Archives: Quotes

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Good government is the most dangerous government, because it deprives people of the need to look after themselves.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Zhivago: I saw a sample of your manhood, a place called [names burnt out village].
[Red Guard leader] Strelnikov: They were selling horses to the whites.
Zhivago: No, it seems you burned the wrong village.
Strelnikov: They always say that. What does it matter? A village betrays us, a village is burned. The point is made.
Zhivago: Yes, your point; their village.

When you define poverty as earning in the bottom quintile of all households, 20% of the people will perpetually live in poverty.