We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it’s only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater

– Milton Friedman

Samizdata quote of the day

Andrew Keen: Are you comparing the Instapundit, the idiotic crazy libertarian ex-law professor, to Polly Toynbee and Robert Fisk? They are my heroes!

Adriana Lukas: No, I am not comparing Instapundit to Polly Toynbee or Robert Fisk. That would be unfair to Instapundit.

– Adriana Lukas, speaking at a debate at the Front Line Club.

Samizdata quote of the day

I believe taxes – of all kinds – should be kept as low as possible and that the pressure to get them down should be relentless… Taxes on income are taxes on effort, work and entrepreneurship. Taxes on capital are taxes on investment and risk taking. But it is effort, work, entrepreneurship, investment and risk taking that we need to continue to grow our economic base.

Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner.

Samizdata quote of the day

Go on, have a rich dessert…before Labour makes it illegal.

Michael Jennings, Samizdata contributor and epicure, at dinner earlier this week

Samizdata quote of the day

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents ‘interests’, I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

– Barry Goldwater, the greatest president America never had.

Samizdata quote of the day

Tabloids don’t sell movies or help anyone’s career. If that were true, every Lindsay Lohan movie would open to 80 million dollars.

– Cameron Diaz, putting the much vaunted ‘power of the media’ into perspective.

And you thought Al Qaeda was bad…

Samizdata quote of the day

Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day and say: I’m free to think and to speak.

– Actor Jimmy Stewart

Samizdata quote of the day

“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time – that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”

Carlo Rovelli. Remember this next time you turn up late for an appointment.

Samizdata quote of the day

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

– Thomas Jefferson

Samizdata quote of the day

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation

– Saki, from ‘The Square Egg’ (1924).

Samizdata quote of the day

I would like to emphasise that we by no means strive to seize full power and to dominate the Afghan policy. Our aim is not to have the upper hand in Afghanistan. No at all! What we struggle for is something else: there should be Afghanistan where every Afghan finds himself or herself – irrespective of sex – happy. I am deeply convinced that this can only be ensured by democracy and a democratically elected government, based on consensus. It is only then that we can indeed solve a number of problems that have been besetting Afghan people. The true solution lies only in such a political and social situation and only with such a type of administration when all the tribes, all the ethnic groups and all people will see themselves fairly represented.

Ahmed Shah Masoud, the ‘Lion of the Panjshir’, one of the greatest guerilla leaders and in my view the most admirable one since the American Revolution, from an interview shortly before his assassination by Islamofascists.