Category: Thought

Weep not that the world changes — did it keep
A stable, changeless state, ’twere cause indeed to weep.

William Cullen Bryant, “Mutation: A Sonnet” (1824).

We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they’re going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer — and they’ve had almost 30 years of it — shouldn’t we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater.

Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing,” a televised speech in support of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign (October 27, 1964).

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.

William Cullen Bryant, The Battlefield (1839), st. 9. Martin Luther King, Jr., cited this poem (Dec. 3, 1956, as quoted in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Advocate of the social gospel, p. 162) thusly: “There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying Truth crushed to earth will rise again.”

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

Voltaire, Candide (1759).

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

W. E. B. Du Bois, John Brown: A Biography (1909): “The Legacy of John Brown.”

The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.

Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877).

Ownership means full control of the services that can be derived from a good. This catallactic notion of ownership and property rights is not to be confused with the legal definition of ownership and property rights as stated in the laws of various countries. It was the idea of legislators and courts to define the legal concept of property in such a way as to give to the proprietor full protection by the governmental apparatus of coercion and compulsion, and to prevent anybody from encroaching upon his rights. As far as this purpose was adequately realized, the legal concept of property rights corresponded to the catallactic concept.

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Scholar’s Edition (1998), first edition published in 1949. “Catallactic” derives from “Catallactics,” a term invented by Richard Whately (1787–1863) as an improvement on “Political Economy”; “catallactic” means “pertaining to exchanges” (trade).

Out of the neglected riches of this dream the poet fetches his wares. He dips into the chaos that underlies the rational shell of the world and brings up some superfluous image, some emotion dropped by the way, and reattaches it to the present object; he reinstates things unnecessary, he emphasizes things ignored, he paints in again into the landscape the tints which the intellect has allowed to fade from it. If he seems sometimes to obscure a fact, it is only because he is restoring an experience. The first element which the intellect rejects in forming its ideas of things is the emotion which accompanies the perception; and this emotion is the first thing the poet restores.

George Santayana, “The Elements of Poetry,” in L. Pearsall Smith, editor, Little Essays Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana, as reprinted in Modern Essays (1921), Christopher Morley, editor.

We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230, which gave, you know, platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted.

But we now know that that was an overly simple view, that if the platforms, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.

Hillary Clinton, talking to Smerconish on CNN about the need for online censorship,