Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski Quotes

A philosopher operates with deductions. A sophist operates with paradoxes. A public intellectual operates with buzzwords.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Failure to find the truth is perhaps an intellectual defeat, but failure to look for the truth is an intellectual surrender.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Believing that there is a conflict between rationality and spirituality is like believing that there is a conflict between knowledge and inspiration.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The ultimate foundation of spirituality is the recognition that there can't be such a thing as a purposeful life in a purposeless universe.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Entrepreneurship is the use of self-interest in the service of others. Politics is the use of others in the service of self-interest.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The surest way to damage society is to call for a great man to lead it. The surest way to improve society is to become a great man to lead oneself and convince others to do likewise.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

If you want peace, prepare for ideological war with those who want others to prepare for physical war.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

If anarchy is chaos, and chaos is war, why wasn't a single war started by anarchists?

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The world will know peace when the entrepreneur fully masters the art of starving the politician.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The greatest obstacle to liberty is not the existence of evil rulers, but the belief in the existence of good rulers.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Individualism turns a band into a society. Collectivism turns society into a mob.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Individual liberty may be unable to solve every social problem, but collective violence is unable to solve any social problem.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Society is a voluntary scheme of mutual benefit. The state is a compulsory scheme of mutual exploitation.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Unorganized morality is called sociability. Organized morality is called civilization. Unorganized immorality is called barbarity. Organized immorality is called statism.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Economics without ethics is a caricature. Ethics without economics is a fairy tale.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The earliest use of writing was strictly commercial and economic, not political or bureaucratic. It was trade, entrepreneurship, and stewardship of private property, not politics, public education or the creation of national mythology that allowed humankind to transition from prehistory to history. Just as trade, entrepreneurship, and stewardship of private property have always been on the forefront of civilization's advancement, so were they also the driving force behind civilization's emergence.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Anarcho-capitalism: the realization that the only way to effectively govern the market is to have an effective market in governance.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Governments represent their citizens in the same way as parasites represent their hosts.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

It takes a common thug to commit injustice, but it takes an exceptional thug to call it social justice.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

To create a free society is not to accomplish the impossible task of convincing all people to abandon aggression, but to accomplish the essential task of convincing enough people to abandon the belief that aggression is ever legitimate.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

To eliminate statism is not to physically subdue the rulers, but to mentally liberate the ruled.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The goal of libertarianism is not to permit people to be free, but to make them realize that they don't need anyone's permission to be free.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

A libertarian is someone who graduated from thinking that there are problems with the state to realizing that the state is the problem.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

To claim that one can be happy without being free is to prove that one has no idea what happiness means.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

A slave believes that the law should define the scope of liberty. A free person believes that liberty should define the scope of the law.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The only common good is the common liberty to pursue individual goods.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Politics is an endless, borderless war against individual liberty.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Patience is the ability to enjoy the calm of boredom.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

An anarchist is someone who rejects the curious notion that crimes become virtues as they grow in size.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

It takes abstract thinking to see how greed can lead to prosperity, but it takes wishful thinking to claim that violence can lead to charity.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

For the greater good:the phrase that always precedesthe greatest evil.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The best way to turn the earth into hell is to turn the state into a god.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

A fool believes that the society of the future will transcend the laws of economics. A person of reason hopes that it will finally learn to respect them.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Bad economics teaches that computers can design markets. Good economics teaches that markets can design computers.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Whenever one feels like saying “the money that billionaire spent on his fleet of yachts could have been used better by the public sector”“, one should ask oneself when was the last time one heard of a billionaire buying an army of tanks and a set of nuclear weapons.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

A foolish environmentalist wants to save nature from the greed of the market by exposing it to the tragedy of the commons. A smart environmentalist wants to save nature from the tragedy of the commons by exposing it to the greed of the market.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Abolitionism was a movement to end private slavery. Libertarianism is a movement to end private and public slavery.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

The history of modern philosophy is the history of losing and regaining the awareness of the fact that there is no third way between the Absolute and the absurd.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Voter: someone smart enough to choose how to be fooled.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski