Category: Thought

We know that the real lesson to be taught is that the human person is precious and unique; but we seem unable to set it forth except in terms of ideology and abstraction

Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), Ch. 10, p. 148 (concluding sentence).

“The nature of man is indivisible; you cannot cut him across, and give one share of him to the state and leave the other for himself.”

Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (1885)

Partisans across the opinion spectrum are vulnerable to occasional bouts of ideologically induced insanity.

Philip Tetlock, in Stewart Brand, The SALT Summaries (Long Now Press, 2011), p. 128.

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.

Iris Murdoch, as quoted in The Observer, September 13, 1987

“A man can only learn when he is free to act.”

Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (1885)

[W]e don’t really have stores that sell only groceries, shelf-stable products, anymore. Most stores sell a variety of shelf-stable and perishable goods. So most stores should be considered, technically, supermarkets. But there is a warmth to the term grocery store that encourages one to embrace it and hold on to it. In large part this is because it sill does connote — in this era of fragmentation and impersonal service and a food world that grows ever more confusing — a place that can be depended upon, day in and day out, where you can get everything you need to nourish your family. We like to think that our grocery store is run by a grocer (not a supermarketer). And we want to believe that there are capable people in charge of our food, people who care for it and ensure that the products are good.

Michael Ruhlman, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America (New York: Abrams Press, May 16, 2017)

A tax can never be favorable to the public welfare, except by the good use that is made of its proceeds.

J.-B. Say, A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Chapter XVII, Section I, p. 168

We tend to use grocery stores without thinking about them, or if we do think about them, it’s with mild annoyance, the thought of shopping itself a chore. What we rarely reflect on is what a luxury it is to be able to buy an extraordinary variety and quantity of food whenever we want every day of the year.

Michael Ruhlman, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America (New York: Abrams Press, May 16, 2017), as quoted at Cafe Hayek, June 14, 2017

“You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.”

Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People (1882), Dr. Stockmann, Act V

Conservative, n.

A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with others.

Cynic, n.

A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.

Egotist, n.

A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

Idiot, n.

A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.

Mayonnaise, n.

One of the sauces that serve the French in place of a state religion.

Once, adj.

Enough.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)