Category: Thought

“It does not distract from the economic fundamentals set forth by Adam Smith to point out that the wealth of nations would come to be predominantly the acquired abilities of people — their education, experience, skills, and health. No one at Adam Smith’s time could have foreseen that there would be a nation in which four-fifths of the national income would be derived from earnings and only a fifth of it from property. Yet the United States is such a nation. We have learned that advances in knowledge are an important source of wealth and income. We appear, however, to know less about the functions of organization than Adam Smith knew.”

Theodore W. Schultz, Investing in People: The Economics of Population Quality (1981), p. 140

Duplicate men are not to be found. There is in each a different balance of desires. Therefore the conditions adapted for the highest enjoyment of one, would not perfectly compass the same end for any other. And consequently the notion of happiness must vary with the disposition and character; that is, must vary indefinitely.

Herbert Spencer, Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed (London: John Chapman, 1851), Introduction, § 2.

“No-one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a workable general law — i.e. he must accord to others the same right as he enjoys himself.”

Immanuel Kant, Theory and Practice (1791)

Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness.

Herbert Spencer, Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed (London: John Chapman, 1851), Chapter 1, § 4.

Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end.

Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Part Two: “Metaphysics of Virtue.”

“There’s two kinds of people in the world, the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out all by themselves.”

Tom Clancy, Without Remorse (1993), p. 231

“The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.”

Bestselling author Tom Clancy, to news reporters at the National Press Club (May 18, 1999)

“What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.”

Tom Clancy, as quoted by John Whitehead

“Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Your life may change, but your dream doesn’t have to. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Your spouse and children need not get in its way, because the dream is within you. No one can take your dream away.”

Tom Clancy, commencement address, Loyola University 1986 graduation

“I wonder how we could have ever thought of doing anything so fantastic as to pay many millions of francs for the purpose of removing the natural obstacles that stand between France and other countries, and at the same time pay many other millions for the purpose of substituting artificial obstacles that have exactly the same effect; so that the obstacle created and the obstacle removed neutralize each other and leave things quite ‘as they were before, the only difference being the double expense of the whole operation.’”

Frédéric Bastiat, from Economic Sophisms, a book against the artificial obstacles created by the protective tariff.