Quotes on Consent

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims - as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force - he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason.

To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

We need transformational change of our criminal justice system - not just, you know, a handful of consent decrees or policy reforms.

Until fishing is properly regulated and contained, we should withdraw our consent. Save your plastic bags by all means, but if you really want to make a difference, stop eating fish.

It is a failure of imagination and methodology to claim that it is necessary to experiment on millions of people without their consent in order to produce good data science.

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.

After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.

Here, in this very first paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can 'the consent of the governed' be given if the right to vote be denied?

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent.

Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.

From the day of its birth, the anomaly of slavery plagued a nation which asserted the equality of all men, and sought to derive powers of government from the consent of the governed. Within sound of the voices of those who said this lived more than half a million black slaves, forming nearly one-fifth of the population of a new nation.

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.

You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.

The apology, that is constantly put forth for the injustice of government, viz., that a man must consent to give up some of his rights, in order to have his other rights protected - involves a palpable absurdity, both legally and politically.

If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this - that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.