I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men experience it as a whole. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.Helen Keller
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.Aldous Huxley
A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Be good ships. Sail out to sea and do new things.Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (1984)
To all the pundits that believe a gold standard is impractical, I suggest they look at the present fiat system and then judge it against the hundred years of monetary stability we enjoyed in years past under the gold standard. Then talk to me about which system is practical and which system is not.Paul Nathan (http://www.commodityonline.com/ 6/21/2010)
Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.
Rather than looking to government to correct our sins, we should understand that racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty.Ron Paul (Government and Racism, April 16th, 2007)
Buying and selling is the nerve of human life that sustains the universe. By means of buying and selling the world is united, joining distant lands and nations, people of different languages, laws and ways of life. If it were not for these contracts, some would lack the goods that others have in abundance and they would not be able to share the goods that they have in excess with those countries where they are scarce.Bartolomé de Albornoz (Spanish theologian)
School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull and stupid, only Coke provides relief. And other products, too, of course.John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education, 2000)
As is true with respect to the other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself.F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
In a small community common views on the relative importance of the main tasks, agreed standards of value, will exist on a great many subjects. But their number will become less and less the wider we throw the net; and, as there is less community of views, the necessity to rely on force and coercion increases.F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
[the] superstition of science held to be competent in all domains, including that of morality; a superstition which, I repeat, is an acquisition of the nineteenth century. It remains to discover whether those who brandish this doctrine believe in it or whether they simply want to give the prestige of a scientific appearance to passions of their hearts, to which they perfectly know are nothing but passions. It is to be noted that the dogma that history is obedient to scientific laws is preached especially by partisans of arbitrary authority. This is quite natural, since it eliminates the two realities they most hate, i.e., human liberty and the historical action of the individual.Julien Benda (1928, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals)
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groupsDr. Reinhold Niebuhr (1927, A Critique of Fascism)
There has never been a worse and more cruel exploitation of one class by another than that of the weaker or less fortunate members of a group of producers by the well-established which has been made possible by the "regulation" of competition.F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
...those who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.Leon Trotsky (1937, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?)
The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of work and equality of pay.Nikolai Lenin (1917, The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution)
who gets what, when, and howHarold Lasswell (1936, Politics: Who Gets What, When and How?)
And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedomLord Acton (May 28th, 1877, An Address Delivered to the Members of the Bridgnorth Institute)
The reader may take it that whoever talks about potential plenty is either dishonest or does not know what he is talking about.F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.Hilaire Belloc (1912, The Servile State)
The statesmen who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.Adam Smith (1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations)
The hopes [planners] place in planning, however, are the result not of a comprehensive view of society but rather of a very limited view and often the result of a great exaggeration of the importance of the ends they place foremost.F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
...while planning is in the main still an ambition, it unites almost all the single-minded idealists, all the men and women who have devoted their lives to a single task.F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
...it is worth inquiring why so large a proportion of the technical experts should be found in the front rank of planners. The explanation of this phenomenon is closely connected with an important fact which the critics of the planners should always keep in mind: that there is little question that almost every one of the technical ideals of our experts could be realized within a comparatively short time if to achieve them were made the sole aim of humanity.F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)
We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.Benito Mussolini (1926, Grand Fascist Council Report)
All governments.which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical..."Adam Smith (1755, Biographical Memoir of Adam Smith)
The socialists believe in two things which are absolutely different and perhaps even contradictory: freedom and organization.Élie Halévy (1938, The Era of Tyrannies: Essays on Socialism and War)
The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism, has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Stalinist Russia as in pre-Hitler GermanyPeter Drucker (1939, The End of Economic Man: A Study of the New Totalitarianism)
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