Isabel Paterson Quotes - Page 2

The great truth is that women actually like men, and men can never believe it.

But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.

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

Right now it is a terrible thing to be a rugged individualist; but we don't know what else to be except a feeble nonentity.

If you go back 150 years you are a reactionary; but if you go back 1000 years, you are in the foremost ranks of progress.

Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status.

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

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse or omission.

As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid.

The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.

One genius is about all a house will hold.

Leadership is obliged to justify itself daily.

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.

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

Not uncommonly one hears some romantic young woman say, 'Oh, I would give anything to be a writer.' But she would not; and 'anything' is not enough. One must give everything.