Wise words from wise people...

"The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder."

Adam Smith, "The theory of Moral Sentiments"

"When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."

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"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."

Frederic Bastiat

"Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire."

Ludwig Von Mises, "Socialism"

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Ludwig Von Mises, "Human Action"

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The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the class of those who cannot.

Ludwig Von Mises

"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

Thomas Jefferson

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."

P.J. O'Rourke

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river."

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."

"The way of science is paved with discarded theories which were once declared self-evident."

Karl R. Popper

 

"A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a confederacy against him."

Trondheim, 10.12.2001
Andrea Gruber, andrea@andreagruber.net