Category: Thought

“[T]here is a tendency in descendants to be like their progenitors, and yet a tendency also in descendants to differ from their progenitors. The work of nature in making generations is a patchwork — part resemblance, part contrast. In certain respects each born generation is not like the last born; and in certain other respects it is like the last. But the peculiarity of arrested civilisation is to kill out varieties at birth almost; that is, in early childhood, and before they can develop. The fixed custom which public opinion alone tolerates is imposed on all minds, whether it suits them or not. In that case the community feel that this custom is the only shelter from bare tyranny, and the only security for what they value.”

Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics (1872).

“The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better.”

Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics (1872).

“[T]here are three great disturbers of monetary standards: Governmental policies — especially but not exclusively in war time; banking policies usually linked with the Governmental; and fluctuations in gold production.”

Irving Fisher, The Money Illusion (1928).

“Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”

Tom Paine, Common Sense (1776).

“An American is quite lost if he tries to think of the dollar as varying. He cannot easily think of anything by which to measure it. Even with our gold standard we have a dollar fluctuating in buying power. Yet we think of the dollar as fixed. It is fixed only in the sense that it is redeemable in a fixed number of grains of gold. It is not fixed in the amount of goods and benefits it can command.”

Irving Fisher, The Money Illusion (1928).

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”

Tom Paine, Common Sense (1776).

In modern days, in civilised days, men’s choice determines nearly all they do. But in early times that choice determined scarcely anything.

Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics (1872), p. 29.

“Much as the old world believed in pure blood, it had very little of it. Most historic nations conquered prehistoric nations, and though they massacred many, they did not massacre all. They enslaved the subject men, and they married the subject women. No doubt the whole bond of early society was the bond of descent; no doubt it was essential to the notions of a new nation that it should have had common ancestors; the modern idea that vicinity of habitation is the natural cement of civil union would have been repelled as an impiety if it could have been conceived as an idea.”

Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics (1872).

“Ideas are forces: the existence of one determines our reception of others.”

G. H. Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind (Third Series) Problem the First — The Study of Psychology: Its Object, Scope, and Method, 1879.

“Commerce has brought nations closer, it has given them customs and habits that are almost identical; the heads of states may be enemies: the peoples are compatriots.”

Benjamin Comstant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns (1819).