Worth Thinking About

Worth Thinking About

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
-- Herbert Spencer

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
-- Thomas Sowell

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
-- Milton Friedman

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. "
-- Winston Churchill

"When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
-- Jonathan Swift

"It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil."
-- Friedrich A. Hayek

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. "
-- Will Rogers

"... the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or to forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because in the opinions of others to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. "
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty [1859]

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. "
-- Mark Twain (1866)

"Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; .... The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. "
-- Frederick Douglass

"The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs."
-- F.A. Hayek

"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection."
-- John Stuart Mill

Last Updated | June 16, 2004