Thomas Carlyle Quotes

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

The liberal, emphasizing the civil and property rights of the individual, insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make the state his servant.

The reason why men enter into [political] society is the preservation of their property.

…the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me, of all the philosophical theories, the most attuned to the needs of men in our time, and I see in it the most powerful safeguard men have left against themselves.

Politically, economically and philosophically the motive of self-interest not only is but must...and ought to be the mainspring of human conduct...

'Fair' is one of the most dangerous concepts in politics. Since no two people are likely to agree on what is 'fair,' this means that there must be some third party with power - the government - to impose its will. The road to despotism is paved with 'fairness'.

Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to “Get Off My Property.” News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.

I always was like, "Yo, I'm here, I might as well get what I could take."

The founding fathers never once rationalized getting in power and having control so they could stay in power.

How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star?

Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.

There is a reason for the affected profession of " anarchist sympathies" among Tories and grandees, and of " libertarian principles" by Hobbesian yahoos of the right. Among the former, one sees the upholding of the view that a gentleman's business and property are his own, and none of the government's. Among the latter, a distaste for democracy, for taxation, and for the need to consult others about the planet.

I do everything for a reason. Most of the time the reason is money.

Republicans define freedom as an absence of restraints imposed by government. Democrats define freedom as an absence of necessity, which government exists to reduce. America has not moved as far as it thinks it has beyond the argument about the New Deal, when FDR insisted, "Necessitous men are not free men."

Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure.

Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.

In Charn [Jadis] had taken no notice of Polly (till the very end) because Digory was the one she wanted to make use of. Now that she had Uncle Andrew, she took no notice of Digory. I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.

Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent men harming or being harmed.

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything.

Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences.

It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals. And whenever any number of men, calling themselves a government, do anything to another man, or to his property, which they had no right to do as individuals, they thereby declare themselves trespassers, robbers, or murderers, according to the nature of their acts.

Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.