Category: Thought

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Aldous Huxley, “Note on Dogma,” Proper Studies (1927).

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas Alva Edison, as quoted in An Enemy Called Average (1990) by John L. Mason, p. 55.

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree (1936)

The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unawares to have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees.

Herbert Spencer, “The Great Political Superstition,” in The Man versus the State (1884).

It is strange how all authoritarians automatically assume that the libertarian wishes to impose his own views on them when all he actually wants to do is to appeal to the authoritarian’s better nature. But I suppose you authoritarians can only see things in your own terms.

Count von Bek to the narrator of The Warlord of the Air: A Scientific Romance (1971), the first novel of A Nomad of the Time Streams series by Michael Moorcock (2013 Titan Books edition, p. 149).

[T]here lie before the legislator several open secrets, which yet are so open that they ought not to remain secrets to one who undertakes the vast and terrible responsibility of dealing with millions upon millions of human beings by measures which, if they do not conduce to their happiness, will increase their miseries and accelerate their deaths?

There is first of all the undeniable truth, conspicuous and yet absolutely ignored, that there are no phenomena which a society presents but what have their origins in the phenomena of individual human life, which again have their roots in vital phenomena at large. And there is the inevitable implication that unless these vital phenomena, bodily and mental, are chaotic in their relations (a supposition excluded by the very maintenance of life) the resulting phenomena cannot be wholly chaotic: there must be some kind of order in the phenomena which grow out of them when associated human beings have to cooperate. Evidently, then, when one who has not studied such resulting phenomena of social order, undertakes to regulate society, he is pretty certain to work mischiefs.

Herbert Spencer, “The Sins of Legislators,” in The Man versus the State (1884).

[C]ommerce inspires in men a vivid love of individual independence. Commerce supplies their needs, satisfies their desires, without the intervention of the authorities. This intervention is almost always — and I do not know why I say almost — this intervention is indeed always a trouble and an embarrassment. Every time collective power wishes to meddle with private speculations, it harasses the speculators. Every time governments pretend to do our own business, they do it more incompetently and expensively than we would.

Benjamin Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns (1819). See also: https://thisiscommonsense.org/2021/09/15/benjamin-constant-5-2/

The representative system is nothing but an organization by means of which a nation charges a few individuals to do what it cannot or does not wish to do herself. Poor men look after their own business; rich men hire stewards. This is the history of ancient and modern nations. The representative system is a proxy given to a certain number of men by the mass of the people who wish their interests to be defended and who nevertheless do not have the time to defend them themselves.
But, unless they are idiots, rich men who employ stewards keep a close watch on whether these stewards are doing their duty, lest they should prove negligent, corruptible, or incapable; and, in order to judge the management of these proxies, the landowners, if they are prudent, keep themselves well informed about affairs, the management of which they entrust to them. Similarly, the people who, in order to enjoy the liberty that suits them, resort to the representative system, must exercise an active and constant surveillance over their representatives, and reserve for themselves, at times that should not be separated by too lengthy intervals, the right to discard them if they betray their trust, and to revoke the powers they might have abused.

Benjamin Constant, On the Liberty of the Ancients Compared to that of the Moderns (“De la Liberté des Anciens Comparée à celle des Modernes,”1819).

Houston, we have a problem.

Astronaut Jim Lovell, in the movie Apollo 13 (1995), William Broyles Jr., screenwriter.

The actual conversation went like this:

55:55:19 Swigert: Okay, Houston…

55:55:19 Lovell: [Garbled]

55:55:20 Swigert: . . . we’ve had a problem here.

55:55:28 Lousma: This is Houston. Say again, please.

55:55:35 Lovell: Uh, Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B Bus Undervolt.

Jack Swigert, Jim Lovell, and CAPCOM Jack R. Lousma, Apollo 13 Flight Journal for April 13, 1970. In the movie, a reconstruction of the declaration in the present tense was spoken by actor Tom Hanks, portraying Jim Lovell. This statement is listed as #50 in the American Film Institute’s AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes, June 21, 2005.

Ride, si sapis.

Laugh if you are wise.

Marcus Valerius Martialis (Martial), Epigrammata, II, 41.