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

“So you live beyond your means and rack up a bunch of bills you can’t cover. So you go to your rich uncle. He’s tapped out, alas. And tired of supporting you. So he goes to his rich uncle who’s even richer and known for his desire to keep the family name unsullied. But what if he’s tapped out? Those are my thoughts when I read this story that Sarkozy is supporting Merkel in getting the IMF to bail out the Greeks. The IMF is the richer uncle. Eventually the other guy runs out of money. We’re going to have to start borrowing from Mars or Venus soon.”

– Russ Roberts, at the Cafe Hayek blog.

Samizdata quote of the day

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

– P. J. O’Rourke

Samizdata quote of the day

Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking “why?” It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small.

Cory Doctorow

Samizdata quote of the day

There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.

– William Gladstone

Samizdata quote of the day

Repeat after me, you greenie morons … cold kills, cold kills, cold kills … greenies kill. You granny killers should be up for manslaughter.

– The indefatigable Richard North spells out just how much worse cold weather is than hot weather.

Samizdata quote of the day

“In the 19th century, the British would have answered Mr Riley-Smith’s question “What has trade to do with human understanding” very readily. It has a great deal to do with it, we would have said. Commerce is the main means of peaceful intercourse with other people. It is the circulatory system of the world. It is part of the constitution of liberty which, as the author rightly says, we exported to America. If we have forgotten this, it is we, not the United States who are – both metaphorically and literally – the poorer.”

Charles Moore, writing about what he regards as an interesting but in some ways wrong-headed book about America by Tristram Riley-Smith.

Samizdata quote of the day


Jack lost his iPhone last night. He has therefore been stuck at home on his Playstation 3 all day.

– An (early twenties, male) customer overheard in a coffee bar in the East End yesterday afternoon. I can understand how the world outside the front door is a scary, scary place if it is just you, completely unaugmented.

Samizdata quote of the day

The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.

– Lysander Spooner

Samizdata quote of the day

“By God, The Guardian is a loathsome newspaper; a local north London morning daily for Stalinist metro libtards, perpetually arrogant, snobbish, self-righteous, humourless, dull, relentlessly middle class, cowardly and cheap.”

Rod Liddle

As regulars know, I am not Mr Liddle’s greatest fan but when he is on form, he really hits it out of the park, as they say in baseball. The whole piece is an exhilerating piece of invective, all the more delicious in that its targets deserve everything they get.

Brown went wilde in government

Gordon Brown must have read Oscar Wilde when he was studying as he has spent his entire career implementng one of his aphorisms in government:

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes

For this reason, he will be remembered for a very long time

Samizdata quote of the day

Personally, I’d like to see some Congressmen forced to testify before a panel of car dealers, about the budget deficit’s Sudden Acceleration Problem.

Instapundit reflects on the travails of Toyota.

Samizdata quote of the day

Every time Labour show a whiff of recovery the pound crashes.

– Guido Fawkes comments on his graph showing that The Market Hates Labour.