Thursday, September 30, 2021

Fortune Quote #3352

On a primitive level people are afraid of witches; on the modern level we
are apprehensively aware of microbes. There everybody believes in ghosts,
here everybody believes in vitamins. Once upon a time men were possessed
by devils, now they are not less obsessed by ideas, and so on. --
Carl Gustav Jung

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Fortune Quote #3351

Intolerance does not arise when I think that I have found the truth.
Rather it comes about only when I think that, because I have found it,
everyone else should agree with me. -- Michael J. Behe, "Darwin's
Black Box"

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Monday, September 27, 2021

Fortune Quote #3349

The case for universal suffrage and political equality does not rest on
any superstition that all men, by acquiring the vote, become equally wise
or equally intelligent. It rests, both historically and philosophically,
on the belief that if any section of the community is deprived of the
ability to vote, then its interests are liable to be neglected and a nexus
of grievances is likely to be created which will fester in the body
politic. -- David Thomson

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Fortune Quote #3348

Majority rule is no more a natural right than is equality. When we accept
the principle of majorities in politics, we do so out of prudence and
expediency, not because of an abstract moral injunction. -- Russell
Kirk, "The Conservative Mind"

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Fortune Quote #3347

All men have equal rights, but not to equal things. -- Edmund Burke

Friday, September 24, 2021

Fortune Quote #3346

All men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five
shillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has
five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right
to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock... -- Edmund
Burke

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Fortune Quote #3345

If a man has a *right* to marry, some woman must have the duty of marrying
him; if a man has a *right* to rest, some other person must have the duty
of supporting him. If rights are confused thus with desires, the mass of
men must feel always that some vast, intangible conspiracy thwarts their
attainment of what they are told is their inalienable birthright.
-- Russell Kirk, "The Conservative Mind"

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Fortune Quote #3344

Ever since Paine's "Rights of Man" was published, the notion of
inalienable natural rights has been embraced by the mass of men in a vague
and belligerent form, ordinarily confounding "rights" with desires.
-- Russell Kirk, "The Conservative Mind"

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Fortune Quote #3343

Immensely expensive systems of state schooling have not succeeded in
repairing the damage to private character and public life that was done
when personal judgement began to supplant traditional opinion. --
Russell Kirk, "The Conservative Mind"

Monday, September 20, 2021

Fortune Quote #3342

The perceptive reformer combines an ability to reform with a disposition
to preserve; the man who loves change is wholly disqualified, from his
lust, to be the agent of change. -- Russell Kirk, "The Conservative
Mind"

Sunday, September 19, 2021

Fortune Quote #3341

A prejudice is by no means (though generally thought so) an error; on the
contrary, it may be a most unquestioned truth, though it be still a
prejudice in those who, without any examination, take it upon trust and
entertain it by habit. -- Chesterfield

Saturday, September 18, 2021

Fortune Quote #3340

We are afraid to put men to live and trade on his own private stock of
reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that
the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and
capital of nations and ages. -- Edmund Burke, "Reflections on the
Revolution in France"

Friday, September 17, 2021

Fortune Quote #3339

The reason first why we do admire those things which are greatest, and
second those things which are ancientest, is because the one are the least
distant from the infinite substance, the other from the infinite
continuance, of God. -- Richard Hooker

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Fortune Quote #3338

I have observed that the philosophers in order to insinuate their polluted
atheism into young minds systematically flatter all their passions natural
and unnatural. They explode or render odious or contemptible that class of
virtues which restrain the appetite. These are at least nine out of ten of
the virtues. In place of all this, they substitute a virtue which they
call humanity or benevolence. By this means their morality has no idea in
it of restraint, or indeed of a distinct settled principle of any kind.
When their disciples are thus left free and guided only by present feeling
they are no longer to be depended on for good or evil. The men who today
snatch the worst criminals from justice will murder the most innocent
persons tomorrow. -- Edmund Burke

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Fortune Quote #3337

If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the
tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is
not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that
we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilizations escape
the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite. -- Russell
Kirk, "The Conservative Mind"

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Fortune Quote #3336

Any conservative is reluctant to condense profound and intricate
intellectual systems to a few pretentious phrases; he prefers to leave that
technique to the enthusiasm of radicals. -- Russell Kirk, "The
Conservative Mind"

Monday, September 13, 2021

Fortune Quote #3335

Plain facts are easily forgotten and their crucial implications ignored
when the whole orientation is toward finding fault with one's own country
and seeking to "learn" from others.... Thus Americans may fail to ask why
America is one of a relative handful of rare exceptions among the countries
of the world in having freedom, prosperity, military security, and social
generosity. -- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Fortune Quote #3334

Just as freedom of the press does not exist for the sake of that tiny
minority of the population who are journalists, so property rights do not
exist for the sake of the those people with substantial property holdings.
Both rights exist to serve social purposes reaching far beyond those who
actually exercise these rights. -- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for
Cosmic Justice"

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Fortune Quote #3333

In short, the truth often seems "simplistic" by comparison with elaborate
attempts to evade the truth. -- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for
Cosmic Justice"

Friday, September 10, 2021

Fortune Quote #3332

Things that are true and things that are better are almost always easier
to believe in. -- Aristotle

Thursday, September 9, 2021

Fortune Quote #3331

It may easily be seen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a
democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of
government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those
powers themselves. -- Alexis de Tocqueville

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Fortune Quote #3330

The prerequisites of civilization are not an interesting subject to those
who concentrate on its shortcomings---that is, on the extent to which what
currently exists as the fruits of centuries of efforts and sacrifices is
inferior to what they can produce in their imagination immediately at zero
cost, in the comfort and security provided by the society they
disdain. -- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Fortune Quote #3329

No one is openly opposed to American civilization, nor even covertly
plotting its demise. Many of those pursuing a vision of cosmic justice
simply take an adversarial position against traditions, morals, and
institutions that make the survival of this civilization possible.
-- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"

Monday, September 6, 2021

Fortune Quote #3328

Subjecting theories to the rigors of logical scrutiny and empirical
verification may be tedious, but subjecting whole populations to the
fancies of intellectuals and politicians has repeatedly proved deadly.
That lesson has been written in blood across the history of the twentieth
century and surely the time is overdue to read it. -- Thomas
Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"

Sunday, September 5, 2021

Fortune Quote #3327

The utter failure of Lenin's "Imperialism" as a work of logic only
highlight its success as propaganda. To convince people of the truth of
something that is true by logical inference from evidence requires no
talent whatever in the arts of propaganda. But to convince many highly
educated people around the world of a theory that is demonstrably false, by
the use of hard data, artfully presented, is clearly a triumph of
propaganda that makes Lenin's "Imperialism" one of the great classics of
that art. -- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Fortune Quote #3326

The fact that events proved him right [about the Soviet Union] has done
absolutely nothing to rehabilitate President Reagan in the eyes of those to
whom evidence has never been more important than the vision on which their
own egos depend. -- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"

Friday, September 3, 2021

Fortune Quote #3325

One of the most bitterly resented policies of the Reagan administration
were tax-rate reductions referred to as "tax cuts for the rich," even
though (1) tax rates in general were cut, (2) the government's tax
*receipts* rose after the rates were cut and incomes rose, and (3) the
upper-income brackets not only paid more total taxes than before, but even
a higher percentage of all taxes. What was intolerable to critics was
that "the rich" were able to pay these greater sums in taxes as a smaller
percentage of their rising incomes. -- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest
for Cosmic Justice"

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Fortune Quote #3324

Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it
became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, "social
justice." -- Thomas Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Fortune Quote #3323

The only way to have "equal respect" is to have respect divorced from
behavior and performance---which is to say, to have the word "respect" lose
its meaning. One can dispense self-esteem as the Wizard of Oz dispensed
substitutes for heart, courage, and brains. But printing any currency
promiscuously destroys its value and there is no reason to doubt that the
same principle applies to the currency of respect. -- Thomas
Sowell, "The Quest for Cosmic Justice"