Category: Thought

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”

A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.

If any come to my house to be instructed in the ways of God what rule have I to put them away? Do you think it not lawful for me to teach women and why do you call me to teach the court?

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge… observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing is ours except time.

The external commerce of all countries is inconsiderable, compared with the internal.

We can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for.

It is scarcely two hundred years since the progress of civilization, of industry, of commerce, that of the social order, and perhaps also the increase of specie, have given to governments the facility of making loans; and in this short space of time these dangerous expedients have led them all either to total or partial bankruptcies, sometimes repeated, or to the equally shameful and more grevious resource of paper money, or to remain overburdened under the weight of a load which daily becomes more insupportable.

But I go farther. I maintain that the evil is not in the abuse; but in the use itself of loans, that is to say that the abuse and the use are one and the same thing; and that every time a government borrows it takes a step towards its ruin. The reason of this is simple: A loan may be a good operation for an industrious man, whose consumption reproduces with profit. By means of the sums which he borrows, he augments this productive consumption; and with it his profits. But a government which is a consumer of the class of those whose consumption is sterile and destructive, dissipates what it borrows, it is so much lost for ever; and it remains burdened with a debt, which is so much taken from its future means.

In these troubled, uncertain times, we don’t need more command and control; we need better means to engage everyone’s intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise.

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.