To demand that a person pee in a cup whenever you wish him to, without a documented reason to suspect that he has been using an illegal drug, is intolerable in our republic. You are saying to him, "I wonder if you are not behaving in a way that I approve of. Convince me that you indeed are. Outrageous. Intolerable.
Interpretation
Forcing someone to prove their innocence is unjust and undermines individual rights.
This quote by Alexander Shulgin asserts that demanding a person to take a drug test without a valid reason reflects a distrust in their character and infringes upon personal freedoms. It critiques the broader implications of such demands in a democratic society, where respect for individual rights and dignity should be paramount.
In practice
During a seminar on individual rights, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of personal freedoms.
How long will this last, this delicious feeling of being alive, of having penetrated the veil which hides beauty and the wonders of celestial vistas? It doesn't matter, as there can be nothing but gratitude for even a glimpse of what exists for those who can become open to it.
How he could be a good user of LSD," I asked, "And know about the spiritual dimension - all that sort of thing - and still be a crook? I don't understand." "Then it's time you did. Psychedelic drugs don't change you - they don't change you character - unless you want to be changed. They enable change; they can't impose it.
Like our attitude to love, truth and goodness, we seem to be confident about knowing what beauty is - certain, even dogmatic - until we think hard about the idea, whereupon all confidence flies away.
Toleration and liberty are the foundations of a great republic.
The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down.
You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end.
Just having the internet is a weird and dangerous thing because people become accustomed to knowing things when they want to know them and not having to work for it. I definitely see the value in not knowing everything and having mystery in life and mystery in people.
Sometimes, waking early before the others, wandering the rooms wrapped in a blanket or drinking my tea in the empty kitchen, I had that most rare of feelings, the sense that the world, so consistently overwhelming and incomprehensible, in fact has an order, oblique as it may seem, and I a place within it.
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