Andre

“A world that is less invigorated by honor, glory, and ideology and more tempted by the pleasures of bourgeois life is a world in which fewer people are killed.”
― Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity

“Therefore, having a lot is not immoral. It is the good luck to be born in America or Japan or Denmark. The “luck” consists chiefly of a modern liberal ideology of innovism combined with reasonably honest courts and reasonably secure property rights and reasonably non-extractive governments and reasonably effective educational systems, and a reasonably long time for the reasonably good ideas, and especially the innovations, to do their work. By all means let’s spread the good luck around—by persuading people to a modern liberalism leading to the Great Enrichment, and a full life.”
― Deirdre N. McCloskey, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All

“The way to help the poor, in short, is to let the Great Enrichment proceed by commercially tested betterment, as it has widely since 1800 and especially in the past forty years.”
― Deirdre N. McCloskey, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All

“the much-maligned “capitalism” has raised the real income per person of the poorest since 1800 not by 10 percent or 100 percent, but by over 3,000 percent.”
― Deirdre N. McCloskey, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All