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

If reality contradicts your thoughts, that’s delusion. If your thoughts contradict your actions, that’s madness. If reality contradicts your actions, that’s defeat, frustration, self-destruction. And no sane being wants delusion, madness and destruction.

– From the Golden Transcendence, John C. Wright, page 212

Samizdata quote of the day

Brooke’s main achievement seems to have been in preventing Churchill from losing the war.

Patrick Crozier writes about Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke’s War Diaries

Samizdata quote for the day

Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.

Evelyn Waugh, novelist.

Socialism’s irony

Via the excellent India Uncut, I reproduce this shortest – and most revealing – of short stories in its entirety:

Socialism (by Saadat Hasan Manto)

He loaded all his belongings onto a truck and was driving to another town when he was waylaid by a mob. Eyeing the goods greedily, one man said to the other, ‘Just look at all that booty he is decamping with.’ The owner smiled proudly, ‘What you see here is my personal property.’

Some of the men laughed. ‘We know.’

There was a yell from the mob, ‘Don’t let this capitalist get away. He is nothing but a robber with a truck.’

It is a partition-era tale, but still remarkably relevant today – it has been institutionalised and multiplied across society.

Samizdata quote of the day

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

– Hubert H. Humphrey

Not everything left-liberals say is nonsense.

Samizdata quote of the day

“Purchaser shall not sell or transfer any Cat purchased hereunder to anyone other than an immediate family member, and shall not offer to any person the purchase of a Cat or any genetic material from a Cat, the rights Purchaser may have under this Agreement, or any other right related hereto, without the Company’s express written authorization.”

– An extract from the click through licence one is required to agree to when ordering a genetically modified hypoallergenic cat from a company named Allerca. (Via Boingboing).

Samizdata quote of the day

I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion.

– Oriana Fallaci

Samizdata quote of the day

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

H.L. Mencken.

Samizdata quote of the day

Life, faculties, production – in other words, individuality, liberty, property – this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

– Frédéric Bastiat

Samizdata quote of the day

Duke Ellington has more in common with Ravel than with Snoop Dogg. Scott Joplin would have regarded today’s “black culture” as an oxymoron. To eliminate a century and a half’s tradition of beauty and grace from your identity isn’t “keepin’ it real”; it’s keepin’ millions of young black men and women unreal in ways the most malevolent bull-necked racist could never have devised.

Mark Steyn

Samizdata quote of the day

“The moral and political track record of modernist artists is nothing to be proud of. Some were despicable in the conduct of their personal lives, and many embraced facism or Stalinism. The modernist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen described the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos”, and added, enviously, that “artists, too, sometimes go beyond the limits of what is feasible and conceivable, so that we wake up, and that we open ourselves to another world.” Nor is the theory of postmodernism especially progressive. A denial of objective reality is no friend to moral progress, because it prevents one from saying, for example, that slavery or the Holocaust really took place.”

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, page 416.

Samizdata quote of the day

The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.

– Jeff Cooper (10 May 1920 – 25 September 2006)