WIST Quotations

Pitt, William the Elder -- Speech on the Excise Bill, House of Commons (Mar 1763)

Dave — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 22:43:18 +0000

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter! — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!

William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778) British statesman, orator [Lord Chatham, 1st Earl of Chatham]
Speech on the Excise Bill, House of Commons (Mar 1763)
(Source)

Tawney, R. H. -- The Acquisitive Century, ch. 5 “The Functional Society” (1920)

Dave — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 17:09:57 +0000

It is not private ownership, but private ownership divorced from work, which is corrupting to the principle of industry; and the idea of some socialists that private property in land or capital is necessarily mischievous is a piece of scholastic pedantry as absurd as that of those conservatives who would invest all property with some kind of mysterious sanctity.

R. H. Tawney (1880-1962) English writer, economist, historian, social critic [Richard Henry Tawney]
The Acquisitive Century, ch. 5 “The Functional Society” (1920)
(Source)

Lovecraft, H. P. -- Letter (1936-08) to Catherine L. Moore

Dave — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:28:09 +0000

As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their yes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously ) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license, or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical “American heritage” — economic oversight, price-fixing, “government in business”, etc. recur often in American colonial history) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) American fabulist [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
Letter (1936-08) to Catherine L. Moore
(Source)