Category: Thought

By virtue of exchange, one man’s prosperity is beneficial to all others.

Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Harmonies (1850).

What is at first small is often extremely large in the end. And so it happens that whoever deviates only a little from truth in the beginning is led farther and farther afield in the sequel, and to errors which are a thousand times as large.

Franz Brentano, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862).

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private.

Daniel Defoe, of the London pandemic of 1665, A Journal of the Plague Year / Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London (1722).

American liberty, as it now is, may be considered the result of a mixture, in unequal proportions, of the theories of Jefferson with the New England usages. From these dissimilar tendencies has resulted a series of contradictory measures, which have become strangely complicated with each other, and which might puzzle and deceive a careless observer. It is in consequence of these opposite influences in the bosom of American society, that such conflicting judgments have been passed upon it; it is because the Yankee type is at present the stronger, whilst the Virginian was superior in the period of the revolution, that the ideas which the sight of America now suggests, are so different from those which she inspired at the epoch of Independence.

Michel Chevalier, Society, manners and politics in the United States; being a series of letters on North America, 1839.

. . . this blue disposable mask is the MAGA hat for progressives.

Bill Whittle, in conversation with Scott Ott and Steve Green, on Right Angle (July 25, 2023).

There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot, to enslave all America. This, however, must be done by degrees. The first step that is intended, seems to be an entire subversion of the whole system of our fathers, by the introduction of the canon and feudal law into America.

John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765).

Das Talent gleicht dem Schützen, der ein Ziel trifft, welches die Uebrigen nicht erreichen können; das Genie dem, der eines trifft, bis zu welchem sie nicht ein Mal zu sehn vermögen.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, Ch. III, para. 31 (On Genius), 1844.

responsibility, n.
A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.

Hannah Arendt, interview with French writer Roger Errera (1974), New York Review of Books.

Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting a passage in the Bhagavad-Gita, in the documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb (1965), characterizing his thoughts upon the successful detonation of the first atomic bomb. Christopher Nolan’s drama Oppenheimer (2023) is in first-release theatrical competition with the fantasy-comedy Barbie (2023) this month.