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]
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Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
– Bertrand Russell
“Cleanse The State With The Blood of Martyrs”, rumbled Three Yoked Oxen. Rincewind spun around and waved a finger under Three Yoked Oxen’s nose, which was as high as he could reach. “I’ll bloody well thump you if you trot out something like that one more time!” he shouted, and then grimaced at the realisation that he had just threatened a man three times heavier than he was. “Listen to me, will you? I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It’s never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting “Forward, brave commrades!” you’ll see he’s the one behind the bloody big rock and wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!”
– Rincewind, the Wizard from Terry Pratchett’s Interesting Times
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.
– Alan Corenk
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a gun”
(With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke. This one came up on a computer newsgroup discussing open-source projects that would let anyone bypass censorship limitations such as Yahoo has imposed in China.)
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in men’s Eyes much wrong:
Have drown’d my Honour in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song
– The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 69, First Edition
The constant expansion of the market, both in extensiveness and in intensity, was the result of an absence of a political order extending over the whole of Western Europe
– Jean Baechler, The Origins of Capitalism
When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before.
– H.L. Mencken
Gun control? It’s the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I’m a bad guy, I’m always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You’ll pull the trigger with a lock on, and I’ll pull the trigger. We’ll see who wins.
– Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano, Mafia hit man
The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside…Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them…
– Thomas Paine, Thoughts on Defensive War in 1775
No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion.
– James Burgh from Political Disquisitions: or, an Enquiry into Public
Errors, Defects, and Abuses, London, 1774-1775
The mind cannot foresee its own advance
– F.A. Hayek
 
No, not that Hayek… this one!
Princes and democratic majorities are drunk with power. They must reluctantly admit that they are subject to the laws of nature. But they reject the very notion of economic law.
– Ludwig von Mises, Human action: A Treatise on Economics
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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