The danger inherent in reform is that the cure may be worse than the disease. Reform is an operation on the social body; but unlike medical surgeons, reformers are not on guard against unpredictable side effects which may divert the course of reform toward unwanted results. Moreover, quite often the social doctors become part of the disease.
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For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-Jongg. But read more
For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-Jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary period, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which is likely to be the more ominous for the Axis -- an American decision that this is sport, or that it is business. - The American Character.
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely read more
To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason.
Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. - "The Liberty Song".
Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. - "The Liberty Song".
Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
Justice is incidental to law and order.
Justice is incidental to law and order.
Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.
Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility read more
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. read more
The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.
Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that read more
Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that society is in some sense more than merely the aggregate of all individuals their adherents regularly pass by a sort of intellectual somersault to the thesis that in order that the coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded it must be subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in the last resort must be an individual mind. It thus comes about that in practice it is regularly the theoretical collectivist who extols individual reason and demands that all forces of society be made subject to the direction of a single mastermind, while it is the individualist who recognizes the limitations of the powers of individual reason and consequently advocates freedom as a means for the fullest development of the powers of the interindividual process.
