Category: Thought

Both in England and on the Continent a graduated property tax (l’impôt progressif) has been advocated, on the avowed ground that the state should use the instrument of taxation as a means of mitigating the inequalities of wealth. I am as desirous as any one that means should be taken to diminish those inequalities, but not so as to relieve the prodigal at the expense of the prudent. To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours.

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), Book V, Chapter II.

For all except the very few of extraordinary gifts, the spur of gain is not only powerful, it is indispensable.

Yves Guyot, stating what he called “the third incentive of human action,” in Where and why Public Ownership Has Failed (H. F. Baker, trans., 1914).

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1895.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1895.

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

Friedrich August von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 83.

The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.

La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, (1665, 1678), 61st maxim.

A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

Friedrich August von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 79

Sincere enthusiasm is the only orator who always persuades. It is like an art the rules of which never fail; the simplest man with enthusiasm persuades better than the most eloquent with none.

La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, (1665, 1678), eighth maxim.

Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds. . . . Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.

Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention (June 5, 1788), speech regarding the Federal Constitution.

One thing I hate about the New Deal is that it is killing what, to me, is the American pioneering spirit. I simply do not know what to tell my own boys, leaving school and confronting this new world whose ideal is Security and whose practice is dependence upon government instead of upon one’s self. . . . All the old character-values seem simply insane from a practical point of view; the self-reliant, the independent, the courageous man is penalized from every direction.

Rose Wilder Lane, Journal entry (April 15, 1937), as quoted in The Ghost in the Little House, ch. 14, by William V. Holtz (1993)