Category: Thought

[I]f all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control,’ they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink.’

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), chapter 3.

Note: illustration by Bernd Pohlenz — CC BY-SA 3.0.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

Habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one’s maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881), Swiss philosopher, poet and critic. Journal Intime (1882)

Kaiken viisauden alku on tosiasiain tunnustaminen.

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The beginning of all wisdom is acknowledgement of facts.

Juho Kusti Paasikivi, quoted on the Paasikivi monument in Helsinki, supposedly originating from Thomas Carlyle.

When the first fire-engine appeared in Japan the carpenters asked to have it removed because it robbed workmen of the employment provided by fires. Bastiat himself never invented anything better.

Yves Guyot, The Comedy of Protection, 1906, viii, referring to Frédéric Bastiat’s infamous satires on protectionism, such as “The Candle-makers’ Petition” and the “Negative Railroad.”

It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea shops.

Ernest Bramah, “The Transmutation of Ling,” The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900).

What is called the Progress of Civilization has been marked and conditioned at every step by an extension of the opportunities, a greater facility in the use of the means, a more eager searching for proper expedients, and a higher certainty in the securing of the returns, of mutual exchanges among men.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best.

It is not the astronomer’s business to consider whether it would be better if the sun were nearer or farther from the earth, or if he turned round her, instead of turning round him. Nor is it the chemist’s business to consider whether carbonic acid and carbonic oxide are noxious gases that ought not to exist. It has never been thought desirable to make Newton responsible for tiles falling on the people’s heads.
Economists, however, are held answerable for the laws which they discover.

Yves Guyot, The Principles of Social Economy (1892).