Self-devotion

“ Are we to decry as miscreants these human beings who act with heroic self-devotion, often sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social and less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject submission to injustice and wrong? ”

“ They have been constrained to them by duty, or by pity; have never even deemed it possible to act otherwise, and did not once think of themselves in the matter at all.
For the true metal of a Golden Deed is self-devotion. Selfishness is the dross and alloy that gives the unsound ring to many an act that has been called glorious. ”

“ We see that with self-devotion there may mix less noble feelings, and that the immitigable hostility of religious strife may be caused by a mixture of ardent conviction with some impulses less noble, with some that are blamable and some that are even ludicrous, with mere pugnacity, with the passion of gratifying self-importance, with the half-noble pleasure that there is in fighting, and the ignoble pleasure that there is in giving pain. ”

“ It seems an ungracious task, unfair—perhaps it seems above all retrograde and ignorant—to express doubt and not to think hopefully of a cause in which so many lives have been spent with singular disinterestedness and self-devotion. ”

“ This young gentleman is a singular instance of self-devotion; his somewhat intemperate zeal on behalf of his employers, is constantly getting him into trouble, and occasionally into the house of correction. ”

“ From all evil against which the law bars you, you should be barred, at an infinite distance, by honour, by conscience, and nobility. Does the law require patriotism, philanthropy, self-abnegation, public service, purity of purpose, devotion to the needs of others who have been placed in the world below you? The law is a great thing,—because men are poor and weak, and bad. And it is great, because where it exists in its strength, no tyrant can be above it. But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, of duty, and of nobility; ”

“ And the essence of that which is improperly called the freewill doctrine is that occasionally, at any rate, human volition is self-caused, that is to say, not caused at all; for to cause oneself one must have anteceded oneself—which is, to say the least of it, difficult to imagine. ”

“ Each man must be his own judge, his own plaintiff, his own defendant—an atom of self-contained equity. By his own ruling in matters of right and wrong he must abide, suffer his own punishments, enjoy his own rewards. He is a lonely organism, in whom only himself took an interest, and as such he must be content to endure with calmness the misinterpretations of aliens.
Modred had forgiven me. ”

“ If my exertions on behalf of a distressed people be a crime, I am willing to pay the penalty, knowing, as I do, that what I have done was in behalf of a people whose cause is just—a people who will appreciate and honour a man, although he may not be a countryman of their own—still a man who is willing to suffer in defence of that divine, that American principle—the right of self-government. ”

“ But, as I told you, that is not the greatest matter, to be self accused, and self-condemned, if there were not a higher tribunal, which this process originally flows from, one greater than the conscience, who speaks to us in his word, and hath written his charge and sentence against us, and this is it which sets the soul most on edge, and it is but the very apprehension of that higher judgment, which is the gall and wormwood, the poison of those challenges in the conscience. ”

“ The reprobation of compulsory self-incrimination is an established doctrine of our civilized society. As stated by appellant's counsel, it is the 'result of the long struggle between the opposing forces of the spirit of individual liberty, on the one hand, and the collective power of the state, on the other.' As such, it should be condemned with great earnestness.
The essential and inherent cruelty of compelling a man to expose his own guilt is obvious to every one, and needs no illustration. It is plain to every person who gives the subject a moment's thought. ”

“ But when he imputes to me a character and disposition unworthy of any public man, and adduces in proof mere naked votes upon questions of great public interest, all given under the solemn sense of duty, impressed by an oath to support the constitution, and by the sacred obligations of a public trust, to defend myself against charges so groundless and unprovoked is, in my judgment, a duty of respect to you, no less than a duty of self-vindication to me. ”

“ The choice given petitioners was either to forfeit their jobs or to incriminate themselves. The option to lose their means of livelihood or to pay the penalty of self-incrimination is the antithesis of free choice to speak out or to remain silent. ”

“ An inner voice tells him that he should not retreat, that it is not the worthless object that is at stake but his own personality, his feeling of legal right, his self-respect—in short, the suit at law ceases to appear to him in the guise of a mere question of interest and becomes a question of character. ”

“ Those who refuse to await their trial practically stand self-condemned, so that you may reasonably pass on them the sentence which they have passed on themselves; but as for those who wait to stand their trial in the confidence that they have done no wrong, you have a right to hold the same opinion about them which they have held about themselves, and not decide, without a hearing, that they are in the wrong.... ”

“ Again: "What can be more complete than our submission to the orders of our superiors in everything that concerns our state of life, the places we are to dwell in, the employments, the offices we are to be engaged in." [20] And again, this submission to the will and judgment of the superior, or general, is called "renouncing our own judgment," "the annihilation of self," "complete obedience, entire dependence upon the will of others, perfect abandonment of personal reputation." ”

“ You or I may not deny the state this right of self-defense in the manner of its own choosing. There seems to be no way of humanly escaping the penalty of your wrongdoing. Your fellows must judge you by what you did, but there is a Judge to whom you may appeal for forgiveness, and who will judge you by your real motives and better intentions. ”

“ It is plain as the Moral Law, and it is instinctive as self-defence. If the country fails to do this justice now, it will commit a crime where guilt and meanness strive for mastery. On this head it is enough to say that it is a debt we owe to saviours and benefactors. But here all the instincts of self-defence harmonize with justice. ”

“ Our duty to abstain from confounding policy with constitutionality demands perceptive humility as well as self-restraint in not declaring unconstitutional what in a judge's private judgment is deemed unwise and even dangerous. ”

“ I have never been so unfortunate as to meet with any advocate of free-agency, either in actual life or in history, who supposed that a volition arose out of nothing, without any cause of its existence, or that it produced itself. They have all maintained, with one consent, that the mind is the cause of volition. Is the mind nothing? If a man should say, as so many have said, that the mind produces its own volitions, is that equivalent to saying, that nothing produces it ”

“ It is not that of the two courses we know that one is in the long run the best, and the other more immediately tempting. We have a sense of obligation irrespective of consequence, the violation of which is followed again by a sense of self-disapprobation, of censure, of blame. ”

“ In the meantime, one cannot dispense with the Authorities, the criminals, or the scapegoats.
The ultimate justification for submission and self negation had been the function of the morality of ulterior aims and higher purposes. Ultimately, one never submitted, one never bowed or crawled, for the sake of the rewards. Ultimately one's self negation was a noble act of sacrifice and suffering; one degraded oneself for the sake of the family, for the sake of the children -so that they, too, might degrade themselves, suffer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Good and the Right. ”

“ If the representatives of the People betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defence, which is paramount to all positive forms of Government ”

“ Therefore, any person who, be the cause what it may or the circumstances what they may, deprives himself by violence of his own life, must be said to be guilty of an act inexcusable and cowardly, as well as mean, and entirely opposed to the principle of independence and self respect. ”

“ For, in truth, every one of the three builds upon rules of justice confessedly true. The first appeals to the acknowledged injustice of singling out an individual, and making him a sacrifice, without his consent, for other people's benefit. The second relies on the acknowledged justice of self-defence, and the admitted injustice of forcing one person to conform to another's notions of what constitutes his good. ”

“ To practice the requisite detachment and to achieve sufficient objectivity no doubt demands of judges the habit of self-discipline and self-criticism, incertitude that one's own views are incontestable and alert tolerance toward views not shared. ”

“ I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself may seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests, those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. ”

“ By their eternal designs and attacks upon us, they force us upon the next means of self-preservation; and then complain of oppression, because we will not suffer them to oppress and destroy us. It is therefore owing to them, that the subject is taken from under the protection of the common law, and left to the discretion of the court. ”

“ Wise men say, that we resign to civil society our natural rights of self-defence, only on condition that the ordinances of law should protect us. ”

“ We are not dealing here with one of the vague, undefinable, admonitory provisions of the Constitution whose scope is inevitably addressed to changing circumstances. The privilege against self-incrimination is a specific provision of which it is peculiarly true that 'a page of history is worth a volume of logic.' New York Trust Co. ”

“ Or, if we include in the definition of the term, every thing which has a sufficient reason and ground of its existence, we cannot deny that it embraces the idea of a volition. For, under certain circumstances, the free mind will furnish a sufficient reason and ground of the existence of a volition. All that I deny is, that a volition does proceed from the mind, or from motive, or from anything else, in the same manner that an effect, properly so called, proceeds from its efficient cause. ”

“ Well, in candour, I must admit that, by justifying, in courts of judicature, through the verdicts of juries, that mode of personal redress and self-vindication, to heal and prevent which was one of the original motives for gathering into social communities, and setting up an empire of public law as paramount to all private exercise of power, a fatal wound is given to the sanctity of moral right, of the public conscience, and [Pg 98] of law in its elementary field. ”

“ When the right of self-defense has been exercised, whether upon provocation or by accident, the person who has exercised it is obliged to surrender himself to the government for justification, and to prove that he went beyond the pale of the laws of the state only because a case had arisen in which those laws could not be applied. ”

“ we hold further that government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; that it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life. ”

“ In a court degraded by licence and self-indulgence, he maintained his self-respect and personal dignity regardless of consequences, and in an age of almost universal corruption and self-seeking he preserved a noble integrity and patriotism. ”

“ The inborn or inveterate badness of a man’s character may explain, but cannot excuse his bad conduct in the impartial and inexorable eye of justice. So, too, he who sins against his own worthiness and dignity as a rational being by choosing to annul his power of self-determination as a voluntary agent and become a helpless tool in the hands of another, [Pg 225] ought not wholly to escape the consequences of his folly. ”

“ The advocates of self-determining power account for them by referring them to a self-determined will. We say a man is free when he does as he pleases or according to his volitions, and has the sense of freedom in his volitions, because he determines his own volitions; and that a man is guilty for crime, if committed by his volition, because he determined this volition, and at the very moment of determining it, was conscious of ability to determine an opposite volition. ”

“ In order to combat these pressures and to permit a full opportunity to exercise the privilege against self-incrimination, the accused must be adequately and effectively apprised of his rights, and the exercise of those rights must be fully honored. ”

“ A perfect right of self-defense can only obtain and avail where the party pleading it acted from necessity, and was wholly free from wrong or blame in occasioning or producing the necessity which required his action. ”