J.M. August Quotes

The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.

If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist.

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

Take good care of yourself. Your life can be gone in a split second.

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

I don't always do what I should but I do what I gotta do.

Sometimes, you don't realize what you have until you wake up and go 'Damn.'

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous.

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.

In government, the scum rises to the top.

We define organic chemistry as the chemistry of carbon compounds.

The art of Mime encompasses all the feelings of the soul. The Dance, on the other hand, is essentially an expression of joy, a desire to follow the rhythms of the music.

Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it.

Social justice rests on the hate towards those that enjoy a comfortable position, namely, upon envy.

The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil.

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life.

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.

I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

I never made a person look bad. They do that themselves.

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

The slum is the measure of civilization.

[T]hose who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

By attempting the impossible one can attain the highest level of the possible.

It is not so much upon the number of exercises, as the care with which they are done, that progreses and skill depend.

All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.

Medical scientists are nice people, but you should not let them treat you.

Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.

Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left.

In actual life, every great enterprise begins with and takes its first forward step in faith.

I prefer silence. Then you can hear thoughts and see into the past. In silence you can’t hide anything … as you can in words.

I dream, therefore I exist.

There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.

Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves.

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.

You get to the point where your demons, which are terrifying, get smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger.

Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.

Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.

It is when it is contended that "in a democracy right is what the majority makes it to be" that democracy degenerates into demagoguery.

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program - on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off - than on any positive task.

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. It has kept mankind in slavery and oppression. The Church and the State have always fraternally united to exploit the people.

Some people seem to be born to suffer.

In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.

The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda...are destructive of all morals because they undermind one of the foundations of all morals: the sense of and respect for truth.

If your opponent praises you: beware! But if he gets stuck into you, you are usually on the right way.