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Big Society quote of the day – Karl Popper


I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous-from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. I am speaking this evening to explain the systematic cause of our present economic, fiscal and therefore social crisis: excessively cheap money. I don’t doubt that those who have managed our present social system meant well but they have operated a system which is unavoidably […]

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Big Society quote of the day – Ayn Rand


Since it is Sunday and I am off to church, something from Ayn Rand seems excusable: The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. Rand detested religion of course. Me too: it tends to spoil faith.

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Big Society quote of the day – Huerta de Soto


To attempt to coordinate society through coercion is an intellectual error. — Jesús Huerta de Soto

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Big Society quote of the day – Mencken


It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common […]

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Big Society quote of the day – Jose Ortega y Gasset


The first of a series: This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention, the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State; that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long-run sustains, nourishes and impels human destinies. — Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1922, found in the introductory remarks to Our Enemy The State by Albert Jay Nock And yet today, people still can’t figure out the Big Society. We have far to go. I […]

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Thought for the day – Karl Popper on reason and critical discussion


From All Life is Problem Solving: When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism. A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another’s opinions, but by gladly allowing others to […]

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Thought for the day – Bastiat


From Bastiat’s dialogue What is Money? B. I have not yet made up my mind that your views upon money and political economy in general are correct. But, from your conversation, this is what I have gathered: — That these questions are of the highest importance; for peace or war, order or anarchy, the union or the antagonism of citizens, are at the root of the answer to them. How is it that in France and most other countries which […]

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Thought for the day – Churchill


Though this is from Winston Churchill’s The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948), it seems relevant to the intellectual battle over economics we face today: If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance […]

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Quote of the day – Gasset, 1922


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This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention, the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State; that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long-run sustains, nourishes and impels human destinies. By Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1922, and found in Our Enemy, The State, by Albert Jay Nock. Further, from that book, and for our Cameroon times of Big Society, not Big Government: If we look beneath the surface of our public […]

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Churchill’s Wit


One kind Christmas gift was Churchill’s Wit: The Definitive Collection. I am particularly savouring this gem (1906): For my own part I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities which he excites among his opponents. I have always set myself not merely to relish but to deserve thoroughly their censure. I expect that will keep me going through the heat of the fires of unreason of the statist left.

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