Category: Thought

It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.

Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn (1869). Frederick Waddy, illustrator.

That rabble had a mighty power over minds, for when the Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of reason. And so the wiser heads dared not resist the fops, and the whole nation feared them as some pestilence, for within itself it already felt the germs of disease. They cried out against the dandies but took pattern by them; they changed faith, speech, laws, and costumes. That was a masquerade, the licence of the Carnival season, after which was soon to follow the Lent of slavery.

Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz (1834), as quoted as an epigraph to Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016).

I have found from many observations that our liberals are incapable of allowing anyone to have his own convictions and immediately answer their opponent with abuse or something worse.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (1869), as quoted as an epigraph to Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016).

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869).

Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.

Ludwig Edler von Mises, Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus — “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis” (1922), Part V : The Economics of a Socialist Community, § V : Destructionism, Ch. 33 : The Motive Powers of Destructionism, p. 440.

What we prepare for is what we shall get.

William Graham Sumner, “War,” (1903).

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

George Washington, Letter to Major-General Robert Howe (August 17, 1779), published in The Writings of George Washington: 1778-1779, Worthington Chauncey Ford, editor (1890).

The man who started with the notion that the world owed him a living would once more find, as he does now, that the world pays him its debt in the state prison.

William Graham Sumner, “The Challenge of Facts,” (1914).

The proof of a theory is in its reasoning, not in its sponsorship.

Ludwig Edler von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit (1912).

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.