| “It is so easy to be wrong – and persist in being wrong – when the costs of being wrong are paid for by others.” – Thomas Sowell |
| “In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
| “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
| “There’s no point blaming the tragedies of socialism on the flaws or corruption of particular leaders. Any system which allows some people to exercise unbridled power over others ian open invitation to abuse, whether that system is called slavery or socialism or something else.” – Thomas Sowell |
| “The transformation of a liberal into a dominant profession is akin to the legal establishment of a state church. Physicians transmogrified into biocrats, teachers into gnosocrats, morticians into thanatocrats are much closer to state supported clergies than to trade associations. The professional as teacher of the currently accepted brand of scientific orthodoxy acts as theologian. As moral entrepreneur and as creator of the need for his services, he acts the role of priest.” |
| “The pretensions of organizers suggest another question, which I have often asked them, and to which I am not aware that I have ever received an answer: Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of the organizers are always good? Do they consider that they are composed of different materials from the rest of mankind?” -Frederic Bastiat, The Law |
| “And what kind of evildoers were these condemned men? Where did so many plotters and troublemakers come from? Among them, for example, were six collective farmers from nearby Tsarskoye Selo who were guilty of the following crime: After they had finished mowing the collective farm with their own hands, they had gone back and mowed a second time along the hummocks to get a little hay for their own cows. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee refused to pardon all six of these peasants, and the sentence of execution was carried out.” -Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
| “But that was not all: Your children were growing up! If they weren’t yet old enough, you and your wife had to avoid saying openly in front of them what you really thought; after all, they were being brought up to be Pavlik Morozovs, to betray their own parents, and they wouldn’t hesitate to repeat his achievement. And if the children were still little, then you had to decide what was the best way to bring them up; whether to start them off on lies instead of the truth (so that it would be easier for them to live) and then to lie forevermore in front of them tool or to tell them the truth, with the risk that they might make a slip, that they might let it out, which meant that you had to instill into them from the start that the truth was murderous, that beyond the threshold of the house you had to lie, only he, just like papa and mama.” -Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
| “…human beings are sacrificed to the tyranny of visions because those sacrificed are not the same as those exhilarated by the vision.” -Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice |
| “Cultures have consequences. Ignoring those consequences while proclaiming equality as a self-justifying ideal does nothing to benefit the less fortunate, and in fact tends to freeze them into their backward position while the rest of the world moves forward.” -Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice |
| “Clearly the defense given by people under such a situation is that they want others to do so as well – they require a systemic solution to every local perceived problem of injustice. I find that immoral. I know of no ethical system that allows you to let someone drown without helping him because other people are not helping, no system that says, “I will save people from drowning only if others too save other people from drowning.”” |
| “What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.” – Thomas Sowell |
| “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” ― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology |
| “The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history — the English, the French and the Russian — all took place in societies where the rate of literacy was approaching 50 per cent. Literacy had a profound effect on the peasant mind and community. It promotes abstract thought and enables the peasant to master new skills and technologies, Which in turn helps him to accept the concept of progress that fuels change in the modern world.” ― Orlando Figes |
| “Convinced that their own ideas were the key to the future of the world, that the fate of humanity rested on the outcome of their own doctrinal struggles, the Russian intelligentsia divided up the world into the forces of ‘progress’ and ‘reaction’, friends and enemies of the people’s cause, leaving no room for doubters in between. Here were the origins of the totalitarian world-view. Although neither would have liked to admit it, there was much in common between Lenin and Tolstoy.” ― Orlando Figes |
| “Convinced that their own ideas were the key to the future of the world, that the fate of humanity rested on the outcome of their own doctrinal struggles, the Russian intelligentsia divided up the world into the forces of ‘progress’ and ‘reaction’, friends and enemies of the people’s cause, leaving no room for doubters in between. Here were the origins of the totalitarian world-view. Although neither would have liked to admit it, there was much in common between Lenin and Tolstoy.” ― Orlando Figes |
| “Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good.” – Archbishop Charles J Chaput |
| “No one is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.” Frederich Nietzche |
| Socialism disguises it cleverly from other, and even from self, under the seductive names of fraternity, solidarity, organization, association. |
| Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being done by Government, it concludes that we object to it being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State – then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion – then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State the we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the cultivation of corn by the State. |
| It is thus that an inventor will make a small machine before he makes one of the regular size. Thus the chemist sacrifices some substances, the agriculturist some seed and a corner of his field, to make trial of an idea. But think of the difference between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his substances, between the agriculturist and his seed! The Socialist thinks, in all sincerity, that there is the same difference between himself and mankind. |
| The pretenses of organizers suggest another question, which I have often asked them, and to which I am not aware that I ever received an answer: Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their agents form a part of the human race? Do they consider the they are composed of different materials from the rest of mankind? They say that society, when left to itself, rushes to inevitable destruction, because its instincts are perverse. They presume to stop it in its downward course, and to give it a better direction. They have, therefore, received from heaven, intelligence and virtues that place them beyond and above mankind: et them show their title to this superiority. They would be our shepherds, and we are to be their flock. |
| Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to cooperate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. |
| “And what kind of evildoers were these condemned men? Where did so many plotters and troublemakers come from? Among them, for example, were six collective farmers from nearby Tsarskoye Selo who were guilty of the following crime: After they had finished mowing the collective farm with their own hands, they had gone back and mowed a second time along the hummocks to get a little hay for their own cows. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee refused to pardon all six of these peasants, and the sentence of execution was carried out.” -Gulag Archipelago |
| “Orachevsky had been given only five years. He had been imprisoned for a facial crime (really out of Orwell) – for a smile! He had been an instructor in a field engineers’ School. While showing another teacher in the classroom something in Pravda, he ha smiled! The other teacher was killed son after, so no one ever found out WHAT Oraachevsky had been smiling at. But the smile had been observed, and the fact of smiling at the central organ of the Party was in itself sacrilege! Then Orachevsky was invited to make a political report. He replied that he would carry out the order but he would be making the report without enthusiasm.” -Gulag Archipelago |
| “Your children were growing up! If they weren’t yet old enough, you and your wife had to avoid saying openly in front of them what you really thought; after all, they were being brought up to be Pavlik Morozovs, to betray their own parents, and they wouldn’t hesitate to repeat his achievement. And if the children were still little, then you had to decide what was the best way to bring them up; whether to start them off on lies instead of the truth (so that it would be easier for them to live) and then to lie forevermore in front of them to; or to tell the truth from the start and risk their lives.” -Gulag Archipelago |
| Many kinds of economic planning are indeed practicable only if the planning author can effectively shut out all extraneous influences the result of such planning is therefore inevitably the piling-up of restrictions on the movements of men and goods. |