From Thomas Sowell:
There are few talents more richly rewarded with both wealth and power, in countries around the world, than the ability to convince backward people that their problems are caused by other people who are more advanced.
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
From Lysander Spooner:
All governments, the worst on earth, and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.
A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.
From Frederic Bastiat:
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
From Milton Friedman:
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
From Harry Browne:
The police can't stop an intruder, mugger, or stalker from hurting you. They can pursue him only after he has hurt or killed you. Protecting yourself from harm is your responsibility, and you are far less likely to be hurt in a neighborhood of gun-owners than in one of disarmed citizens - even if you don't own a gun yourself.
Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.
From Robert Heinlein:
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
An armed society is a polite society.
The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
From H L Mencken
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
From Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
From Henry Hazlitt
The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
From Ayn Rand
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws.
From C S Lewis
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.
There are few talents more richly rewarded with both wealth and power, in countries around the world, than the ability to convince backward people that their problems are caused by other people who are more advanced.
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
From Lysander Spooner:
All governments, the worst on earth, and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them.
A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.
From Frederic Bastiat:
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
From Milton Friedman:
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
From Harry Browne:
The police can't stop an intruder, mugger, or stalker from hurting you. They can pursue him only after he has hurt or killed you. Protecting yourself from harm is your responsibility, and you are far less likely to be hurt in a neighborhood of gun-owners than in one of disarmed citizens - even if you don't own a gun yourself.
Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.
From Robert Heinlein:
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
An armed society is a polite society.
The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
From H L Mencken
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
From Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
From Henry Hazlitt
The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
From Ayn Rand
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws.
From C S Lewis
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
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