I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not be a fool, which, if I may judge by the exhibitions around me, is a matter of no small difficulty.
James A. Garfield, in a letter to Burke Aaron Hinsdale (January 1, 1867); quoted in The Life of Gen. James A. Garfield (1880) by Jonas Mills Bundy, p. 77.
In the ideal socialist state, power will not attract power freaks. People who make decisions will show no slightest bias towards their own interests. There will be no way for a clever man to bend the institutions to serve his own ends. And the rivers will run uphill.
David Director Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom (1973), p. 108.
Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.
Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline (2009), p. 216.
I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.
James A. Garfield, as quoted in Garfield of Ohio: The Available Man (1970) by John M. Tyler. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was shot on July 2, 1881, and died of the wound and iatrogenic interventions on September 19 of that year.
I would rather be beaten in Right than succeed in Wrong.
President James A. Garfield, Maxims of James Abram Garfield (1880), compiled by William Ralston Balch, p. 1.
There’s always been art with immoral messages. The differences is that, in modern times, our immoral art is produced by the most tiresome collection of monotonous, talentless idiot hacks to ever walk the Earth. . . . These depraved attention mongers can’t even manage to be offensive in an interesting way. Instead they simply recycle the same shock tactics over and over again. And we’ve seen it all by now. As it turns out, there are only so many ways to be a satanic whore. After a while it gets repetitive, and we are way past that point today.
Matt Walsh, “Proof for Your Liberal Friend: The Music Industry Is Demonic & Evil,” The Matt Walsh Show, compilation (July 5, 2025).
When someone removes a cancer, what do you replace it with?
Economist Tom Sowell, in conversation with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Knowledge, upon being asked what would be established to replace the Federal Reserve.
Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.
Love the sinner and hate the sin.
Augustine of Hippo, Opera Omnia, Vol II. Col. 962, letter 211.
Lex naturae … nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectis insitum nobis a Deo, per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione.
The law of nature … is nothing other than the light of the intellect planted in us by God, by which we know what should be done and what should be avoided. God gave us this light or law in creation.
Thomas Aquinas, On the Ten Commandments (c. 1273).
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.
What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, XI, 14 (c. 397).