Essayists From The United States

"Clever phrases or cliches such as "Human rights are above property rights" or "What would you do, let them starve?" have influenced untold numbers of Americans to vote for charlatans and to advocate legal thievery."

"A society such as this [Mont Pelerin Society], beyond entertainment or evil has one other possibility -- an intellectual levelling-up of its members. After attendance at three meetings I have experienced nowhere near the edification I can obtain elsewhere and at lower cost. Maybe these folks are too far advanced for me to grasp their wisdom. In any event I am not benefited...These pedants have a gadgetry of scholarship -- degrees, licenses, titles, readings of all old-world philosophy -- to which those outside are not admitted except in condescending tolerance, a form of gentle and mannerly contempt."

"Assuming the market is free from fraud, violence, misrepresen­tation, and predation, the economic failure or success of any individ­ual is measured by what he can obtain in willing exchange—fair­ness being a state of affairs that is presupposed in the assumption. Everyone, according to any moral code I would respect, is entitled to fairness in the sense of no special privilege to anyone and open op­portunity for all; no one is entit­led to what is implied by a fair price, a fair wage, a fair salary, a fair rent, or a fair profit. In mar­ket terms, one is entitled to what others will offer in willing ex­change. That is all!"

"Freedom is the key to Godliness"

"The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed."

"There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism."

"Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Republicanism, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing."

"Were it necessary to bring a majority into a comprehension of the libertarian philosophy, the cause of liberty would be utterly hopeless. Every significant movement in history has been led by one or just a few individuals with a small minority of energetic supporters."

"The distinction between individuals is not to be found in self-interest. It is to be found in the degree of intelligence they apply in interpreting their self-interest. The "selfless" one, in the name of doing good, charity, and sacrifice, is not intelligent enough to see that his greatest contribution to others would be his own evolution, presenting society with a more perfect person. The intelligent one knows that his value to others is identical with value to self, and that this value rests on the extent of his perfection, the extent that he excels, the extent that he has something over and above which can be drawn on by others."

"Whenever government assumes responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of citizens, the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is politically expedient to cover them by direct tax levies."

"I have never met a single European who had a clean, clear-cut understanding of the principles of strictly limited government."

"The proper function of government does not include government's intrusion into economic activities;..it should"

"If we are free to be our varietal selves; if there be no obstructions to the exchange of ideas and goods; if we have the liberty to move; society and"

"Why do tourists gape so eagerly at this sort of thing [Château de Fontainebleau]? Most people, I believe, aspire to what these agents and sycophants of the state achieved: ease without work, services for themselves by edict, power and position by wishing plus, of course, a little intrigue."

"Pray, speak quietly, every sound you make is such exquisite agony to me."

"I think if I have any regret at all about my theatrical career, it was that I didn’t stay longer in the theater. It was very hard to do because the transportation problem was quite serious. It took thirty-five hours to fly out. So you couldn’t really commute to the movie business the way you can do in London. But I wanted to be in movies, because I loved movies. I was a big movie fan. And still am and always have been."

"In a world where slaughter and vicious crimes are daily occurrences, a good ghoulish movie is comic relief."

"The best parts are the heavies. The hero is usually someone who has really nothing to do. He comes out on top, but it's the heavy who has all the fun."

"... the hero is usually a very dull, straightforward guy. He's got to be good."

"Is there a better way to die than ... to be watching a movie and then just drop dead? ... with all over you ..."

"Acting, no matter what they say, is the same kind of art as a or a ist. We are interpretive artists, we interpret the ; the major thing is the script, the . And we are as good as the scriptwriters. A certain couple of movies I’ve done, like , really hold up and are as fresh today as they were 35 years ago, because the script was so good. Laura happened to be a classic movie because it was well made, well cast, and the . That’s the kind of thing one longs to do. One doesn’t get that many of them."

"Ernest Crosby, a leading single-taxer and Tolstoyan, who was also a gifted poet and writer."

"If judge and jury had to hang the prisoner themselves in cold blood, there would be fewer executions; if we each had to butcher our own meat, there would be a great increase in the number of vegetarians."

"Religion is not a native category. It is not a first-person term of self-characterization. It is a category imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture."

"Then let my skeleton soulWrithe upward from its loam,Drink red morning again,And look gently home."

"Then no soft arms could hold me from my wilderness To reap at daylight's fallow edge, with bullet or knife,That flicker of hoof or pelt, that flash of wings returning -The dogs trace it - harvest of life that gives me life."

"For he has seen a road by healing watersHushed into wintry slate against the sand,And spoken there with the wind's elfin daughters,And mingled in their dusty saraband.He has known winds that blow from blossomy closes,Rich with the fruity smell of summertide,And kissed warm faery lips... Now he reposes,While we are not quite certain he has died."

"This is an autumn when they come no more.Beech leaves yellow and fall, the beech-mast rotsUneaten. Infertile now the beechHollows its heart, begetting naught.There is frost on the grandson's eyes,And only rumor upon the skies..."

"Father remembered the wild pigeons crowdingBeech groves, mast-rich. The flutter in boughs, the cloudDarkening all, a hurricane circling and surging.Eye lost count, ear could not measure sound.Mind hurled measureless with them, feathered the sky."

"The sky drips its spectral And Gods, like men, to soot revert.Gone is the mild, the serene air.The golden years are come too late.Pursue not wisdom or virtue here,But what blind motion, what dim lastRegret of men who slew their pastRaised up this bribe against their fate."

"The probing knife of madnessCan start a dullard brain;Cold cheeks feel kissesAnd warm with tears again"

"Farewell,Army of Tennessee! Rough glory, rooted here,Feeds the lone vow, the lingering touchOf a late comrade sworn to remember you!Lights glow from river and town. The darkness stabs.And winter sweeps the undefended earth."

"The whispering in the marrow spreads to the brain;The remembering heart carries it round againTill it beats in the throat, the lips, the weeping eyeAnd is born at last in a blazing wordless outcry."

"The seed of Appomattox blooms; its fruitRots where eyes are dazed with a hungry searching,And ears are deaf with steps that murmur and followNo command."

"Why did my father write? I know he sawHistory clutched as a wraith out of blowing mistWhere tongues are loud, and a glut of little soulsLaps at the too much blood and the burning house."

"I want the word that burns into my heartLike God's coal alive on the Prophet's tongue.I would listen now while memory is ablazeTo seal your testament within my soul."

"We mourned with you then in brotherhood,And I'll weep with you now for those whose namesBurn on your monuments like altar flames."

"We, too, have names that blaze on mouldering stoneAnd I have seen men's tears fall where they sleptAnd heard a shouting while I wept,A century off yet louder in my earThan all that's so much magnified and near."

"Something stirs that once had life. It dropsInto the stream, a last act of faith.Seedballs of sycamore, incautious leaves of willow,These have outstayed their autumn, teasing deathOnly so far, not yet beyond all patience.Now they let go."

"Over the ships that are anchored, Over the fleets that part, Over the cities dark by the shore, High as a dream thou art!"

"I've let you teach too many science fiction classes," I said. Dr. Identity's pupils mutated into large asterisks. "It's possible. More likely, however, I'm just a product of the future. and the future's been extinct for a long time."

"North from the beautiful islands, North from the headlands and highlands, The long sea-wall, The white ships flee with the swallow; The day-beams follow and follow, Glitter and fall."

"Now that the wind is tamed and broken, And day gleams over the lea, Row, row, for the one you love Was out on the raging sea: Row, row, row, Sturdy and brave o’er the treacherous wave, Hope like a beacon before, Row, sailor, row Out to the sea from the shore!"

"He is so recognizable, as a wise uncle, who does not talk down to you, who does not make you feel clueless for not understanding the great themes of our lives, but who gently, in language that is both gorgeous and plain, throws on the lights for you, accompanies you on your own journey."

"Words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion within the human heart that can never be reversed."

"Buechner's theological efforts are never systematic treatises but instead short, highly literary productions in most of which he draws explicit links with fiction-writing generally and his own fiction in particular... Buechner's 1969 Noble Lectures at Harvard, published in 1970 as The Alphabet of Grace, comprise a slender volume which is one of his most important and revealing works. Here the intimate relationship Buechner sees among fiction, theology, and autobiography is first made clear and fully embodied; and the book itself is a thoroughly lyrical piece."

"Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him."

"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."

"Religion as a word points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where he senses meanings no less overwhelming because they can be only hinted at in myth and ritual; where he glimpses a destination that he can never know fully until he reaches it."

"Maybe the most sacred function of memory is just that: to render the distinction between past, present, and future ultimately meaningless; to enable us at some level of our being to inhabit that same eternity which it is said that God himself inhabits."