One can hardly say that republicanism has failed, or say a priori that it is bound to fail, so long as it has not been tried under conditions essential to its success.
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Category: Thought
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Albert Jay Nock
As long as our people are incapable of the simplest possible process of putting two and two together, I can not get much warmed up over their political misfortunes.
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Ludwig von Mises
It is a widespread fallacy that skillful advertising can talk the consumers into buying everything that the advertiser wants them to buy. The consumer is, according to this legend, simply defenseless against high-pressure advertising. If this were true, success or failure in business would depend on the mode of advertising only.
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Ludwig von Mises
The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.
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Ludwig von Mises
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.
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Anne Hutchinson
If any come to my house to be instructed in the ways of God what rule have I to put them away? Do you think it not lawful for me to teach women and why do you call me to teach the court?
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Denis Diderot
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge… observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
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Denis Diderot
No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.
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John Locke
Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, tho’ he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief, whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat; because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which, if lost, is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence, and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man’s person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge.
John Locke, from the Second Treatise on Civil Government (Thomas Hollis Edition. [London: A. Millar et. al.] 1764), Chapter Three: “Of the State of War.”
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James M. Buchanan
Individuals, separately and in groups, make decisions concerning the use of economic resources. They do so in at least two capacities: first, as purchasers (sellers) of goods and services in organized markets, and, secondly, as “purchasers” (“sellers”) of goods and services through organized political processes. Economic theory has been developed largely to explain the workings of organized markets, and the trained economist understands how decentralized decisions are mutually co-ordinated so as to produce allocative results that are internally consistent. Economists, especially English and American, have devoted little time and effort to an explanation of individual behavior in the second decision process.