Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Quotes #12

“[E]very boy or girl in this country learns the three R’s. Now, perhaps they would have better minds if they learned the Greek letters and language instead, but they have no choice. This English is their heritage. Long before they could choose, their elders have moulded their minds and made them into English speakers, English readers, English writers, and accountants. The young depend on the choices made for them by their elders. An heir is not somebody who can choose what he shall inherit; if he could make his choice, he would be self-made. But, in so far as his inheritance is determined, he is an heir, and under the laws of heredity. And to his heredity a man may say either yes or no, but he is caught in this one alternative which is not creative. He does, however, determine the background of the next generation.

“Hence, one’s generation’s background is due to the previous generation’s foreground. My father’s values determined my education. And by no action of mine can I cancel out the fact that his education preceded my own judgements. I am more the product of his intent or his omissions than his own life was. I am his heir. Only my own son or students may fully reflect my own choices.”

~from The Christian Future, page 221

Thomas Sowell Quotes #4

“In the most varied conditions in countries around the world – whether in Third World countries or in economically more advanced countries, and whether in countries where the majority or the minority has the higher skills – those seeking either the leadership or the votes of lagging groups tend to offer them four things:

Assurance that their lags are not their fault.
Assurance that their lags are the fault of some more fortunate group that they already envy and resent.
Assurance that the lagging group and their culture are just as good as anybody else’s, if not better.
Assurance that what the lagging group needs and deserves is a demographically defined ‘fair share’ of the economic and other benefits of society, sometimes supplemented with some kind of reparations for past injustices or some special reward for being indigenous ‘sons of the soil’.

“In addition, racial or ethnic leaders have every incentive to promote the isolation of the groups they lead – despite the fact that isolation has been a major factor in the poverty and backwardness of many different peoples around the world.

“Where a lagging group is concentrated in a particular region of a country, leaders of such groups have incentives to promote secession from the more advanced part of the country… The people themselves may also benefit physically by being spared the public embarrassment and private shame of being visibly outperformed repeatedly by others in the same economy and society.”

~from Wealth, Poverty and Politics, page 268-269

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Quotes #11

“Mankind writes its own history long before the historians visit its battlefields; days, festivals, holidays, the order of meals, rest and vacations, together with religiously observed ritual and symbols, are sources of political history, though rarely used by the average political or economic historian…

“It is not necessary to record the everyday life of a nation for a thousand years in order to know its aim and inspiration. The great creations of history do not reveal their deepest sense nor their soul every day. But each has its wedding day; and the words and songs, the promises and laws of this period of a nation’s life express its character viva voce and settle its destiny once and forever.”

~from Out of Revolution, page 8 & 9

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Quotes #9

“The temptations of our time do not arise from heavenly demonism or earthly provincialism. They come from soul erosion. Our life is haunted by boredom and neurosis; it is disintegrated by a mechanized society, and by a mechanizing science which makes man a mere derivation of antecedent causes. Hence we are tempted to worship crude vitality, sensationalism, life at any price.”

Footnote on above quote: “Even man’s lusts and fears have become respectable today because they testify to his vitality. ‘Vital, dynamic, powerful, stirring, stimulating, exciting, thrilling, terrific,’ are the medals which modern man bestows. They are really insults. To call a speaker stimulating, for instance, is a triumph of Pontius Pilate among us. It seems that the truth no longer matters.”

~from The Christian Future, page 121

Thomas Sowell Quotes #1

“It would never occur to people with academic degrees and professorships that they are both ignorant and incompetent in vast areas of human life, much less that they should keep that in mind before they vent their emotions and wax self-righteous.

“Degrees show that you have knowledge in some special area. Too often they embolden people to pontificate on a wide range of other subjects where they don’t know what they are talking about. The fact that academics are overwhelmingly of the political left is perfectly consistent with their assumption that third parties — especially third parties like themselves — should be controlling the decisions of other people who have first-hand knowledge and experience.”

~from The Thomas Sowell Reader, page 21