Surely there can be but one rule of right, if morality has an eternal foundation, and whoever sacrifices virtue, strictly so called, to present convenience, or whose duty is to act in such a manner, lives only for the passing day, and cannot be an accountable creature.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
Sympathy which, a generation ago, was taking the shape of justice, is relapsing into the shape of generosity; and the generosity is exercised by inflicting injustice. Daily legislation betrays little anxiety that each shall have that which belongs to him, but great anxiety that he shall have that which belongs to somebody else. For while no energy is expended in so reforming our judicial administration that everyone may obtain and enjoy all he has earned, great energy is shown in providing for him and others benefits which they have not earned. Along with that miserable laissez-faire which calmly looks on while men ruin themselves in trying to enforce by law their equitable claims, there goes activity in supplying them, at other men’s cost, with gratis novel-reading!
Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics, Vol. 2, Part IV: “Justice” (1891), Chapter 5, “The Idea of Justice.”
It is a tolerably well-ascertained fact that men are still selfish. And that beings answering to this epithet will employ the power placed in their hands for their own advantage is self-evident. Directly or indirectly, either by hook or by crook, if not openly, then in secret, their private ends will be served. Granting the proposition that men are selfish, we cannot avoid the corollary, that those who possess authority will, if permitted, use it for selfish purposes.
Herbert Spencer, “The Constitution of the State,” Part 1, Chapter XX, §2 of Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed, (London: John Chapman, 1851).
Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally: a crowd of authors that all is now right: and I, that all will be right.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), chapter one.
Whereas the governments of some low-income countries are improving their economics policies, in the United States the proliferation of political movements that view economics with disdain, along with apparent general public support for government market interventions, are in considerable measure contributing to the decline in the performance of the U.S. economy.
Theodore W. Schultz, Investing in People: The Economics of Population Quality (1981), p. 143-4.
Society . . . as it becomes more enlightened, should be very careful not to establish bodies of men who must necessarily be made foolish or vicious by the very constitution of their profession.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), chapter one.