Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.
Václav Havel, Open letter to Dr. Gustáv Husák, Communist President (April 8, 1975).
Men are born free, that since they begin with no government, they must therefore institute government by voluntary agreement, and thus government must be their agent, not their superior. Since volition is a function of the individual, the individual has the precedent right. Then even if it was presumed that government did equate roughly with the moral shorcomings of humanity, it should still be limited and subsidiary. If everyone were invariably honest, able, wise, and kind, there should be no occasion for government. Everyone would readily understand what is desirable and what is possible in given circumstances, all would concur upon the best means toward their purpose and for equitable participation in the ensuing benefits, and would act without compulsion or default. The maximum production was certainly obtained from such voluntary action arising from personal initiative. But since human beings will sometimes lie, shirk, break promises, fail to improve their faculties, act imprudently, seize by violence the goods of others, and even kill one another in anger or greed, the government might be defined as the police organization. In that case, it must be described as a necessary evil. It would have no existence as a separate entity, and no intrinsic authority; it could not be justly empowered to act excepting as individuals infringed one another’s rights, when it should enforce prescribed penalties. Generally, it would stand in the relation of a witness to contract, holding a forfeit for the parties. As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.
Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine, 1943.
In our ignorance, we could not see that the Kaiser’s Germany and the Communist International were merely two aspects of the Old World’s reaction against the new, the American principle of individual liberty and human rights.
Rose Wilder Lane, Give Me Liberty (1936).
The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.
Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine, 1943.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar Wilde, “The Children of the Poets,” The Pall Mall Gazette (October 14, 1886).
The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” Fortnightly Review, February 1891.
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
Václav Havel, Speech of October 1989, accepting a peace prize.
I am strongly and steadily opposed to all plans of state employment. Besides the old fatal objection that we have no right to compel some to pay for others, such works interfere with the regular labor market, they are badly supervised and badly conducted and therefore tend to demoralize the men employed; they often keep labor collected at certain spots when it should be dispersed, discouraging the men from following and finding other work.
Auberon Herbert, from the appendix to the 1885 edition of The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State.
I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience.
Men quickly learn to look upon what is done for them by the state as a right and grumble that what is given is not given in fuller measure. It is a common cry: “We do not want charity, but state employment.” State employment is charity, only with all the healing grace left out of it.
Auberon Herbert, as reprinted in the first edition of The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, 1885.