Mark Wood - Personal Homepage

Quotes:

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." - Thomas Jefferson.

"Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism." - Thomas Jefferson.

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." - President Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away". - Henry David Thoreau.

"Prior to the rise of capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving one's fellow man. " - Walter E. Williams.

"State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." - Friedrich Nietzsche.

"If you are for gun control, then you're not against guns, because the guns will be needed to disarm people. You'll need to go around, pass laws, and shoot people who resist, kick in doors, and throw people in jail, and so on; rip up families, just to take away guns. So it's not that you're anti-gun, because [...] you'll need the police's guns to take away other people's guns, so you're very pro-gun, you just believe that only the government (which is of course so reliable, honest, moral, virtuous, and forward-thinking) should be allowed to have guns. So there's no such thing as gun control, there's only centralizing gun ownership in the hands of a small political elite and their minions. Gun control is a misnomer." - Stefan Molyneux.

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities" - Ayn Rand.

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most mean dread it." - George Bernard Shaw.

"[...] [N]o government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support." - Lysander Spooner.

"Genius is where you find it." - Robert A. Heinlein.

"Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory." - Robert A. Heinlein.

"I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do." - Robert A. Heinlein.

"One way or other, what you get, you pay for." - Robert A. Heinlein.

"Of course, I don't believe an ideal world is achievable. But if we aim lower than perfection, then we set a ceiling on happiness." - Nathan McKnight.

"Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man's well-being is not their goal." - Ayn Rand.

"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful." - Leo Tolstoy.

"I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back." - Leo Tolstoy.

"The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase." - Leo Tolstoy.

"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do." - Leo Tolstoy.

"Understand then all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses." - Leo Tolstoy.

"The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule; there is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves 'the good of the whole,' because the 'good of the whole' is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done. ...[C]ollectivist ethics... knows no other limit than that set by expediency - the suitability of the particular act for the end in view." - F. A. Hayek. The Road to Serfdom, pps.166-167.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money - only for wanting to keep your own money." - Joseph Sobran.

"There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others." - Franz Oppenheimer.

Hitchens' Razor: "What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence". - Christopher Hitchens.

"Aid is just a stop-gap. Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid. In dealing with poverty here and around the world, welfare and foreign aid are a Band-Aid. Free enterprise is a cure. Entrepreneurship is the most sure way of development." - Bono.

"Job creators and innovators are just the key, and aid is just a bridge. We see it as startup money, investment in new countries. A humbling thing was to learn the role of commerce." - Bono.

"Australia is not a democracy, in any shape or form. It is run by four of five big pressure groups, and the biggest of these are the government bureaucracies. Then come the communist-controlled unions, and after that the huge business lobbies, always with their hands in the public purse, always trying to influence governments, always looking for handouts and tariffs and concessions. Fourth come the media, and as a very poor fifth, the elected representatives of the people." - Lang Hancock (1979).

"Sir, If Rupert Murdoch wishes to buy a television station and has the money to do so, good luck to him. It is none of my business and none of the Government's. If the Government has the taxpayers' interests at heart, it should sell him the ABC, thus saving the public a lot of money." - Lang Hancock (1981).