Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2023-10-30 Oct 30, 2023Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.~ Eric HofferI have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.~ Adam SmithIt is collectivism that is the unrealistic expression of utopian belief systems. In its worst form -- the state -- collectivism is the institutionalized exertion of violence to compel living beings to behave contrary to their natural self-interest inclinations. So strong are the motivations for individual preferences that the state must resort to attacks upon the very nature of life to satisfy the ambitions of those who see others as nothing more than resources to be exploited for such ends.~ Butler D. Shaffer Oct 27, 2023Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.~ Aldous HuxleyWhen Michelle and I decided that I would run for President, it was because of a shared belief in the power of community and connection, a commitment to the idea that we are our brothers' keepers.~ Barack Hussein ObamaUltimately, however, as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, a powerful bureaucratic class is in the same relation to commerce as was the scorpion in Aesop to the dog on whose back he crossed the river. They will destroy commerce and establish socialism, even if it kills them, because that is their nature.~ John Derbyshire Oct 26, 2023It was not the tycoons of big business, it was not the working classes, it was the intellectuals who reversed the trend toward political freedom and revived the doctrines of the absolute State, of totalitarian government rule, of the government's right to control the lives of the citizens in any manner it pleases. This time, it was not in the name of the "divine right of kings," but in the name of the divine right of the masses. The basic principle was the same: the right to enforce at the point of a gun the moral doctrines of whoever happens to seize control of the machinery of government.~ Ayn RandTo be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.~ Joseph Paul GoebbelsAs against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane.~ Pierre Trudeau Oct 25, 2023All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.~ Dr. Samuel JohnsonMost of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.~ Henry Grady WeaverIt is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world.~ Molière Oct 24, 2023The world must be made safe for democracy.~ Woodrow WilsonTo include freedom in the very definition of democracy is to define a process not by its actual characteristics as a process but by its hoped for results. This is not only intellectually invalid, it is, in practical terms, blinding oneself in advance to some of the unwanted consequences of the process.~ Thomas SowellDemocracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making, absolutist shape which we have given to it is, it is clear, the time of tyranny's incubation.~ Bertrand de Jouvenel Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print