Category: Thought

If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.

Philosopher Robert Nozick explaining why freedom cannot be maintained in a statist society, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974).

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.

Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

Philosopher Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), first sentence.

We’re not earning any money by ‘saving.’ The government is manipulating the economy for nobody’s good but its own. Republicans and Democrats both do this; probably Democrats do it for worse purposes than Republicans.
But it’s about time that we all learned what’s going on. Call it a lesson in economic reality.

The artist may doubt his own work, but he is bitterly disappointed if other people doubt it also.

There cannot, I conceive, be any question that to the assumption of a Law Natural we owe the doctrine of the fundamental equality of human beings. That ‘all men are equal’ is one of a large number of legal propositions which, in progress of time, have become political.

When I look at this poor, bleeding, wounded World, this world that has suffered so long, struggled so much, been scourged so fiercely, thorn-pierced so deeply, crucified so cruelly, I can only shake my head and remember: The giant is blind, but he’s thinking: and his locks are growing, fast.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles,” Ch. 7, Section 3 (1992), p. 190