Category: Thought

[T]he hope of evading such taxes by smuggling gives frequent occasion to forfeitures and other penalties, which entirely ruin the smuggler, a person who, though no doubt highly blameable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been, in every respect, an excellent citizen, had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so.

Adam Smith, The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), referring to luxury taxes.

To promote the little interest of one little order of men in one country, it hurts the interest of all other orders of men in that country, and of all men in all other countries.

Adam Smith, The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), on colonialism, his own country’s participation in which Smith judged quite negatively: “Great Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies.”

The truest mark of having been born with great qualities is to have been born without envy.

La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, (1665, 1678), 433rd maxim.

To hurt in any degree the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign owes to all the different orders of his subjects.

Adam Smith, The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

There is no better means of reducing a fallacious variety of thought to absurdity than to let it live itself out completely.

Attributed to Carl Menger in Ludwig Von Mises, “Comments about the mathematical treatment of economic problems.” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Spring 1977, 1(2), p. 100.

Gratitude is the virtue of wise and generous minds. Ingratitude is the fault of fools and clowns.

La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, (1665, 1678), maxims 688 and 689.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called ‘the People’s Stick.’

Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (1873).

The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his brothers and his equals.
I can feel free only in the presence of and in relationship with other men. In the presence of an inferior species of animal I am neither free nor a man, because this animal is incapable of conceiving and consequently recognizing my humanity. I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen.
 Only in respecting their human character do I respect my own.

My public and I understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don’t say what it wants to hear.

Karl Kraus, about his newsletter, Die Fackel.