Best 40 quotes of Isabel Paterson on MyQuotes

An abstraction will move a mountain: Nothing can withstand an idea.

An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.

As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid.

As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.

Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you or pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect your pupils by compulsion?

Every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

Freedom is dangerous. Possibly crawling on all fours might be safer than standing upright, but we like the view better up there.

If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.

If there were just one gift you could choose, but nothing barred, what would it be? We wish you then your own wish; you name it. Ours is liberty, now and forever.

If you go back 150 years you are a reactionary; but if you go back 1000 years, you are in the foremost ranks of progress.

If you hear some bad collectivistic notions, chances are that they came from [modern] liberals. But if you hear or read something outrageously, god-awfully collectivistic, you may be sure that the author is a conservative.

Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse or omission.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends... ...when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.

No law can give power to private persons; every law transfers power from private persons to government.

Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure.

Not uncommonly one hears some romantic young woman say, 'Oh, I would give anything to be a writer.' But she would not; and 'anything' is not enough. One must give everything.

Now the sole remedy for the abuse of political power is to limit it; but when politics corrupt business, modern reformers invariably demand the enlargement of the political power.

One genius is about all a house will hold.

People mostly do as they like, and that would be fine if they'd let other people do the same.

Right now it is a terrible thing to be a rugged individualist; but we don't know what else to be except a feeble nonentity.

The biggest pests are the people who use altruism as an alibi. What they passionately wish is to make themselves important.

The craving for power is in itself a sign of inferior abilities and unfitness for responsibility.

The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.

The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God. But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian. Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.

The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.

The only way to prevent prostitution altogether would be to imprison one half of the human race.

The philanthropist, the politician, and the pimp are inevitably found in alliance because they have the same motives, they seek the same ends, to exist for, through, and by others.

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than is required to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.

Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status.

What kind of world does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with breadlines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way.

Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.

As the several items can be exchanged, they must be equal; but in what terms? Not in pounds, yards, or hours; they are equal in value. Then what is wanted is a unit of value to reckon by.

In arguing against free enterprise capitalism, the collectivist always adopts the false assumption of a fixed number of jobs in that system. Conversely, in arguing for collectivism, he always assumes that there will be as many jobs as there are workers. The government will make the jobs.

Poverty can be brought about by law; it cannot be forbidden by law.

The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.