Category: Thought

“Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.”

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845

“We must not confound liberty with anarchy. Liberty is the reciprocal respect for personal rights, according to certain fixed rules known by the name of law. Anarchy is the privilege of some and the spoliation of others, according to the caprices and arbitrary will of the cunning and the violent, and the feebleness and lack of energy of the timorous.”

“[T]here are men who look upon social revolution as a kind of fairyland.”

‘Nothing can serve as a substitute for an ideology that enhances human life by fostering social cooperation — least of all lies, whether they be called “tactics,” “diplomacy,” or “compromise.” If men will not, from a recognition of social necessity, voluntarily do what must be done if society is to be maintained and general well-being advanced, no one can lead them to the right path by any cunning stratagem or artifice.’

Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, first published in German as Liberalismus, 1927, and in English as The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth, 1962.

“Political liberty, by submitting to all the citizens, without exception, the care and assessment of their most sacred interests, enlarges their spirit, ennobles their thoughts, and establishes among them a kind of intellectual equality that forms the glory and power of a people.”

Benjamin Constant The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns, 1819

The idea of defending, as integral parts of our Empire, countries 10,000 miles off, like Australia, which neither pay a shilling to our revenue . . . nor afford us any exclusive trade . . . is about as quixotic a specimen of national folly as was ever exhibited.

Richard Cobden, a note to Edward Ellice, 1856.

[C]ommerce inspires in men a vivid love of individual independence. Commerce supplies their needs, satisfies their desires, without the intervention of the authorities. This intervention is almost always — and I do not know why I say almost — this intervention is indeed always a trouble and an embarrassment. Every time collective power wishes to meddle with private speculations, it harasses the speculators. Every time governments pretend to do our own business, they do it more incompetently and expensively than we would.

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

“Free Trade! What is it? Why, breaking down the barriers that separate nations; those barriers, behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge, hatred, and jealousy, which every now and then burst their bounds, and deluge whole countries with blood; those feelings which nourish the poison of war and conquest, which assert that without conquest we can have no trade, which foster that lust for conquest and dominion which sends forth your warrior chiefs to scatter devastation through other lands, and then calls them back that they may be enthroned securely in your passions, but only to harass and oppress you at home.”

Richard Cobden, Speech at Covent Garden (28 September, 1843).

“Among the ancients, a successful war increased both private and public wealth in slaves, tributes, and lands shared out. For the moderns, even a successful war costs infallibly more than it is worth.”

Benjamin Constant The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns, 1819

“A common mistake is that the conclusions of the plain unlettered man differ from those of economists in being more immediately founded on observed facts and less on deduction. The truth is that the plain unlettered man is more prone to rely on deduction from unproved hypotheses than the economist is. All classes must equally use deduction, because it is only by this logical process that we form any conclusion about the future effect of any present cause. Drawing the conclusion that rain will follow a certain direction of the wind with certain appearances of the clouds is an act of logical deduction. The main point in which men’s logical methods differ lies in the care with which hypotheses are formed by induction from observed facts, and the readiness of men to test them. Now it is the plain man who is most prone to form hasty generalizations from insufficient facts, to consider the conclusions which he thence deduces as final, and to be blind to all facts which do not tally with his theory.”

Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy, 1886, p. 40