Category: Thought

Whenever a Government assumes the power of discriminating between the different classes of the community, it becomes, in effect, the arbiter of their prosperity, and exercises a power not contemplated by any intelligent people in delegating their sovereignty to their rulers. It then becomes the great regulator of the profits of every species of industry, and reduces men from a dependence on their own exertions, to a dependence on the caprices of their Government. Governments possess no delegated right to tamper with individual industry a single hair’s-breadth beyond what is essential to protect the rights of person and property.

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.

Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social-democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered it.

Irving Kristol, as quoted in “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: A Symposium,” edited by William Barrett, Commentary (1978).

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

“Scientific method consists in applying to those subjects which lie without the range of our immediate experience those same common-sense methods of reasoning which successful men of the world apply in judging of matters which concern their own interests.”

Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy, 1886, chapter III, “Of Scientific Method”

“The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task.”

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child, 1948

“The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs … has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689