Man's power over Nature

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument [or excuse].

―C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Scarcity

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

—Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional? and Other Essays

The Insatiable Soul

What moves each soul is different, but the soul is the same—this restive and insatiable soul that despises all goods of the world and which, nonetheless, incessantly needs to be stirred in order to seize them, so as to escape the grievous numbness that is experienced as soon as it relies for a moment on itself. This is a sad story. It is a little bit the story of all men, but of some more than others, and of myself more than anyone I know.

—Alexis de Tocqueville, Selected Letters, 148–149.

Intellectual Proletariat

There are few greater dangers to political stability than than the existence of an intellectual proletariat who find no outlet for their learning [other than politics].

—F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

The Shadow

I had seen the shadow of the other war behind the actual one. During all this time it has never budged from me, that irremovable shadow, it hovers over every thought of mine by day and by night; perhaps its dark outline lies on some pages of this book, too. But, after all, shadows themselves are born of light. And only he who has experienced dawn and dusk, war and peace, ascent and decline, only he has truly lived.

— Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday

Natural uniformity

Where the differences among people are least-in the desire to be safe from violence and secure in their possessions, for example-there is less sacrifice of freedom in assigning to a monopoly the power to punish [exceptions]. Were the same monopoly to determine the 'best' size(s) or style(s) of shoes, the result would be mass discomfort, and were it to determine more and weightier matters the results would be even less satisfactory in terms of the differing values of individuals, however 'better' it might be in terms of the particular values of the monopoly. 

 —Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

Safetyism

Suppose that X percent of the children will receive serious injuries if they play in this particular playground and 2X percent will receive equally serious injuries if they stay home. Since no place is 100 percent safe, and none can be made 100 percent safe, the only meaningful question is the relative safety of one place compared to another and the cost of making either place safer by a given amount. Our natural inclination may be to want to make every place as safe as possible but in reality no one does that when they must pay the costs themselves. We are willing to pay for brakes in our cars, but having a second set of brakes in case the first set fails would make us safer still. 

A new kind of institution for transferring risk has arisen in recent times. Since government agencies such as the National Highway Safety Administration do not charge directly for their services as do mutual aid societies or insurance companies, they must collect the money needed to support themselves from lawsuits, donations, or taxes. Put differently, their only money-making product or service is fear—and their incentives are to induce as much fear as possible in jurors, legislators, and the general public. Whereas individuals weighing risks for themselves are restrained in how much risk reduction they will seek by the costs, there are no such restraints on the amount of risk reduction sought by those whose risk reduction is paid for with other people's money. Nor is there any such inherent restraint on how much fear they will generate from a given risk or how much credit they will claim for whatever risk reduction may take place, regardless of what the facts may be. 

—Thomas Sowell, Applied Economics.

Historical slavery

Both secular and religious philosophers going back to Plato had seen the mundane physical world as being far less important than the ideal or spiritual world, so that being right and free in one’s mind was more important than one’s fate in the physical world. Dissipating one’s energies trying to reform the practices of a sinful world was considered less important than bringing one’s own soul into line with spiritual imperatives. However, as a humanistic philosophy began to affect both secular and religious thought, what happened in the mundane physical world began to assume greater importance than it had before in the eyes of intellectuals, philosophers, and religious leaders. Religious minorities, such as the Quakers or the Evangelicals within the Anglican Church, could not simply rely on religious tradition and authority because their very existence was based on a questioning of, and in some cases a break with, those traditions and authorities. These insurgents had to think independently about slavery, as about other things, and derive their own conclusions. The rising class of secular intellectuals in the West could even less rely on the authority of established religious institutions. This did not mean that either secular or religious insurgents were automatically anti-slavery. What it meant was that they both had to evolve some intellectually and morally defensible position because they could not simply base themselves on existing beliefs or practices. Different individuals resolved the issues differently but out of this process came some who began to see slavery as an intolerable evil. 

—Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Eurocentric slavery

Often it is those who are most critical of a “Eurocentric” view of the world who are most Eurocentric when it comes to the evils and failings of the human race. Why would anyone wish to arbitrarily understate an evil that plagued mankind for thousands of years, unless it was not this evil itself that was the real concern, but rather the present-day uses of that historic evil? Clearly, the ability to score ideological points against American society or Western civilization, or to induce guilt and thereby extract benefits from the white population today, are greatly enhanced by making enslavement appear to be a peculiarly American, or a peculiarly white, crime. 

—Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Wages as an incentive

An economy is not a moral seminar, authorized to hand out badges of merit to deserving people. An economy is a mechanism for generating the material wealth on which the standard of living of millions of people depends. Pay is not a retrospective reward for merit, but a prospecting incentive for contributing to production. 

—Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies.