Category: Thought

“Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.”

Lysander Spooner, “Natural Law; or The Science of Justice” (1882)

“The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: ‘To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.’”

Lysander Spooner, “Natural Law; or The Science of Justice” (1882)

“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, ‘a new form of servitude.’”

F. A. Hayek, “Individualism: True and False” (1945), in Individualism and Economic Order

“…I very much doubt whether monetary policy has ever done anything good….”

F. A. Hayek, Cato Policy Report, from an interview conducted by James U. Blanchard III

“The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”

F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Chapter 6, “Planning and the Rule of Law”

“Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately coordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.”

F. A. Hayek, “Scientism and The Study of Society” (1944), p. 67; later published in The Counter-revolution of Science

“All economic activity is carried out through time. Every individual economic process occupies a certain time, and all linkages between economic processes necessarily involve longer or shorter periods of time.”

F. A. Hayek, “Intertemporal Price Equilibrium and Movement in the Value of Money” (1928)

“Never read any book that is not a year old.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “First Visit to England” in English Traits (1856)

“The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “First Visit to England” in English Traits (1856)

“In contemplating the religious system of the Aztecs, one is struck with its apparent incongruity, as if some portion of it had emanated from a comparatively refined people, open to gentle influences, while the rest breathes a spirit of unmitigated ferocity.”

William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, chapter three