Category: Thought

If social conditions did not fulfill the wishes of the reformers, if their utopias proved unrealizable, the fault was seen in the moral failure of man. Social problems were considered ethical problems. What was needed in order to construct the ideal society, they thought, were good princes and virtuous citizens. With righteous men any utopia might be realized.

The discovery of the inescapable interdependence of market phenomena overthrew this opinion. Bewildered, people had to face a new view of society. They learned with stupefaction that there is another aspect from which human action might be viewed than that of good and bad, of fair and unfair, of just and unjust. In the course of social events there prevails a regularity of phenomena to which man must adjust his actions if he wishes to succeed. It is futile to approach social facts with the attitude of a censor who approves or disapproves from the point of view of quite arbitrary standards and subjective judgments of value. One must study the laws of human action and social cooperation as the physicist studies the laws of nature. Human action and social cooperation seen as the object of a science of given relations, no longer as a normative discipline of things that ought to be — this was a revolution of tremendous consequences for knowledge and philosophy as well as for social action.

Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949).

The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God; inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague. Inflation is a policy — a deliberate policy of people who resort to inflation because they consider it to be a lesser evil than unemployment. But the fact is that, in the not very long run, inflation does not cure unemployment.

Inflation is a policy. And a policy can be changed. Therefore, there is no reason to give in to inflation. If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating.

Ludwig Edler von Mises, fourth lecture from Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (1979; 1995; 2006).

No matter how far down the wrong road you’ve gone, turn back.

This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals.

Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” in Individualism and Economic Order (1948).

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

Thomas Sowell, “The survival of the left,” Forbes (Sept. 8, 1997), collected in The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), p. 144.

We can either have a free Parliament or a free people. Personal freedom requires that all authority is restrained by long-run principles which the opinion of the people approves.

Friedrich A. Hayek, “‘Free Enterprise’ and Competitive Order,” from a paper delivered to the Mont Pelerin Society, April 1947, in Individualism and Economic Order (1948).

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), p. 398.

They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.

Nathaniel Lee (1653–1692) was a playwright known for his blank verse works such as The Rival Queens and Caesar Borgia, and for offending King Charles II in 1681 with Lucius Junius Brutus. This statement is his summary of how he got sent to Bedlam in 1683.

Freedom. Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.

Liu Xiaobo, No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems, Chapter 8.

No one should attempt to describe a utopia unless he’s recently reread, for example, the works of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Rabelais and Dostoevski to remind himself of how different people are.

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State And Utopia (1974).