Previous Quotes Of The Day

"The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence." ~ Gandhi 6/21/06

“What is called economic progress is the effect of an accumulation of capital goods exceeding the increase in population. If this trend gives way to a standstill in the further accumulation of capital or to capital decumulation, there will no longer be progress in this sense of the term.” ~ Ludwig Von Mises 6/9/06

"Men converse by means of language, but words are formed at the will of the generality, and there arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind." ~ Francis Bacon 6/2/06

“The State's coercive interference in either money or banking, including its licensing of a monopolistic central bank, reduces all men's freedom and most men's wealth.” ~ Ludwig Von Mises 5/8/06

“Either the choice and the risk rest with the individual or he is relieved of both.” F.A. Hayek 4/5/06

"Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We'll build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration." ~ Adolf Hitler 4/1/06

"We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. The practical compromises they must leave to the politicians. Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may arouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere "reasonable freedom of trade" or a mere "relaxation of controls" is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm." ~ Hayek

“When we engage in poor reasoning and faulty economic logic in support of a noble cause, we can end up doing much more harm than good in the pursuit of liberty and economic freedom.” ~ Tom Lehman 12/31/05

"It makes no difference where the frontiers of a country are drawn. Nobody has a special material interest in enlarging the territory of the state in which he lives; nobody suffers loss if a part of this area is separated from the state. It is also immaterial whether all parts of the states territory are in direct geographical connection, or whether they are separated by a piece of land belonging to another state. It is of no economic importance whether the country has a frontage on the ocean or not. In such a world the people of every village or district could decide by plebiscite to which state they wanted to belong." ~ Ludwig Von Mises 12/2/05

"There can be little doubt that the manner in which during the last hundred years man has learned to organize the forces of nature has contributed a great deal toward the creation of the belief that a similar control of the forces of society would bring comparable improvements in human conditions. That, with the application of engineering techniques, the direction of all forms of human activity according to a single coherent plan should prove to be as successful in society as it has been in innumerable engineering tasks, is too plausible a conclusion not to seduce most of those who are elated by the achievement of the natural sciences." ~ F.A. Hayek 11/28/05

"The means are the ends. The ends may be wonderful or asinine. You don't know. But when the means are sordid, the whole project is tainted from the get-go. Better to focus on the means. Work hard. Think clearly. Say 'please' and 'thank you.' Smell the cork before you drink the wine. Buy low; sell high. Be humble. Be happy. Who knows, you may even get the ends you craved. The ends are beyond us. We never know what will happen. Nor do we know what God's Plan may be - either for us or for the world itself. All we have is the means. That is all we control. But if we use the means of civilized people - the economic means to get what we want - we will not necessarily get what we want, but at least we will deserve it." ~ Bill Bonner 11/23/05

"If experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth. It is to the interest of all the rest of us to hold down his powers to an irreducible minimum, and to reduce his compensation to nothing." ~ H.L. Mencken 11/21/05

“There are always a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off: these are the men who never become tamed under subjection and who always, like Ulysses on land and sea constantly seeking the smoke of his chimney, cannot prevent themselves from peering about for their natural privileges and from remembering their ancestors and their former ways. These are in fact the men who, possessed of clear minds and farsighted spirit, are not satisfied, like the brutish mass, to see only what is at their feet, but rather look about them, behind and before, and even recall the things of the past in order to judge those of the future, and compare both with their present condition. These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them slavery has no satisfaction, no matter how well disguised.” ~ Etienne de la Boetie 11/16/05

"A conspiracy is rarely, if ever, proved by positive testimony. When a crime of high magnitude is about to be perpetrated by a combination of individuals, they do not act openly, but covertly and secretly. The purpose formed is known only to those who enter into it. Unless one of the original conspirators betray his companions and give evidence against them, their guilt can be proved only by circumstantial evidence." ~ Special Judge Advocate John A. Bingham 11/8/05

“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.” ~ Charles Darwin 11/6/05

"It has been a conservative precept and a sociological principle since Auguste Comte that the surest way of weakening the family, or any vital social group, is for the government to assume, and then monopolize, the family's historic functions." ~ Robert Nisbet 11/2/05

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H. L. Mencken 10/31/05

"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people." ~ Oscar Wilde 10/26/05

“The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping master at a slave plantation.” – Professor Frank H. Knight. 10/24/05

“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights.” ~ H.L. Mencken 10/20/05

"The elite should be supreme by virtue of persuasion, not by the assistance of firing squads." ~ Ludwig Von Mises 10/18/05

"The best case against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter" ~ Winston Churchill 10/14/05

"Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of an advance auction in stolen goods." ~ H.L. Mencken 10/12/05

"Everywhere, men resign themselves to the most extreme sacrifices rather than do without government and hence security, without realizing that in so doing, they misjudge their alternatives." -- Gustave de Molianari 10/10/05

"The only freedom that deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to attain it." ~ John Stuart Mill 10/4/05

"All those not familiar with economics (i.e., the immense majority) do not see any reason why they should not coerce other people by means of force to do what these people are not prepared to do of their own accord." ~ Mises 9/27/05

"You're not the product of a broken home, a devastated economy, a world in the upheaval of war, a minority group, a family of drunkards or a poverty-ridden neighborhood. You are the product of your own thinking processes, and whatever you're thinking about today is the cornerstone of your tomorrow." ~ Thomas Sikking 9/22/05

"Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police." --Albert Einstein 9/20/05

“A politician with a small brood is likely to think he can feed the multitudes; a man with a large family knows he cannot even get his own model-thin daughter to eat. A bachelor economist is susceptible to the delusion that he can change the behavior of whole nations; a man with a large family knows he cannot even get his own children to straighten up.” – Bill Bonner 9/13/05

"An educated person is one whom it is hard to fool—in any way. Not to be fooled by life is to be educated." ~ Professor Douglas H Thayer 9/6/05

"The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of consistent application of these doctrines." ~ Mises 9/1/05

"War is the devil's sacrament. It promises to bind us not with God but with the nation state. It grants not life but death. It provides not liberty but slavery. It lives not on truth but on lies, and these lies are themselves said to be worthy of defense. It exalts evil and puts down the good. It is promiscuous in encouraging an orgy of sin, not self-restraint and thought. It is irrational and bloody and vicious and appalling. And it claims to be the highest achievement of man. It is worse than mass insanity. It is mass wallowing in evil." ~ Lew Rockwell 8/28/05

“Principles matter, and they matter greatly. Without the fences that the founders of the United States carefully erected in order to protect those rights that they claimed were God-given, we are left to the mercy of political animals that care only about results and not about truth.” ~ Professor William L. Anderson 8/26/05

“A conscientious moralist or churchman would not consider meddling in controversies concerning technological or therapeutical methods without first having sufficiently familiarized himself with all the physical, chemical and physiological problems involved. Yet many of them think that ignorance of economics is no bar to handling economic issues. They even take pride in their ignorance. They hold that problems of the economic organization of society are to be considered exclusively from the point of view of a preconceived idea of justice and without taking account of what they call the shabby materialistic concern for a comfortable life. They recommend some policies, reject others, and do not bother about the effects that must result from the adoption of their suggestions.” ~Ludwig Von Mises 8/24/05

“A handful of murderous fanatics represent a threat to Americans - along with muggers, rapists and reality TV - but not to America itself. Only by reacting to terrorists in an absurd and hysterical way can the nation defeat itself.” - Bill Bonner 8/23/05

“It is man’s nature to strive ceaselessly after the substitution of more satisfactory conditions for less satisfactory. This motive stimulates his mental energies and prompts him to act. Life in a perfect frame would reduce man to a purely vegetative existence.” ~ Ludwig Von Mises 8/22/05

“If I were young and aggressive or starting out (or starting over) I would seriously consider learning a second and third language, moving overseas, and looking for opportunity. I would learn a business here and go reproduce it offshore.” ~ John Mauldin 8/18/05

"Nothing could be more obsolete than to attempt to liberate mankind from poverty by political means; nothing could be more futile and dangerous." ~ Hannah Arendt 8/17/05

“Education cannot convey to pupils more than the knowledge of their teachers. Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought. The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned, or at least, adds something new to it. One utterly misconstrues the feats of the pioneer in reducing them to the instruction he got from his teachers. No matter how efficient school training may be, it would only produce stagnation, orthodoxy, and rigid pedantry if there were no uncommon men pushing forward beyond the wisdom of their tutors.” ~ Ludwig Von Mises 8/15/05

"There is no doubt that the real destroyer of the liberties of any people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and largesse." Plutarch 8/13/05

"It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason." ~ Lord Acton 8/12/05

“Democracy replaces cooperation with force...consensual civilization with the tyranny of the majority...the wise crowd of independent citizens with a mob of voters, with silly slogans on their bumpers and mischief in their hearts.” ~ Bill Bonner 8/11/05

"What is called the American way of life is the result of the fact that the United States has put fewer obstacles in the way of saving and capital accumulation than in other nations. The economic backwardness of such countries as India consists precisely in the fact that their policies hinder both the accumulation of domestic capital and the investment of foreign capital. As the capital required is lacking, the Indian enterprises are prevented from employing sufficient quantities of modern equipment, are therefore producing much less per man-hour and can only afford to pay wage rates which, compared with American wage rates, appear as shockingly low." ~ Ludwig Von Mises 8/10/05

“Those who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.” ~ F.A. Hayek 8/9/05

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” ~ Paulo Friere 8/8/05

“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” ~ Hermann Goering (Nazi Official Sentenced to Death For War Crimes) 8/5/05

“None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.” Geothe 8/4/05

"It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." ~ Henry Ford 8/2/05