Category: Thought

Man’s concern is not with government; he should look on government as no more than a very secondary thing — we might almost say a very minor thing. His goal is industry, labour and the production of everything needed for his happiness. In a well-​ordered state, the government must only be an adjunct of production, an agency charged by the producers, who pay for it, with protecting their persons and their goods while they work. In a well-​ordered state, the largest number of persons must work, and the smallest number must govern. The work of perfection would be reached if all the world worked and no one governed.

Charles Dunoyer, De la liberté du travail (1845), David M. Hart, translator.

La spoliation ne déplace pas seulement
la richesse, elle en détruit toujours une partie.

Spoliation does not merely displace wealth; it always destroys a part of it.

Vilfredo Pareto, Les systèmes socialistes (1902 – 1903), Vol. II, p. 54, David M. Hart, translator.

Man’s concern is not with government; he should look on government as no more than a very secondary thing — we might almost say a very minor thing. His goal is industry, labour and the production of everything needed for his happiness. In a well-​ordered state, the government must only be an adjunct of production, an agency charged by the producers, who pay for it, with protecting their persons and their goods while they work. In a well-​ordered state, the largest number of persons must work, and the smallest number must govern. The work of perfection would be reached if all the world worked and no one governed.

Charles Dunoyer, De la liberté du travail (1845), David M. Hart, translator.

Let us assume that all production is socialized. If citizens abandon their work on the slightest pretext to go for a walk, they will end up in destitution and die of hunger. One will therefore be forced, sooner or later, to take measures to avoid these evils; and if one does not want to let selection operate and carry out the sorting of good and bad elements, it will be necessary to take away from citizens the freedom to leave their work, condemning them, in a way, to forced labor.

Vilfredo Pareto, Les systèmes socialistes (1902 – 1903), Vol. II, p. 63.

Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.

Economist Kenneth Boulding, as quoted in Liberal education (1955). Vol. 41, p. 430.

Signe de décadence: humanitaires, mièvre sensiblerie;
rend incapable défendre positions. Toute élite qui n’est
pas prête à livrer bataille pour défendre ses positions
est condamnée à disparaître, et il y a une élite
nouvelle qui monte et qui pousse l’ancienne.

Sign of decadence: humanitarians, mawkish sentimentality; makes one incapable of defending positions. Any elite that is not ready to do battle to defend its positions is condemned to disappear, and there is a new elite that rises and pushes out the old.

Vilfredo Pareto, Les systèmes socialistes (1902 – 1903), Vol. I, p. 37 – 38, David M. Hart, translator.

Well, right here we’ve seen something, I’ve seen something, hundreds of pilots have seen something … in the skies. We have dutifully reported these things. And we have to have 15 million witnesses before anybody is going to look into the problem … seriously? Well this is utterly fantastic. This is more fantastic than flying saucers or people from Venus or anything as far as I am concerned.

Kenneth Arnold, 30 years after first seeing nine mysterious flying objects over Mount Rainier, while attending the First International UFO Congress in Chicago, curated by Fate to mark the 30th anniversary of the “birth” of the modern UFO age, “Pilot Kenneth Arnold 1977 still angry about disbelief,” on YouTube.

Almost every organization … exhibits two faces — a smiling face which it turns toward its members and a frowning face which it turns to the world outside.

Kenneth Boulding, Joseph T. Mahoney & Anne S. Huff, Toward a New Social Contract. Theory in Organization Science (Faculty paper, University of Illinois at Urbana, 1993).

Economic problems have no sharp edges. They shade off imperceptibly into politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field.

Kenneth Boulding, quoted in Leonard Silk, The Economists (1976).

Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. 

R.A. Lafferty, The Flame Is Green (1971).