![[For the Romans] an essential element of the Law of Nature is the equality of man, specifically, equality before the law, and the principle of human rights, including the rights to property, which antedated the state, and thus are independent of it. Fifteen hundred years later these ideas would furnish the philosophical cornerstone of Western democracy. (Richard Pipes)](https://static.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images/68/richard-pipes-democracy-element-958668.jpg)
[For the Romans] an essential element of the Law of Nature is the equality of man, specifically, equality before the law, and the principle of human rights, including the rights to property, which antedated the state, and thus are independent of it. Fifteen hundred years later these ideas would furnish the philosophical cornerstone of Western democracy.
Richard PipesRelated topics
democracy element equality essential fifteen furnish human hundred independent later law man nature principle property state thus western years cornerstone romansRelated quotes
The values of Western civilization are not just different, they're better. I know a whole generation has been raised on the notion of multiculturalism, that all civilizations are just different. No, not always. Sometimes things are better. Rule of law is better than autocracy and theocracy. Equality of the sexes, better. Protection of minorities, better. Free speech, better.
Bill Maher
Growing terrorism, permissive societies, democracy collapsing through lack of law and order. If things continue on their present track, the disintegration of Western societies will occur much sooner than you think under the hammer blows of fascism and communism. Freedom is not something that does not have a breaking point, and your enemies would like you to reach that point.
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy - because we're experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that's what's going on now.
Kurt Vonnegut
The foremost, or indeed the sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it were to a single principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex.
E. M. Forster
