It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened. In The Making, quoted from Laird Wilcox, ed. Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension or error. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.
Freedom is to be obtained in spite of the government rather than through it.
French writer of aphorisms Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding. There is nothing more horrible than the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts. I do not believe it right for one group to impose its vision of morality on an entire society. Nelson Rockefeller , Veto Message, May 13, 1972. Rockefeller vetoed a bill to repeal New York's 1970 abortion law.