Mark Wood - Personal Homepage

Quotes:

"If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, but they can't take away what makes us American - our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that." - Jon Stewart.

"All the market is is the concatenation of all voluntary acts." - Walter Block.

"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full." - Henry Kissinger.

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus.

"The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who has made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement." - Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead.

"Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer - in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive." - Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead.

"Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship between equals." - Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead.

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights." - James Madison.

"We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money." - Davy Crockett, 1836.

"The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence." - Ron Paul, paraphrasing the Axiom of Non-Aggression.

"When men have gained freedom in purely economic relationships they begin to desire it elsewhere." - Ludwig von Mises.

"The number of cars, laptops, and MRI machines, etc... in the world is proportional to the number of machines used to make cars, laptops, and MRI machines etc..., which is the world's industrial capital stock. These machines are almost exclusively funded by people with disposable income. When government taxes all the disposable income, society ceases to accumulate capital/wealth, and natural wear and tear reduce wealth." - Unknown.

"When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free." - Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948) Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition" - Thomas Jefferson.

"It is absolutely bizarre that the people who can't tell us what the fucking weather is next Tuesday can predict with absolute precision what the fucking global temperatures will be in 100 years' time. It's horseshit." - Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair.

"If you accept the idea of anthropogenic global warming (which you may well not), then the problem is that use of power causes greenhouse emissions because the power production systems create emissions when power is used. To quote C.S. Lewis "first things first". You cannot fix a production-side problem by modifying the consumption-side behaviour. That's like stripping the interior of your caravan because you don't have a car powerful enough to tow it. It doesn't solve the problem, and only serves to ruin your caravan.

"It is the social function of the laws to curb the arbitrariness of the police. The rule of law restricts the arbitrariness of the officers as much as possible. It strictly limits their discretion and thus assigns to the citizens a sphere in which they are free to act without being frustrated by government interference." - Ludwig von Mises.

"Profit tells the entrepreneur that the consumers approve of his ventures; loss, that they disapprove." - Ludwig von Mises.

"It's an astounding non sequitur: to assert that government can prevent crises, recessions, and 'swings in unemployment' while being fully aware that for 98 years it has been trying to do it and failing." - James Payne.

"Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason." - Ayn Rand.

"Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy"-Ludwig von Mises.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will." - Frederick Douglas.

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion." - James Burgh (Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses) [London, 1774-1775].

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" - Ronald Reagan.

"Politics must be the battle of the principles -the principle of liberty against the principle of force" - Auberon Herbert, 19th Century British philosopher.

"The limitation of tyrants is the endurance of those they oppose" - Frederick Douglass.

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty" - John Adams.

"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory." - S. D. Weitzenhoffer.

"It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for." - Will Rogers.