Sublime
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To–day the rich man knows in his heart that he is a cancer and not an organ of the State. He differs from all other thieves or parasites for this reason: that the brigand who takes by force wishes his victims to be rich. But he who wins by a one–sided contract actually wishes them to be poor.
G. K. Chesterton • The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books]
No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is t
... See moreArthur Schopenhauer • The Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)
Some of Locke’s opinions are so odd that I cannot see how to make them sound sensible. He says that a man must not have so many plums that they are bound to go bad before he and his family can eat them; but he may have as much gold and as many diamonds as he can lawfully get, because gold and diamonds do not go bad. It does not occur to him that th
... See moreBertrand Russell • History of Western Philosophy
The great political defect of Locke and his disciples, from a modern point of View, was their worship of property.
Bertrand Russell • History of Western Philosophy
Printing money is a stealth tax on wealth that disincentivizes holding money, as above. It has the same first-order effect on wealth transfers but has hidden second-order effects of misdirecting capital due to political expediency and cowardice.
Sacha Meyers • Bitcoin Is Venice: Essays on the Past and Future of Capitalism
Without criticizing Hobbes’s metaphysics or ethics, there are two points to make against him. The first is that he always considers the national interest as a whole, and assumes, tacitly, that the major interests of all citizens are the same. He does not realize the importance of the clash between different classes, which Marx makes the chief cause
... See moreBertrand Russell • History of Western Philosophy
We live in an era of wealth and overabundance, but how bleak it is. There is “neither art nor philosophy,” Fukuyama says. All that’s left is the “perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.”
Rutger Bregman • Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
All social inequality, in the long run, is inequality of income. That is part of the argument for democracy: that the attempt to have a “proportionate justice” based on any merit other than wealth is sure to break down. Defenders of oligarchy pretend that income is proportional to virtue; the prophet said he had never seen a righteous man begging h
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