People who decry the fact that businesses are in business “just to make money” seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want.
The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances.
What the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.
Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves ‘progressives.’ What arouses them are denunciations of social failures and accusations of wrong-doing.
What ‘eminent domain’ laws mean in practice is that politicians have a right to seize your property and turn it over to someone else, in order to gain campaign contributions and win votes.
If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left.
Because many of us make mistakes that can have bad consequences, some intellectuals believe that it is the role of government to intervene and make some of our decisions for us. From what galaxy government is going to hire creatures who do not make mistakes is a question they leave unanswered.
Some people say that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. But the runaway taxes of our time are the price we pay for being gullible.
One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.
I’m so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals.
However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society where others are free.
It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.
The welfare state has always been judged by its good intentions, rather than its bad results.
The left’s obsession with the high incomes of corporate executives never seems to extend to equally high – or higher – incomes of professional athletes, entertainers, or best-selling authors like Danielle Steel.
I’m always embarrassed when people say that I’m courageous. Soldiers are courageous. Policemen are courageous. Firemen are courageous. I just have a thick hide and disregard what silly people say.
A passionate commitment to social justice is no substitute for knowing what the hell you’re talking about.
Too many people – some of them judges – seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.
People who have never run even a modest little business assert with great certainty and indignation that heads of multinational corporations are paid much more than they are worth. People who know nothing about medicine and nothing about economics unhesi.
The America that has flourished for more than two centuries is being quietly but steadily dismantled by the Obama administration.