Category: Thought

I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party.

As quoted in Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1900) by Ephraim Emerton, p. 377.

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.

Thomas Sowell, “Big Lies in Politics” (Townhall, July 31, 2012).

I know you’re sane and you know you’re sane. But what if we’re both wrong?

Robert Sheckley, “The Death of the Dreammaster,” in Martin H. Greenberg (ed.), The Further Adventures of Batman (1989), p. 24

That is not how you do it; you do not solve one problem with another, greater problem.

Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).

With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.

Milton Friedman, “The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community” (1983)

To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox: whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus . . . thereby spreading the infection.

Philip K. Dick, VALIS (1981).

Man is the only animal whose fear of embarrassment can overcome his instinct for self-preservation.

Robert Sheckley, Game of X (1965), Chapter Six.

There is no fear that we shall ever in practice have too little call for deliberation — too little need of judicious conjecture. Science does not enable us to dispense with commonsense, but only to employ it more profitably; nor does the best-instructed man necessarily deliberate the less; only he exercises his deliberation on different points from those that occupy the less-instructed; and to better purpose; he does not waste his mental powers in conjectures as to his road, when he has a correct map in his hand; but he still has abundance of other inquiries to make as he travels over it. The adoption of the Arabic numerals and of the Algebraic symbols, does not supersede calculation, but extends its sphere.

Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1832), Lecture III.

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather ‘What can I and my compatriots do through government’ to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Introduction.

Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion?

Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965).