Category: Thought

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907).

The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That’s the trouble with women, too.

Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man, in Existence (1975).

When law and force keep a man within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing upon him but a mere negation. They only oblige him to abstain from doing harm. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property. They only guard the personality, the liberty, the property of others. They hold themselves on the defensive; they defend the equal right of all.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850).

Schizoid times demand schizoid government.

An excuse-making rumination of the mad dictator, Genghis II Mao IV Khan, in Robert Silverberg’s science fiction novel Shadrach in the Furnace (1976), Chapter 20.

[I]t is more disgraceful for a king to tell lies than for anyone else.

Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander.

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them . . . is in human greed; the other is in misconceived philanthropy.

Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850).

It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. But the basic reason for this ought not to be mysterious. The reason is that the demagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group. 

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (1946), “The Lesson,” Chapter 1.

We should view our government the way we should a friendly, cuddly lion. Just because he’s friendly and cuddly shouldn’t blind us to the fact that he’s still got teeth and claws.

Walter E. Williams, Conservative Chronicle (August 30, 1995).

But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you — and why?

Walter E. Williams, All It Takes Is Guts (1987).

Demand and supply are terms related in a peculiar manner. A commodity which is supplied, is always, at the same time, a commodity which is the instrument of demand. A commodity which is the instrument of demand, is always, at the same time, a commodity added to the stock of supply. Every commodity is always, at one and the same time, matter of demand, and matter of supply. Of two men who perform an exchange, the one does not come with only a supply, the other with only a demand; each of them comes with both a demand and a supply. The supply, which he brings, is the instrument of his demand; and his demand and supply are of course exactly equal to one another.

James Mill, Elements of Political Economy (1821; 1844), Chapter 4, “Consumption” Section III, “That Consumption Is Co-Extensive With Production.”