Tom Bethell Quotes & Sayings

Most conservatives - by which I mean normal people - have little conception of the aggressive and revolutionary force that confronts them. It is a revolutionary force in that it seeks to overturn the existing order, but it differs from the spirit of Marx and Lenin in that it never proclaims itself openly. — Tom Bethell

It is wrong to take half or more of what people earn; wrong to force some people to pay for the support of others, threatening them with jail if they refuse (are in "noncompliance"). — Tom Bethell

[A] private property regime makes people responsible for their own actions in the realm of material goods. Such a system therefore ensures that people experience the consequences of their own acts. Property sets up fences, but it also surrounds us with mirrors, reflecting back upon us the consequences of our own behavior. — Tom Bethell

No one has ever found an organism that is known not to have parents, or a parent. This is the strongest evidence on behalf of evolution. — Tom Bethell

A theory accepted by 99 percent of scientists may be wrong. — Tom Bethell

(P162) The great blessing of private property, then, is that people can benefit from their own industry and insulate themselves from the negative effects of others' actions. It is like a set of invisible mirrors that surround individuals, households or firms, reflecting back on them the consequences of their acts. The industrious will reap the benefits of their industry, the frugal the consequences of their frugality; the improvidant and the profligate likewise. They receive their due, which is to say they experience justice as a matter of routine. Private property institutionalises justice. This is its great virtue, perhaps dwarfing all others. We may say with the economists that private property "internalizes the externalities," or with the philosophers that it gives rise to "social justice. — Tom Bethell

The great blessing of private property, then, is that people can benefit from their own industry and insulate themselves from the negative effects of others' actions. It is like a set of invisible mirrors that surround individuals, households or firms, reflecting back on them the consequences of their acts. The industrious will reap the benefits of their industry; the frugal the consequences of their frugality; the improvident and the profligate likewise. They receive their due, which is to say they experience justice as a matter of routine. — Tom Bethell

A Pulitzer Prize is awaiting the journalist who can find an American who dies of hunger, and probably the Nobel Prize for literature as well. — Tom Bethell