"A common error […] is to identify tyranny and monarchy, which in fact are quite unrelated political forms—all they share is the coincidence of personal rule. We may not all know it, but we'd almost all rather live under the "autocratic" and "absolutist" tsars than under Stalin."

"[M]ost of the advances in Western scientific history, contrary to popular belief, occurred when scientists were not servants of the state."

"Journalism […] looks like an unfree market because it is tied so closely to the unfree market of higher education."

"[P]ower in a democracy is held by those who manage public opinion."

"[A]s long as the actions of two parties advance each others' interests, they can be considered allies, even if their philosophies of the world are so utterly opposed that they cannot afford the luxury of any such favorable reference."

"A political formula is a belief that makes the ruled accept their rulers. Since the former tend to outnumber the latter, a political formula is, if not absolutely essential, an excellent way to cut down on your security costs."

"a foreign traveler in 1864 […] asked some random American to explain the war. "It's the conquest of America by Massachusetts," was the answer. Massachusetts, of course, later went on to conquer first Europe and then the entire planet, the views of whose elites as of 2007 bear a surprisingly coincidental resemblance to those held at Harvard in 1945."

"In a democracy with a free press, the press is the government. Public opinion on any subject will naturally shift toward the opinions of those who explain that subject to the public."

"In the English language as we use it now, words like progressive and conservative are actually relative designations. Progressive means "left of the mainstream" and conservative means "right of the mainstream." When the mainstream shifts, these words have to shift as well, and the result is that many of the radical left-wing ideas of 1907 would be radical right-wing ideas in 2007."

"The temptation to reform, rather than abandon, the adaptive fiction is omnipresent."

"[T]he continuity of tradition from Plymouth Rock to the United Nations is quite unmistakable."

"The secret of power is that power and responsibility are the same thing."

"Limited government simply has no motivation to stay limited. And so it doesn't."

"Conservatives cannot admit that conservatism is futile, because then they'd have nothing to do. No man will willingly abolish his own occupation."

"The problem with the permanent bureaucracy is that any enterprise controlled by its own employees tends to expand without limit."

"[I]n a free society, there is no such thing as official truth."

"It is a commonly held misconception that elected politicians hold any significant power in the current Western system of government. At best they represent figureheads around which power coalesces, and you can follow the power by following the name, as if it were a small and dusty bobber attached to a large and energetic fish."

"In the twenty-first century, any writer whose work appears anywhere but his own blog is a shill. Or at least, he should be assumed to be compromised unless proven otherwise. The Internet has all the tools you need to write and be read without being beholden to anyone. If anyone rejects this independence, you have to wonder why."

"The problem today is that the people who think they are the most daring are in fact the most obsequious."

"[T]axation is not theft. Taxation is rent."

"[R]evenue-maximizing government is not a medieval atrocity from the past, but a permanent feature of human history whose rare exceptions are unstable and undesirable."

"In fact, the word racism is applied in almost exactly the same way, by almost exactly the same authorities, as atheism in 1811. It is an omnibus epithet for a tremendous variety of ideas and opinions which responsible authorities find dangerous or displeasing."

"The artists of today produce kitsch because they're rebelling against a fictitious power structure by supporting a real one."

"[T]he state is simply a real-estate business on a very large scale."

"In fact, rationalism is to reason as scientism is to science."

"[T]he modern world has largely replaced religion, defined as the veneration of paranormal beings, with idealism, defined as the veneration of mysterious universal principles."

"Limited government is a recipe for corrupting the judiciary."

"A good way to find the most powerful people in the US is to find the most responsible people. No one in the US is scheming for power. A lot of them seem to be working for change. No one in the US is brainwashing the masses. A lot of them seem to be educating the public. No one in the US is ruling the world. A lot of them seem to be making global policies."

"Since the ideal of limited government—that is, the idea that sovereignty cannot be the rightful property of anyone, individual, family, or corporation—has become general, we have seen an extraordinary level of violence, which appears to be connected to the question of who should control and receive the revenues of sovereignty."

"[U]niversal faith in progress is evidence for, not against, decline."

"The First Republic was the Congressional regime, which illegally abolished the British colonial governments. The Second Republic was the Constitutional regime, which illegally abolished the Articles of Confederation. The Third Republic was the Unionist regime, which illegally abolished the principle of federalism. The Fourth Republic is the New Deal regime, which illegally abolished the principle of limited government."

"For obvious reasons of human psychology, journalists […] are likely to favor political systems in which they themselves are more important and powerful."

"[T]he hardest part of thinking clearly is recognizing false assumptions that are universally shared."

"There is no institution to which one can go in order to receive a sound paleoconservative education. Most of the people in the idea trade would simply deny that such a thing exists. Safeway will sell you a whole, salted rhinoceros head before Harvard will teach you that Lincoln was a tyrant."

"An alien perspective is useful because it is not, at least not obviously, influenced by the ideas that are loose in the world today."

"[E]very kind of human action has become shrouded in a vast cloud of something called "ethics", which no one can define, but no one is allowed to question. An actual holy book would be a serious improvement."

"The essential idea of leftism is that the world should be governed by scholars."

"That's always the trouble with history. It always looks like it's over. But it never is."

"The genius of New Deal "liberal democracy" is that while it's somewhat liberal, it's not at all democratic. It is in fact designed specifically to resist democracy. The combination of this design with a civic creed that assigns unlimited positive connotations to the word democracy is simply brilliant. We may despise it, but we have to admire it."

"All decent, reasonable men are horrified by the idea that the government might control the press. None of them seem concerned at all that the press might control the government."

"Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought. If you believe the status quo of 2007 is basically righteous, then you should believe the same thing if a time machine transported you to Vienna in 1907. But if you went around Vienna in 1907 saying that there should be a European Union, that Africans and Arabs should rule their own countries and even colonize Europe, that any form of government except parliamentary democracy is evil, that paper money is good for business, that all doctors should work for the state, etc., etc.—well, you could probably find people who agreed with you. They wouldn't call themselves "moderates", and nor would anyone else."

"Replacing your own ideology is a lot like do-it-yourself brain surgery."

"In fact, it's basically impossible to combine a system in which agreements stay agreed with one in which equality stays equal."

"The other day I was tinkering around in my garage and I decided to build a new ideology."

"I can't imagine counting the number of times I've heard someone say "we should…" when what they really mean is "the government should…"."

"Technical advances have masked, and continue to mask, the signs of decay that would otherwise be obvious."

"Democratic politics is best understood as a sort of symbolic violence, like deciding who wins the battle by how many troops they brought."

"Most people in the West don't think their entire system of government is fundamentally, irreparably corrupt. Nor did most people in the Soviet Union."

"[T]he ruling caste are the people who say "we" when they mean "the government". The ruled castes always say "they"."

"In fact, natural selection tends to favor the ascent of ideologies which not only are ineffective, but actually iatrogenic. In other words, the solution is actually causing the problem it purports to be trying to solve."