Rose Wilder Lane QUOTES

1 " Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is. "

― Rose Wilder Lane

2 " It is precisely democracy which is destroying the American political structure, American law, and the American economy. "

― Rose Wilder Lane

3 " Making the best of things is a damn poor way of dealing with them. My life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand. "

― Rose Wilder Lane

4 " No state, no government exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men. "

― Rose Wilder Lane

5 " You must take into account the actual distinction between truth and fact. It is beyond all human power to tell all the facts. Your whole lifetime spent at nothing else would not tell all the facts of one morning in your life, just any ordinary morning when you get up, dress, get breakfast and wash the dishes. Facts are infinite in number. The truth is a meaning underlying them; you tell the truth by selecting the facts to illustrate it. "

― Rose Wilder Lane

6 " Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open. "

― Rose Wilder Lane

7 " A “planned economy” destroys Government because when men use force in an attempt to control productive energies, they have no means of knowing real costs, and these costs automatically increase at an increasing rate until the people can no longer pay them. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

8 " Being absolute, and maintained by police force, a Government monopoly need not please its customers. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

9 " So long as any large group of persons, anywhere on this earth, believe the ancient superstition that some Authority is responsible for their welfare, they will set up some image of that Authority and try to obey it. And the result will be poverty and war. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

10 " Living is fighting for life, and when anyone does not know this fact, someone else is doing his fighting for him. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

11 " Let him get out on the front lines. Let him bring one slow freight through a snowstorm in the Rockies; let him drive one rivet to hold his apartment roof over his head. Let him keep his own electric light burning through one quiet, cosy winter evening when mist is freezing to the wires. Let him make, from seed to table, just one slice of bread, and we will hear no more from him about the human right to security. No man’s security is any greater than his own self-reliance. If every man and woman worth living did not stand up to the job of living, did not take risk and danger and exhaustion beyond exhaustion and go on fighting for one thin hope of victory in the certainty of death, there would not be a human being alive today. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

12 " Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been too much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting diseases and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

13 " The feudal system was the most perfect social system in history. It even had a safety valve, to release any pressure of energy in it. An exceptional, ambitious, and gifted boy might get his master’s permission to learn to read and write, and enter The Church. Church discipline was strict, but The Church represented the spiritual world, and in it, all men were equal. Any priest might become the Pope. A serf’s son did become a Pope. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

14 " To know the everlasting majority attitude toward new uses of productive energy, remember that your great-grandfather did not believe that railroads were possible. At the time, a committee of learned men investigating the question for the British Government, reported that railroads were not possible, for the reason that the proposed speed of fifteen miles an hour would kill any human being; the human body could not endure such a pressure of air. Remember what sensible men thought of Alexander Graham Bell’s insisting that a wire could carry a human voice. Remember that ships could not be made of iron because iron does not float. Recall that the horseless carriage could never be more than a rich man’s toy, not only because it cost at least five thousand dollars, but also because it ran only on macadam and therefore could never leave the cities. Or, what do you think of the experimenters in New Mexico who are working on rocket-ships to carry men from planet to planet? How much of your own money will you invest in a rocket-line from here to Mars? No majority will ever take up arms against their Government to defend such men as these. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

15 " The Old World belief is this: Individuals are cells in a greater organism. All men are naturally dependent, obedient, controlled by Authority. (Communists, Fascists and Nazis say this in a cliché, “The individual is nothing.”) Government is Authority, controlling the masses and responsible for their welfare. Therefore, the stronger the Government, the better for the masses. Liberty "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

16 " Indeed, nothing but smuggling kept the poor from starving to death under that Government monopoly, benevolently planned for their good. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

17 " Certainly they would have planted more grapes, produced more wine, lowered the price of wine. They would have needed more casks, more boats, more settlers. America might be France today. The King was encouraging settlements, to hold America for France. He was taking every care of the settlers. Still, there are two facts: They planted no more grapes. The settlements grew very slowly. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

18 " The fact is that nothing but human energy working productively can produce any of the necessities of human life, any human living conditions. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

19 " I thought they were unemployed. They did not appear as unemployed on any record, but the actual unemployment in France and throughout Europe, was enormous. For every purchase in a French department store, something like an hour’s time was unemployed; millions of hours a day. And the cashiers, the filing clerks, the watchers of those records, never did a stroke of productive work. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

20 " In communism, the men who establish the commune plan its economy. "

― Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority

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