To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox: whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus . . . thereby spreading the infection.
Philip K. Dick, VALIS (1981).
Man is the only animal whose fear of embarrassment can overcome his instinct for self-preservation.
Robert Sheckley, Game of X (1965), Chapter Six.
There is no fear that we shall ever in practice have too little call for deliberation — too little need of judicious conjecture. Science does not enable us to dispense with commonsense, but only to employ it more profitably; nor does the best-instructed man necessarily deliberate the less; only he exercises his deliberation on different points from those that occupy the less-instructed; and to better purpose; he does not waste his mental powers in conjectures as to his road, when he has a correct map in his hand; but he still has abundance of other inquiries to make as he travels over it. The adoption of the Arabic numerals and of the Algebraic symbols, does not supersede calculation, but extends its sphere.
Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1832), Lecture III.
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather ‘What can I and my compatriots do through government’ to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Introduction.
Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion?
Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965).
I wish for my own part there were no such thing as Political-Economy. I mean not now the mere name of the study: but I wish there had never been any necessity for directing our attention to the study itself. If men had always been secured in person and property, and left at full liberty to employ both as they saw fit; and had merely been precluded from unjust interference with each other — had the most perfect freedom of intercourse between all mankind been always allowed — had there never been any wars — nor (which in that case would have easily been avoided) any taxation — then, though every exchange that took place would have been one of the phenomena of which Political-Economy takes cognizance, all would have proceeded so smoothly, that probably no attention would ever have been called to the subject. The transactions of society would have been like the play of the lungs, the contractions of the muscles, and the circulation of the blood, in a healthy person; who scarcely knows that these functions exist. But as soon as they are impeded and disordered, our attention is immediately called to them.
Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1832), Lecture III.
Human effort can not add or subtract an atom of the matter of the universe. It can only shift and move matter so as to make it serve man’s wants, — make it useful, or create utilities in it.
F.W. Taussig, Wages and Capital: An Examination of the Wages Fund Doctrine (1897), p. 3.
It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
An old saw often repeated by Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Hopper, computer scientist.
Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), p. 217.
[T]here is a proverbial maxim which bears witness to the advantage sometimes possessed by an observant bystander over those actually engaged in any transaction. “The looker-on often sees more of the game than the players.” Now the looker-on is precisely (in Greek θεωρòς) the theorist.
When then you find any one contrasting, in this and in other subjects, what he calls experience, with theory, you will usually perceive on attentive examination, that he is in reality comparing the results of a confined, with that of a wider, experience; — a more imperfect and crude theory, with one more cautiously framed, and based on a more copious induction.
Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1832), Lecture III.