Phil > Phil's Quotes

“The processes peculiar to economic life in a free society make evident the fundamental superiority of the spontaneous order over the commanded order.”
― Wilhelm Röpke, Economics of the Free Society

“Guilt or grief is all that gracious souls get by communion with vain souls!”
― Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices

“Mercy is God's Alpha, justice is His Omega.”
― Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices

“You who are so apt to abuse God's mercy, consider this, that in the gospel days, the plagues that God inflicts upon the despisers and abusers of mercy are usually spiritual plagues; as blindness of mind, hardness of heart, benumbedness of conscience, which are ten thousand times worse than the worst of outward plagues which can befall you.”
― Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices

“This brings me to the very center of my convictions, which, I hope, I share with many others. I have always been reluctant to talk about it because I am not one to air my religious views in public, but let me say it here quite plainly: the ultimate source of our civilization's disease is the spiritual and religious crisis which has overtaken all of us and which each must master for himself. Above all, man is Homo religiosus, and yet we have, for the past century, made the desperate attempt to get along without God, and in the place of God we have set up the cult of man, his profane or even ungodly science and art, his technical achievements, and his State. We may be certain that some day the whole world will come to see, in a blinding flash, what is now clear to only a few, namely, that this desperate attempt has created a situation in which man can have no spiritual and moral life, and this means that he cannot live at all for any length of time, in spite of television and speedways and holiday trips and comfortable apartments. We seem to have proved the existence of God in yet another way: by the practical consequences of His assumed non-existence.”
― Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market

“And since men obviously cannot live in a religious vacuum, they cling to surrogate religions of all kinds, to political passions, ideologies, and pipe dreams—unless, of course, they prefer to drug themselves with the sheer mechanics of producing and consuming, with sport and betting, with sexuality, with rowdiness and crime and the thousand other things which fill our daily newspapers”
― Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market

“However, and here we return again to our main theme, we would merely be deluding ourselves if we drew such a sharp dividing line between the realm of the spirit and the conditions of man's existence.”
― Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market

“It is a poor species of human being which this grim vision conjures up before our eyes: “fragmentary and disintegrated” man, the end product of growing mechanization, specialization, and functionalization, which decompose the unity of human personality and dissolve it in the mass, an aborted form of Homo sapiens created by a largely technical civilization, a race of spiritual and moral pygmies lending itself willingly—indeed gladly, because that way lies redemption—to use as raw material for the modern collectivist and totalitarian mass state.”
― Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market

“Afflictions are God's furnace, by which he cleanses his people from their dross. Affliction is a fire to purge out our dross, and to make virtue shine. Afflictions are medicines which heal soul diseases, better than all the remedies of physicians.”
― Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices

“God makes afflictions to be but inlets to the soul's more sweet and full enjoyment of his blessed self.”
― Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices

“Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever shining benevolence.”
― Washington Irving, The Washington Irving Anthology: The Complete Fiction and Collected Non-Fiction Works

“A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.”
― Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle

“With all production, employment, and distribution of output completely under the monopoly control of the State, the fate and fortune of every individual would be at the mercy of the political authority. In addition, these earlier opponents of socialism had cogently argued that with the end of private property and freedom of enterprise, individuals would lose much of the self-interested motivation for industry, innovation, and work effort that exists in a market economy.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked

“Mises showed that the end of private property would mean the end to economic rationality.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked

“As Mises summarized the dilemma, “It is not an advantage to be ignorant of whether or not what one is doing is a suitable means of attaining the ends sought. A socialist management would be like a man forced to spend his life blindfolded.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked

“Unfortunately, purges are not something which happen just because men are imperfect. Purges are the necessary consequences of the philosophical foundation of Marxian socialism. If you cannot discuss philosophical differences of opinion in the same way you discuss other problems, you must find another solution—through violence and power. This refers not only to dissent concerning policies, economic problems, sociology, law, and so on. It refers also to problems of the natural sciences.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked

“For instance, if there is a difference of opinion with regard to science or genetics, it must be decided by the “leader.” This is the necessary unavoidable consequence of the fact that, according to Marxist doctrine, you do not consider the possibility of dissent among honest people; either you think as I do, or you are a traitor and must be liquidated.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked

“What Marx called the great catastrophe of the Industrial Revolution was not a catastrophe at all; it brought about a tremendous improvement in the conditions of the people. Many survived who wouldn’t have survived otherwise. It is not true, as Marx said, that the improvements in technology are available only to the exploiters and that the masses are living in a state much worse than on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Everything the Marxists say about exploitation is absolutely wrong! Lies! In fact, capitalism made it possible for many persons to survive who wouldn’t have otherwise. And today many people, or most people, live at a much higher standard of living than that at which their ancestors lived 100 or 200 years ago.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked

“Most of the violent ideas of our times have come from men who themselves wouldn’t have been able to resist any aggression”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked

“I have pointed out that the worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked

“Little adapted to reasoning, crowds, on the contrary, are quick to act. As the result of their present organisation their strength has become immense. The dogmas whose birth we are witnessing will soon have the force of the old dogmas; that is to say, the tyrannical and sovereign force of being above discussion. The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“Two fundamental factors are at the base of this transformation. The first is the destruction of those religious, political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilisation are rooted. The second is the creation of entirely new conditions of existence and thought as the result of modern scientific and industrial discoveries.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“History tells us, that from the moment when the moral forces on which a civilisation rested have lost their strength, its final dissolution is brought about by those unconscious and brutal crowds known, justifiably enough, as barbarians.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous, and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...

“It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order, which we shall shortly study. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...