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Quote by Jonathan R. Eller

“By 1950, he had come to view the pedestrian as a threshold or indicator species capable of foretelling things to come—if the rights of the pedestrian were threatened, it would be an early indicator that broader freedoms of thought and action were also at risk.”

Quote by Jonathan R. Eller

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Jonathan R. Eller

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“By offering the educated a semblance of freedom he made the denial of real freedom even more painful and humiliating. The intelligentsia sought to avenge their betrayed hopes; the Tsar strove to tame their restive spirit; and, so, semi-liberal reforms gave way to repression and repression bred rebellion.”

EducationLibertyRussiaLiberalismCivil LibertiesIntelligentsiaTsar Of Russia
Book:The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921
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“There is the greatest difference between assuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.”

PhilosophyLibertyCivil Liberties
Book:On Liberty
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“Sex is only one part of life, it is only one expression of companionship, it is something that needs to be accepted and fought for in order to live a life of human dignity. Gender expression or gender identity is also a matter of a person’s choice. Laws that criminalize gender identity and sexual orientation have no place in a democracy and must be struck down. Everyone must join hands to fight for equal rights for all of us to live in a just society.”

Civil Liberties
Book:A Life In Trans Activism
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“It is seven months since a thirty-two-year-old Oslo man, the racist extremist Anders Behring Breivik, single-handedly doubled Norway's average annual homicide rate in one afternoon, killing a total of seventy-seven people ... From my seat in the bus nothing appears to have changed. What did I expect? That the Norwegians would have put up razor wire and enforced constant police patrols? Hardly likely in a land where the then prime minister, at the memorial service to the dead of Utoya and the Oslo bomb, gave one of the most courageous speeches in defense of public freedom I have ever heard. Jens Stoltenberg had called for 'more openness, more democracy,' at a time when most politicians elsewhere in the world would have used an attack of that nature to pledge revenge, exploit the anxieties of the electorate, garner greater authority and power, and then compromise civil liberties. His speech was a reminder that the political leaders of the north have often served as the moral compass of the world.”

DemocracyTerrorismExtremismCivil LibertiesSocial DemocracyScandinavia
Book:The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
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“To the Victorian public, proud of their national tradition of liberal policing and of Britain as a beacon of tolerance, the very idea of a political police carried the stigma of foreign despotism. In the nineteenth century, Britain’s elected politicians would never have dared venture anything resembling the kind of legislation that recent years have seen passed with barely a blink of the public eye, to threaten civil liberties that have for generations been taken for granted. That changing times demanding changing laws is hard to dispute, but if new powers are to be conceded it is essential that we be ever more vigilant in guarding against their abuse. Likewise, if our political leaders are allowed blithely to insist that ‘history’ should be their judge, then we should at least be in no doubt that the historians of the future will have access to the material necessary to hold those leaders to account for any deceptions they may have practiced. Histories bearing an official sanction, of the kind that appeal to today’s security services, are not a satisfactory alternative. This book is a pebble cast on the other side of the scales.”

HistoryCivil Liberties
Book:The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents
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