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Isabel Paterson Quotes

1886–1961 United States

Isabel Paterson (22 January 1886 – 10 January 1961) was a best-selling writer, influential literary critic, and libertarian philosopher.

United States
Authors
Critics
Philosophers
Political authors

Also known as: Paterson, Isabel

Random Isabel Paterson quote

16 quotes

The only way to prevent prostitution altogether would be to imprison one half of the human race.

The God of the Machine (1943)

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

The God of the Machine (1943)

In human affairs, all that endures is what men think.

The God of the Machine (1943)

What the past shows, by overwhelming evidence, is that the imponderables outweigh every material article in the scales of human endeavor.

The God of the Machine (1943)

The possibility of a short circuit, ensuing leakage and breakdown or explosion, occurs in the hook-up of political organization to the productive processes.

The God of the Machine (1943)

When the word leader, or leadership, returns to current use, it connotes a relapse into barbarism. For a civilized people, it is the most ominous word in any language.

The God of the Machine (1943)

An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.

The God of the Machine (1943)

Whether it does any good or not, a law enforced must hurt someone.

The God of the Machine (1943)

If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.

The God of the Machine (1943)

The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.

The God of the Machine (1943)

As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.

The God of the Machine (1943)

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.

The God of the Machine (1943)

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than is required 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.

The God of the Machine (1943)

Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.

The God of the Machine (1943)

But in reason if one man has no right to command all other men--the expedient of despotism--neither has he any right to command even one other man; nor yet have ten men, or a million, the right to command even one other man, for ten times nothing is nothing, and a million times nothing is nothing.

The God of the Machine (1943)

Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.

The God of the Machine (1943)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Isabel Paterson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.