Top 33 Isabel Paterson Quotes
#1. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#2. Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status.
Isabel Paterson
#3. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#4. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#5. Newton was asked as a mathematician, not as a moralist. He replied 'Gentlemen, in applied mathematics, you must describe your unit.
Isabel Paterson
#6. The great truth is that women actually like men, and men can never believe it.
Isabel Paterson
#7. No law can give power to private persons; every law transfers power from private persons to government.
Isabel Paterson
#9. Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure.
Isabel Paterson
#10. An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.
Isabel Paterson
#11. The only way to prevent prostitution altogether would be to imprison one half of the human race.
Isabel Paterson
#12. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.
Isabel Paterson
#13. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#14. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#15. The craving for power is in itself a sign of inferior abilities and unfitness for responsibility.
Isabel Paterson
#16. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#17. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#18. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#19. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
Isabel Paterson
#20. An abstraction will move a mountain: Nothing can withstand an idea.
Isabel Paterson
#21. The power to do things for people is also the power to do things to people.
Isabel Paterson
#23. As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid.
Isabel Paterson
#24. The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.
Isabel Paterson
#25. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#26. Poverty can be brought about by law; it cannot be forbidden by law.
Isabel Paterson
#28. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#29. It takes the best part of a lifetime to find out what you don't want.
Isabel Paterson
#30. 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.
Isabel Paterson
#31. Freedom is dangerous. Possibly crawling on all fours might be safer than standing upright, but we like the view better up there.
Isabel Paterson
#32. People mostly do as they like, and that would be fine if they'd let other people do the same.
Isabel Paterson
#33. The biggest pests are the people who use altruism as an alibi. What they passionately wish is to make themselves important.
Isabel Paterson
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