Maggie's Farm

The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.

Eric Hoffer

Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.

Eric Hoffer

If the Internet existed first, before newspapers, would anyone have invented newspapers?

Warren Buffett, in reply to a question about investing in the newspaper business

No one has a right to happiness.

Eric Hoffer

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.

Eric Hoffer

"When issues of public policy are discussed in the outward form of an argument, often the conclusions reached are predetermined by the assumptions and definitions inherent in a particular vision of social processes. Different visions, of course, have different assumptions, so it is not uncommon for people who follow different visions to find themselves in opposition to one another across a vast spectrum of unrelated issues. (This happens) in such disparate fields as law, foreign policy, the environment, racial policy, military defense, education, and many others. To a remarkable extent, however, empirical evidence is neither sought beforehand nor consulted after a policy has been instituted. Facts may be marshaled for a position already taken, but that is very different from systematically testing opposing theories by evidence. Momentous questions are dealt with essentially as conflicts of vision."

Thomas Sowell, from "Vision of the Anointed"

The Master said, "Yu, have you heard the six words to which are attached six becloudings?" Yu replied, "I have not."

"Sit down, and I will tell them to you.
There is the love of being benevolent without the love of learning - the beclouding here leads to a foolish simplicity. There is the love of knowing without the love of learning - the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind. There is the love of being sincere without the love of learning - the beclouding here leads to an injurious disregard of consequences. There is the love of straightforwardness without the love of learning - the beclouding here leads to rudeness. There is the love of boldness without the love of learning - the beclouding here leads to insubordination. There is the love of firmness without the love of learning - the beclouding here leads to extravagant conduct."

From the Analects of Confucius (h/t, a commenter at One Cosmos)

"...it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism."

Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

Abraham Lincoln

To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office.

P.J. O'Rourke

One of the rum things about human life is that we treat any stage we happen to be going though as something permanent and unchangeable, as if spring will never come, as if happiness will never end, as if youth will last for ever.

Simon Barnes, Times sports writer, as quoted by Stumbling and Mumbling

The truth is true whether you want to believe it or not...it doesn't need you to make it true. That lie about everbody having their own truth inside of them has done a lot of damage and made people crazy.

Bob Dylan (in his notes for the Biograph album)

"Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society."

Dr. Timothy Ball

“The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.”

David Brinckley

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before ... let the Christian live like the rest of the world ... and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That was its heresy ..."

In 1939, Bonhoeffer joined a hidden group of high-ranking military officers based in the Abwehr, or Military Intelligence Office, who wanted to overthrow the National Socialist regime by killing Hitler. He was arrested in April 1943 after money used to help Jews escape to Switzerland was traced to him. He was charged with conspiracy and imprisoned in Berlin for a year and a half. After the unsuccessful July 20 Plot in 1944, Bonhoeffer's connections to the conspirators were discovered. He was moved to a series of prisons and concentration camps ending at Flossenburg. Here, he was executed by hanging at dawn on 9 April 1945, just three weeks before the liberation of the city. Also hanged for their parts in the conspiracy were his brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher.

"There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism. Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights-and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members."

Ayn Rand (h/t, reader). Here's an Ayn Rand website.

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.

Edward R. Murrow

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

Edward R. Murrow

Over the last century, millions of people from all over the world have come to New York City. They didn’t come here to be taken care of and to be dependent on city government. They came here for the freedom to take care of themselves.

Rudy Guiliani (h/t, Ace)

Government isn't the solution: it's the problem.

Ronald Reagan

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

Dave Barry

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”

Ernest Benn (h/t, Patriot Post)