wonders if we have made ourselves all alike; forgetting that the unlikeliness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type, and the superiority of another, with the possibility, by combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 3
It would be a great misunderstanding...to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved...But disinterested benevolence can find other instruments to persuade people to their good, than whips and scourges.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 4
[Extending] the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 4
America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please.
O’ROURKE, P.J., Rolling Stone Magazine
[N]o drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.
O’ROURKE, P.J., Give War A Chance; Studying For Our Drug Test
One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle.
OTIS, JAMES, Against the Writs of Assistance, Boston, 1761, quoted in Orators of America by Guy Carleton Lee (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900)
National ID cards will be used to track the law-abiding masses, not criminals.
It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself.
PERCELL, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE CASEY
Call it tolerance, call it respect: it is the mark of a free society that individuals are left free to pursue their own values, however wise or foolish, however enlightened or benighted, however pleasing or offensive to others.
PILON, ROGER, The Right to Do Wrong
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
[H]ow many tobacco smokers resort to theft and prostitution in order to support their habit? Yet clinical studies have shown that tobacco is more habit forming than heroin.
REDFORD, JAMES, Government Causes the Crime, Part I
[In outlawing tattooing], [t]he City of New York had, in fact, created a new class of criminals, based solely on artistic profession and personal expression.
ROOT, DAMON W., Hands Off that Tattoo!, Liberzine.com, May 30, 2000
The liberty the citizen enjoys is to be measured not by the governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the paucity of restraints it imposes on him.
SPENCER, HERBERT, Man versus the State
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
SPOONER, LYSANDER, Vices are Not Crimes - A Vindication of Moral Liberty,1875
What do you mean that people would ‘abuse’ drugs? How? By giving themselves pleasure? Should that be forbidden?
SZASZ, THOMAS, Straight Talk From Thomas Szasz: A Reason Interview, Reason
Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state.
TWAIN, MARK, Quoted in Mark Twain Speaking, University of Iowa Press, 1976:384-8
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have.
WEBSTER, DANIEL, Speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner, May 10, 1847