Hugo Venturini > Hugo's Quotes

“If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization”
― Ludwig von Mises

“He who only wishes and hopes does not interfere actively with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy

“Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people. But, of course, these motorcars, television sets and refrigerators do not make a man happy. In the instant in which he acquires them, he may feel happier than he did before. But as soon as some of his wishes are satisfied, new wishes spring up. Such is human nature.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”
― Friedrich von Hayek

“The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek

“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
― Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell

“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites. ”
― Thomas Sowell

“Intellect is not wisdom.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

“Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders. ”
― Thomas Sowell

“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.”
― Thomas Sowell, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
― Edmund Burke

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke

“Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.”
― Edmund Burke

“Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
― Edmund Burke

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
― Edmund Burke

“Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth.”
― Edmund Burke

“Our patience will achieve more than our force.”
― Edmund Burke

“No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
― Edmund Burke

“Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.”
― Edmund Burke

“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”
― Edmund Burke

“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.”
― Edmund Burke

“To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.”
― Theodore Dalrymple

“When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.”
― Theodore Dalrymple

“The bravest and most noble are not those who take up arms, but those who are decent despite everything; who improve what it is in their power to improve, but do not imagine themselves to be saviours. In their humble struggle is true heroism.”
― Theodore Dalrymple

“The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.”
― Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What's Left Of It

“If the history of the 20th Century proved anything, it proved that however bad things were, human ingenuity could usually find a way to make them worse.”
― Theodore Dalrymple