Category: Thought

I wish for my own part there were no such thing as Political-Economy. I mean not now the mere name of the study: but I wish there had never been any necessity for directing our attention to the study itself. If men had always been secured in person and property, and left at full liberty to employ both as they saw fit; and had merely been precluded from unjust interference with each other — had the most perfect freedom of intercourse between all mankind been always allowed — had there never been any wars — nor (which in that case would have easily been avoided) any taxation — then, though every exchange that took place would have been one of the phenomena of which Political-Economy takes cognizance, all would have proceeded so smoothly, that probably no attention would ever have been called to the subject. The transactions of society would have been like the play of the lungs, the contractions of the muscles, and the circulation of the blood, in a healthy person; who scarcely knows that these functions exist. But as soon as they are impeded and disordered, our attention is immediately called to them.

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

Human effort can not add or subtract an atom of the matter of the universe. It can only shift and move matter so as to make it serve man’s wants, — make it useful, or create utilities in it.

F.W. Taussig, Wages and Capital: An Examination of the Wages Fund Doctrine (1897), p. 3.

It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

An old saw often repeated by Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Hopper, computer scientist.

Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), p. 217.

[T]here is a proverbial maxim which bears witness to the advantage sometimes possessed by an observant bystander over those actually engaged in any transaction. “The looker-on often sees more of the game than the players.” Now the looker-on is precisely (in Greek θεωρòς) the theorist.

When then you find any one contrasting, in this and in other subjects, what he calls experience, with theory, you will usually perceive on attentive examination, that he is in reality comparing the results of a confined, with that of a wider, experience; — a more imperfect and crude theory, with one more cautiously framed, and based on a more copious induction.

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

The property right in one’s own body must be said to be justified a priori, for anyone who would try to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose the exclusive right to control over his body as a valid norm simply in order to say “I propose such in such.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (1993).

“You look as if you’ve just discovered the secret of perpetual motion.”

“Franklin W. Dixon,” in The Hardy Boys’ Guide to Life (2002), cited as if from the 18th Hardy Boys’ mystery, The Twisted Claw (1939; 1969), not confirmed.

Fate laughs at probabilities.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Eugene Aram (1832).

We live in a dangerous world, never knowing where our next meal may come from. Learn a little botany in case you’re ever marooned on a jungle island.

“Franklin W. Dixon,” in The Hardy Boys’ Guide to Life (2002), cited as if from the sixth Hardy Boys’ mystery, The Shore Road Mystery (1928; 1964), not confirmed.

Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.

Anthony Trollope, Miss Mackenzie (1865).