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2009 October 09
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"True individualists tend to be quite unobservant;
it is the snob, the... sophisticate, the frightened conformist,
who keeps a fascinated or worried eye on what is in the wind." |
"I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden." |
"It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions." |
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2009 October 08
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"From each according to his abilities,
to each according to his needs." |
"... the smaller the domain where choices among alternatives are made collectively, the smaller will be the probability that any individual's preference gets overruled." |
"I think that every true reformer, every real friend of liberty,
will agree with me in saying that if we must erect safeguards,
they should be rather for the security of the individual
than of the mass, and that our chiefest care must be
to train the majority to respect the rights of the minority,
to prevent the claims of the few from being trampled
under foot by the caprice or passion of the many." |
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2009 October 07
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"Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. ... Any human right is therefore as absurd as immoral. Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely as related only to the preliminary regime and totally inconsistent with the final state where there are only duties based on functions." |
"Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.
Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual?
We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or,
in the words of the ardent young Nazi, 'to be free from freedom.'" |
"The sovereignty fetish is still so strong in the public mind,
that there would appear to be little chance of winning popular assent to
American membership in anything approaching a super-state organization.
Much will depend on the kind of approach which is used in further
popular education." |
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2009 October 06
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"He who joyfully marches to music in rank
and file has already earned my contempt.
He has been given a large brain by mistake,
since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice." |
"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." |
"To require conformity in the appreciation of sentiments or the interpretation of language, or uniformity of thought, feeling, or action, is a fundamental error in human legislation -- a madness which would be only equaled by requiring all men to possess the same countenance, the same voice or the same stature." |
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2009 October 05
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"Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, Liberalism, and Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains; and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was the century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State. It is a perfectly logical deduction that a new doctrine can utilize all the still vital elements of previous doctrines." |
"It used to be the boast of free men that,
so long as they kept within
the bounds of the known law,
there was no need to
ask anybody's permission
or to obey anybody's orders.
It is doubtful whether any of us
can make this claim today." |
"A State which dwarfs its men, in order that
they may be more docile instruments in its hands --
even for beneficial purposes -- will find that
with small men no great thing can really be accomplished." |
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