How to Convert the World

The Count of Oropesa, more than four centuries ago, had a passion to reform the world. A Spanish saint, San Pedro of Alcantara, gave him this kind of counsel.

May your Lordship not torment yourself: there is a remedy for this deluge of crimes. Let us be, you and me, that which we should be. There will be two less souls to convert. Let each person behave thus: it is the most efficacious of reforms. The trouble is, that no one wants to correct himself and everyone meddles at correcting others: thus everything stays as is.

Source: Unsourced
Taken From:  Leonard Read, How to Advance Liberty, March 10, 1965

Sour-Faced Saints

From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, spare us, O Lord,

Teresa of Ávila (The New Catholic Treasury of Wit and Humor)

Acts and Prices

all useful human acts deserve a price.

Luis de Molina

Natural Rights

As regards humans, it is shown that from the beginning of their rational nature, they were born free .... For liberty is a right necessarily instilled in man from the beginning of rational nature and so from natural law ....

Bartholomew de Las Casas

Buying and Selling

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)

Natural Obedience, Natural Reason

...if we led our lives according to the ways intended by nature and the lessons taught by her, we should be intuitively obedient to our parents; later we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody

 Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Wishes and Action

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Old Proverb

Of Men and Clocks

To think that I attempted to force the reason and conscience of thousands of men into one mould and I cannot make two clocks agree?

Emperor Charles V (1550's)

Following the multitude

It is a poor mind that will think with the multitude because it is a multitude: truth is not altered by the opinions of the vulgar or the confirmation of the many.  It is more blessed to be wise in truth in face of opinion than to be wise in opinion in face of truth

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

Learn to do Good

Let us therefore learn while there is yet time, let us learn to do good. Let us raise our eyes to Heaven for the sake of our honor, for the very love of virtue, or, to speak wisely, for the love and praise of God Almighty, who is the infallible witness of our deeds and the just judge of our faults

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

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Economics of Liberty

Among free men there is competition as to who will do most, each for the common good, each by himself, all expecting to share in the misfortunes of defeat, or in the benefits of victory; but an enslaved people loses in addition to this warlike courage, all signs of enthusiasm, for their hearts are degraded, submissive, and incapable of any great deed

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Liberty and King's Favor

"By such words, Hydarnes, you give us no good counsel," replied the Lacedaemonians, "because you have experienced merely the advantage of which you speak; you do not know the privilege we enjoy. You have the honor of the king's favor; but you know nothing about liberty, what relish it has and how sweet it is. For if you had any knowledge of it, you yourself would advise us to defend it, not with lance and shield, but with our very teeth and nails."

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Liberty is the Natural Condition

Liberty is the natural condition of the people. Servitude, however, is fostered when people are raised in subjection. People are trained to adore rulers. While freedom is forgotten by many there are always some who will never submit.

 Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Indifference vs Cowardice

But if a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single man, should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates indifference rather than cowardice?

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553

Supporting the Colossus

I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces?

Étienne de La Boétie - The Politics of Obedience 1552-1553