Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from pages xxii-xxiii of Thomas Mackay’s Preface to the 1891 collection he edited titled, A Plea For Liberty; specifically it’s from the 1981 Liberty Fund edition (Jeffrey Paul, ed.) of this collection:

Each addition to the responsibility of the State adds to the list of ill-contrived solutions of difficulty, and to the enlargement of the sphere of a stereotyped regimentation of human life. Inseparable from this obnoxious growth is the repression of private experiment and of the energy and inventiveness of human character. Instead thereof human character is degraded to a parasitic dependent on the assistance of the state, which after all proves to be but a broken reed.