Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the read more

Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.The read more

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

You really have to experience the feeling of being with the president in the oval office. ... It's a disease read more

You really have to experience the feeling of being with the president in the oval office. ... It's a disease I came to call Ovalitis.

I should have had a circuitous answer that was a non-answer.

I should have had a circuitous answer that was a non-answer.

There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute read more

There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse. The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of read more

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend read more

Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. What other virtue can there be in fifty-one percent except the brute fact that fifty-one is more than forty-nine? The rule of fifty-one per cent is a convenience, it is for certain matters a satisfactory political device, it is for others the lesser of two evils, and for others it is acceptable because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all sense of its true meaning when we imagine that the opinion of fifty-one per cent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole hundred per cent, or indulge in the sophistry that the rule of a majority is based upon the ultimate equality of man.

The notion of a farseeing and despotic statesman, who can lay down plans for ages yet unborn, is a fancy read more

The notion of a farseeing and despotic statesman, who can lay down plans for ages yet unborn, is a fancy generated by the pride of the human intellect to which facts give no support.

Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.

Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.