Patrick Peterson > Patrick's Quotes

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
― Isaac Newton, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton: Volume 5, 1709–1713

“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”
― Maria Montessori

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.”
― Ayn Rand

“Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”
― P. J. O'Rourke

“Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
― P.J. O'Rourke

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
― P.J. O'Rourke

“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”
― Ludwig Von Mises

“Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.”
― Ludwig Von Mises

“Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household. He is fully confident that this trend will prevail also in the future. He simply calls it the American way of life and does not give serious thought to the question of what made this continuous improvement in the supply of material goods possible.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays

“He who only wishes and hopes does not interfere actively with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“All varieties of the producers' policy are advocated on the ground of their alleged ability to raise the party members' standard of living. Protectionism and economic self-sufficiency, labor union pressure and compulsion, labor legislation, minimum wage rates, public spending, credit expansion, subsidies, and other makeshifts are always recommended by their advocates as the most suitable or the only means to increase the real income of the people for whose votes they canvass. Every contemporary statesman or politician invariably tells his voters: My program will make you as affluent as conditions may permit, while my adversaries' program will bring you want and misery.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“Therefore it is not arrogance or narrow-mindedness that leads the economist to discuss these things from the standpoint of economics. No one, who is not able to form an independent opinion about the admittedly difficult and highly technical problem of calculation in the socialist economy, should take sides in the question of socialism versus capitalism. No one should speak about interventionism who has not examined the economic consequences of interventionism. An end should be put to the common practice of discussing these problems from the standpoint of the prevailing errors, fallacies, and prejudices. It might be more entertaining to avoid the real issues and merely to use popular catchwords and emotional slogans. But politics is a serious matter. Those who do not want to think its problems through to the end should keep away from it.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Interventionism: An Economic Analysis

“Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“As regards the social apparatus of repression and coercion, the government, there cannot be any question of freedom. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. It is the recourse to violence or threat of violence in order to make all people obey the orders of the government, whether they like it or not. As far as the government’s jurisdiction extends, there is coercion, not freedom. Government is a necessary institution, the means to make the social system of cooperation work smoothly without being disturbed by violent acts on the part of gangsters whether of domestic or of foreign origin. Government is not, as some people like to say, a necessary evil; it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. But it is the opposite of liberty. It is beating, imprisoning, hanging. Whatever a government does it is ultimately supported by the actions of armed constables.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Liberty And Property

“A new type of superstition has got hold of people's minds, the worship of the
state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion,
of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the
fashionable idols!”
― Ludwig von Mises

“It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers, the people, the common man, prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.”
― Pierre Dos Utt, Tanstaafl: A Plan for a New Economic World Order

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“These people look upon inequality as upon an evil. They do not assert that a definite
degree of inequality which can be exactly determined by a judgment free of any
arbitrariness and personal evaluation is good and has to be preserved unconditionally.
They, on the contrary, declare inequality in itself as bad and merely contend that a
lower degree of it is a lesser evil than a higher degree in the same sense in which a
smaller quantity of poison in a man’s body is a lesser evil than a larger dose. But if
this is so, then there is logically in their doctrine no point at which the endeavors
toward equalization would have to stop. Whether one has already reached a degree of
inequality which is to be considered low enough and beyond which it is not necessary
to embark upon further measures toward equalization is just a matter of personal
judgments of value, quite arbitrary, different with different people and changing in the
passing of time. As these champions of equalization appraise confiscation and
“redistribution” as a policy harming only a minority, viz., those whom they consider
to be “too” rich, and benefiting the rest—the majority—of the people, they cannot
oppose any tenable argument to those who are asking for more of this allegedly
beneficial policy. As long as any degree of inequality is left, there will always be
people whom envy impels to press for a continuation of the equalization policy.
Nothing can be advanced against their inference: If inequality of wealth and incomes
is an evil, there is no reason to acquiesce in any degree of it, however low;
equalization must not stop before it has completely leveled all individuals’ wealth and
incomes.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays

“Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates
riches.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays

“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
― Mark Twain

“Big Brother is Watching You.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Most people do not pretend to be physicists. Few of us doctor our own illnesses. When we have to cope with the problems of physics or chemistry, we call in the experts. But we all feel that we are economists...the point is that only rarely does the man in the street admit to ignorance on matters of economic policy.”
― Lorie Tarshis