Every human act is preceded by a decision to act, and that decision is based on faith. One cannot even think without a deep-seated faith that he exists and that there is a supreme standard of good in the universe. This is true of every living personwhether his god is the God of Abraham and Christ, Zeus or Isis, reason or fate, history or astrology, or any other god, whether it be true or false.

When the belief is false, the result will be different from what was expected. But the fact remains that every action of every human being springs from the desire to attain something which he considers to be good or from the desire to avoid something which he thinks is evil or undesirable.

Since the actions of any individual are determined by his beliefs, it follows that the underlying control of the energies of any group of persons is the religious faith prevailing among them.

Source: Henry Grady Weaver
The Mainspring of Human Progress, p. 21

Topics: Praxeology

In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed . . . . No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

Source: Noah Webster
Reply to a Letter of David McClure on the Subject of the Proper
Course of Study in the Girard College, Philadelphia. New Haven
October 25, 1836

Topics: Christianity; Education

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

Source: Thomas Sowell

Topics: Politics

What is politically defined as economic “planning” is the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by government officials.

Source: Thomas Sowell

Topics: Economics; Force; Politics

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what has worked with what sounded good. In area after area—crime, education, housing, race relations—the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.

Source: Thomas Sowell
Is Reality Optional?, 1993

Topics: Central Planning; Government, Domestic Policy; Government, Downfall

Progress is precisely that which the rules and regulations did not foresee.

Source: Ludwig von Mises

Topics: Progress

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.

Source: Walter Bagehot

Topics: Dictatorships

America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to “the common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.

Source: Ayn Rand

Topics: America, Heritage; Capitalism; Progress; Prosperity

American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected.

Source: Thomas Sowell

Topics: America, Heritage; Capitalism; Progress; Prosperity

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