Category: History

“The reason of man can only imperfectly judge—nay, and is often therein cozened—hence it must needs follow that all human constitutions are of necessity liable to imperfection, error, and injustice.” – William Ames, “Conscience” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“A division of things is by the law of nations. Nevertheless, by the common consent it may, upon just grounds, be somewhere enacted that almost all possessions should be in common.” – William Ames, “Conscience” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The necessary thing, that which necessarily leads all men into civil agreements or contracts, or to make commonwealths, is the necessity of it for preserving peace. Because otherwise, if there were no such thing, but every man were left to his own will, men’s contrary wills, lusts, and passions would lead every one to the destruction of another.” – Henry Ireton, “Whitehall Debates” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 4.3

“The cease of majesty dies not alone but like a gulf doth draw what’s near it with it: it is a massy wheel, fix’d on the summit of the highest mount, to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which, when it falls, each small annexment, petty consequence, attends the boisterous ruin.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 3.3

“Autocrats seek to create an apathetic, demobilized citizenry that they can easily control.” – Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz, “The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2023

“One problem for anyone like me who believes in a fixed human nature, including a fixed moral sense, is to explain how human behavior could have changed so radically over a few centuries or millennia. Much of the world has seen an end to slavery, to genocide for convenience, to torture as a routine form of criminal punishment, to capital punishment for property crimes, to human sacrifice, to rape as the spoils of war, to the ownership of women. We seem to be turning into a nicer species.” – Steven Pinker, The Seed Salon

“There are two ways in which the identification of the law of nature with the rule of man’s unfallen, or his regenerate, condition may tend to radical conclusions. To associate the natural with the unfallen state is to approach the general type of thought now described as primitivistic. To associate it with a regenerate condition presents, on the other hand, some affinity with the type of thought known as perfectibilitarian. In the eighteenth century these two types were to furnish, separately and together, the dominant modes of radical thinking. Discontent with the existing social order issued in the cry of ‘back to nature,’ or in the cry of ‘onward to perfection.’ Then the happy discovery was made that the two things were really identical: in order to go onward to perfection one had only to go back to nature for one’s rule. But before this blessed state of confusion could be achieved dogma must have disappeared or have been interpreted so figuratively that nothing but the smudged outline of its pattern persisted. In some of the radicals of the Puritan revolution these processes are seen at work.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty

“Scripture is the rule for the church; the law of nature, the only rule for the state. To attempt to introduce the Mosaic Law into the constitution of the state under the guise of natural law is sophistical. Nor are we left without strong indications of what the law of nature teaches in the civil sphere: it teaches that the people not only designate the persons of their governors, but bestow upon them all their power.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty

“The fact that there is a Puritan doctrine of liberty, whatever its limitations, is immensely important. Repeatedly Puritanism brings the question of liberty up for discussion, and this is a major service. While operating within the prescribed bounds of ‘Christian’ liberty, Puritanism, further, does a great deal to foster the notion of individuality, and an individualistic outlook, with results partially, though not wholly, favourable to democracy.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty

“Nothing stokes human creativity like the desire to kill a motherfucker you don’t like.” – The Fat Electrician, “America’s Secret Weapon That Won WW2 – VT Fuze”

“Men in all ages have, through their supine carelessness, degenerated from the righteousness of their first principles.” – The Worshipful Company of Saddlers (quoted by A. S. P. Woodhouse in Puritanism & Liberty)

“The strong Puritan impulse to action results in the constant intrusion of religion into the secular sphere in an effort to enforce the standards of the holy community upon the world, and in a marked tendency to press on, in the name of that ideal, from the quest for religious liberty to the quest for political power.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty

“Its zeal for reformation results in part from the fact that the Puritan temper is in general active rather than contemplative. Though its official creed repudiates works as a means of salvation, it emphasizes them as a sign; and the Puritan has an overwhelming sense of one’s responsibility to use every effort for advancing the kingdom of God.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty (emphases in original)

“The Danes made themselves too acceptable to English women by their elegant manners and their care of their person. They combed their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, and even changed their garments often. They set off their persons by many such frivolous devices. In this manner, they laid siege to the virtue of the married women, and persuaded the daughters, even of the nobles to be their concubines.” – John of Wallingford, Chronicle

“With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. In their eyes the merit of an object which is in any degree either useful or beautiful, is greatly enhance by its scarcity, or by the great labour which it requires to collect any considerable quantity of it, a labour which nobody can afford to pay but themselves. Such objects they are willing to purchase at a higher price than things much more beautiful and useful, but more common.”– Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One

“The vine is more affected by the difference of soils than any other fruit tree. From some it derives a flavour which no culture or management can equal, it is supposed, upon any other. This flavour, real or imaginary, is sometimes peculiar to the produce of a few vineyards; sometimes it extends through the greater part of a small district, and sometimes through a considerable part of a large province.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One

“Before the invention of the art of printing, a scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonymous.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One

“The unwritten law possesses capacity for growth; and has often satisfied new demands for justice by invoking analogies or by expanding a rule or principle. This process has been in the main wisely applied and should not be discontinued. Where the problem is relatively simple, as it is apt to be when private interests only are involved, it generally proves adequate. But with the increasing complexity of society, the public interest tends to become omnipresent; and the problems presented by new demands for justice cease to be simple.” – Justice Brandeis, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).

“An essential element of individual property is the legal right to exclude others from enjoying it. If the property is private, the right of exclusion may be absolute; if the property is affected with a public interest, the right of exclusion is qualified. But the fact that a product of the mind has cost its producer money and labor, and has a value for which others are willing to pay, is not sufficient to ensure to it this legal attribute of property. The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions—knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas—become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use. Upon these incorporeal productions the attribute of property is continued after such communication only in certain classes of cases where public policy has seemed to demand it. These exceptions are confined to productions which, in some degree, involve creation, invention, or discovery. But by no means all such are endowed with this attribute of property. The creations which are recognized as property by the common law are literary, dramatic, musical, and other artistic creations; and these have also protection under the copyright statutes. The inventions and discoveries upon which this attribute of property is conferred only by statute, are the few comprised within the patent law.” – Justice Brandeis, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).

“Property, a creation of law, does not arise from value . . . . Property depends upon exclusion by law from interference.” – Justice Holmes, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).

“The peculiar value of news is in the spreading of it while it is fresh; and it is evident that a valuable property interest in the news, as news, cannot be maintained by keeping it secret.” – Justice Pitney, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).

“The news element—the information respecting current events contained in the literary production—is not the creation of the writer, but is a report of matters that ordinarily are publici juris; it is the history of the day. It is not to be supposed that the framers of the Constitution, when they empowered Congress ‘to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries’ (Const. art. 1, § 8, par. 8), intended to confer upon one who might happen to be the first to report a historic event the exclusive right for any period to spread the knowledge of it.” – Justice Pitney, Supreme Court of the United States, International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).

“Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.” – Adam Przeworski (quoted by Gabe Fleisher in “Why Today Is So Extraordinary,” Wake Up to Politics, January 20, 2025

“Essentially, to be remembered as a U.S. president, you have to need to do one of three things: Be one of the first presidents; Be one of the most recent presidents; Be Abraham Lincoln.” – Gabe Fleisher, “Why It’s Pointless to Guess at Biden’s Legacy,” Wake Up to Politics

“The greatness of a state and the happiness of its subjects, however independent they may be supposed in some respects, are commonly allowed to be inseparable with regard to commerce.” – David Hume, Political Discourses

“Nationalism is collective madness, a form of narcissism with millions preening in front of an imaginary mirror, telling themselves they are God’s favorites. Their happiness can only come from the unhappiness of others, so they need to kill and make miserable a lot of people. At the same time there’s something suicidal, something self-defeating about the whole enterprise. Sooner or later they always come to a bad end.” – Charles Simic, “The Art of Poetry,” Paris Review

“We are a country of millions of fools, who believe the most imbecile things about ourselves and the world.” – Charles Simic, “The Art of Poetry,” Paris Review

“I grew up in a slaughterhouse. We were not only occupied, but there was a civil war going on with multiple factions fighting each other. Blood in the streets was not a figure of speech, but something I saw again and again. There’s no question that all that had a lot to do with my outlook on life. Innocent human beings get killed—that was my earliest lesson. Whenever I read about a ‘just war’ in which thousands of innocents have died or will die, I want to jump out of my skin.” – Charles Simic, “The Art of Poetry,” Paris Review

“One of the distinct advantages of growing up in a place where one is apt to find men hung from lampposts as one walks to school is that it cuts down on grumbling about life as one grows older.” – Charles Simic, “The Art of Poetry,” Paris Review