Category: Thought

Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards.

The wider market society, however, taught a different lesson. There the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. There the intellectual skills were not most highly valued. Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority “entitled” them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?

Robert Nozick, “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” Cato Policy Report January/February 1998

When it comes to big government secrets, we usually only learn the truth after it becomes irrelevant.

Richard M. Dolan, on his YouTube channel.

If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict — and of tragedy — can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social. The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition. This gives its value to freedom as Acton conceived of it — as an end in itself, and not as a temporary need, arising out of our confused notions and irrational and disordered lives, a predicament which a panacea could one day put right.

A lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths.

Deep Throat to FBI agent Fox Mulder The X-Files in the first season episode, “E.B.E.” (1993), written by Glen Morgan and James Wong.

Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty, there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954).

Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being ‘pushed to an extreme,’ not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), Chapter 2, “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.”