Category: Thought

The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book VIII, Chapter 1.

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

Montesquieu, Persian Letters, no. 60.

“The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of government most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.”

“The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished, derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the nineteenth century.”

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (1890), Book I.

“There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society — as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe.”

F. A. Hayek, speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974.

“Students of social science, must fear popular approval: Evil is with them when all men speak well of them.”

Alfred Marshall, as quoted by F. A. Hayek, speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974.

“[T]he Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.

“This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence.

“But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally.”

F. A. Hayek, speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974.

“A legislature is always badly set to work in manufacturing crime. To risk money in a wager is not a crime per se, whether the wager be on the result of a race, on the fate of a lottery ticket, on the turn of a dicebox, or on any other like contingency. It is folly, perhaps, in all cases, and it becomes crime and madness in some; but to draw the line between allowable folly and criminality, in a matter of this kind, is rather the office of publick opinion, than of the law.”

William Leggett, in an editorial in the Plaindealer, January 28, 1837, republished in A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), and titled “Gambling Laws.”

“Progress is a new season and the rule of progress is everything in its season.”

Henry Ford, May 15, 1923.

“Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.”