Any time economists start telling you to pass complex regulations to enforce morality, run in the opposite direction. The Obama administration had something with the idea of ‘science-based’ policy. At least let’s get the cause and effect science right before we start making moral claims.
John H. Cochrane, “NoahLogic,” The Grumpy Economist, June 4, 2017
The best scheme of finance is, to spend as little as possible; and the best tax is always the lightest.
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
If each human being is to have liberty, he cannot also have the liberty to deprive others of their liberty.
John Hospers, Libertarianism: A Philosophy for Tomorrow
Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices – taking advantage of our freedom of speech – who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do.
Nat Hentoff, The Day They Came to Arrest the Book (1982)
The multiplication of a product commonly reduces its price: that reduction extends its consumption; and so its production, though become more rapid, nevertheless gives employment to more hands than before. It is beyond question that the manufacture of cotton now occupies more hands in England, France, and Germany than it did before the introduction of the machinery that has abridged and perfected this branch of manufacture in so remarkable a degree.
Primitively the love of property is gratified only by possession of food and shelter, and, presently, of clothing; but afterwards it is gratified by possession of the weapons and tools which aid in obtaining these, then by possession of the raw materials that serve for making weapons and tools and for ether purposes, then by possession of the coin which purchases them as well as things at large, then by possession of promises to pay exchangeable for the coin, then by a lien on a banker, registered in a pass-book. That is, there comes to be pleasure in an ownership more and more abstract and more remote from material satisfactions.
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Ethics; Part IV: Justice, Chapter IV: “The Sentiment of Justice” (Williams & Norgate, 1891)
The day they discover yoga mats are carcinogenic will be the happiest day of my life.
Tim Minchin, from the monologue preface to his song “The Fence”
Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.
Samuel Adams, from The Advertiser (1748)