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2023 October 27
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"Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power." |
"When Michelle and I decided that I would run for President, it was because of a shared belief in the power of community and connection, a commitment to the idea that we are our brothers' keepers." |
"Ultimately, however, as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, a powerful bureaucratic class is in the same relation to commerce as was the scorpion in Aesop to the dog on whose back he crossed the river. They will destroy commerce and establish socialism, even if it kills them, because that is their nature." |
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2023 October 26
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"It was not the tycoons of big business, it was not the working classes, it was the intellectuals who reversed the trend toward political freedom and revived the doctrines of the absolute State, of totalitarian government rule, of the government's right to control the lives of the citizens in any manner it pleases. This time, it was not in the name of the "divine right of kings," but in the name of the divine right of the masses. The basic principle was the same: the right to enforce at the point of a gun the moral doctrines of whoever happens to seize control of the machinery of government." |
"To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole." |
"As against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane." |
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2023 October 25
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"All theory is against freedom of the will;
all experience for it." |
"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means." |
"It is madness beyond compare
To try to reform the world." |
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2023 October 24
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"The world must be made safe for democracy." |
"To include freedom in the very definition of democracy
is to define a process not by its actual characteristics
as a process but by its hoped for results.
This is not only intellectually invalid, it is,
in practical terms, blinding oneself in advance
to some of the unwanted consequences of the process." |
"Democracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making,
absolutist shape which we have given to it is,
it is clear, the time of tyranny's incubation." |
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2023 October 23
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"From the utopian viewpoint, the United States constitution is a singularly hard-bitten and cautious document, for it breathes the spirit of skepticism about human altruism and incorporates a complex system of checks, balances and restrictions, so that everybody is holding the reins on everybody else." |
"The Constitution was made to guard the people
against the dangers of good intentions." |
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.
The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being
corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his
revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his
tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who
rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.
He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new
blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of
immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or
mutual check, in our Constitution." |
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