Rose Wilder Lane Quotes

The historical novelty of the Soviet government was its motive. Other governments have existed to keep peace among their subjects, or to amass money from them, or to use them in trade and war for the glory of the men governing them. But the Soviet government exists to do good to its people, whether they like it or not…To that end they have suppressed personal freedom; freedom of movement, of choice of work, freedom of self-expression in ways of life, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience.

We would learn more by looking at America. Oddly enough, statistics appear only in times of agitation and distress. Their function would appear to be that of omens of worse to come. We seem to have a morbid taste for them, like that of children for ghost stories that raise the hair. The American air has not been so full of fragmentary statistics since the Panic of 1893. I read again, for instance, that less than 10 per cent of our population own more than 90 per cent of the wealth… I read also that a hundred years ago 80 per cent of our population owned property and that today the percentage is 23.

In southern Illinois there was a Terror. The Government men went into that country and took no nonsense; they condemned the land—every farm; offered the owners $7 an acre, or nothing. This was a model project, tearing down houses, building new roads, surveying a Community Center all blueprinted. The people were frantic and furious; they hired lawyers, who told them they could do nothing; they tried to get the facts printed; no newspaper dared do it.

In 1933 a group of sincere and ardent collectivists seized control of the Democratic Party, used it as a means of grasping Federal power, and enthusiastically, from motives which many of them regard as the highest idealism, began to make America over. The Democratic Party is now a political mechanism having a genuine political principle: national socialism.

Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-granted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we—because we don’t question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted.

No jailer can compel any prisoner to speak or act against that prisoner's will, but chains can prevent his acting, and a gag can prevent his speaking.

I would question whether, in the dynamics of capitalism, it is true (as Jefferson believed) that it is the distribution of ownership that matters… The man who owned no land was then actually dispossessed. He literally had no right to stand upon the earth. I think myself that the defense of personal freedom depends upon the institution of private property: i.e., the right of every individual to own an actual piece of ground upon which to stand.

When a free person buys insurance from a private company, the company has a profit-motive in remaining solvent, and the government uses it police power properly to enforce the carrying-out of the terms of the contract freely entered into. But when government uses police power to compel a person to buy government insurance, there is no profit motive, and there is no third party existing, to enforce the terms of the contract. It seems to be a most precarious venture, at best.

I want to finish work on my mother's juvenile (Farmer Boy manuscript) by the end of June. There's a curious half-angry reluctance in my writing for other people. I say to myself that whatever earnings there may be are all in the family. Also I seize upon this task as an excuse to postpone my own work.

The American pioneers phrased this clearly and bluntly. They said, ‘Root, hog, or die.’ There can be no third alternative for the shoat let out of the pen, to go where he pleases and do what he likes. Individual liberty is individual responsibility. Whoever makes decisions is responsible for results. When common men were slaves and serfs, they obeyed and they were fed, but they died by thousands in plagues and famines. Free men paid for their freedom by leaving that false and illusory security.

Various authorities have been trying to force a Social Security number on me. They telephone and tell me I MUST have one; since I have none, they are giving me one. I tell them I won’t have it. I get forms, my humble request to be entitled to Social Security benefits; with command, Sign here and return to—I put them in the wastebasket. I get orders to appear at such an hour, such a date, at such an office, with all records and receipts to show cause—I reply that it is not convenient for me to appear—etc., etc. I even get an order to appear and support with documents my claim for refund of the tax‐and‐fine that I paid; I return this, writing across it, I have made no such claim. The telephone rings, and I am informed that I am being given the necessary Social Security number; I say I have none and I shall NOT have one; I will have nothing to do with that Ponzi fraud because it is treason; it will wreck this country as it wrecked Germany; I won’t have it; you can’t make me.

I'm not "filled with my art". I ain't got no art. I've got only a kind of craftsman's skill, and make stories as I make biscuits or embroider underwear or wrap up packages.

So far as is discernible to me, capitalism has no alter-ego, strictly speaking. In theory, capitalism is the economics of a society of free individuals. It rests upon the nature of man; this natural being, that each person is a source of human energy, a dynamo creating life energy, and self-controlling in action… I do not see how there can be an ‘alter-ego’ to this basic reality. One might as well say that there is an alter-ego to the fact that the earth is not flat.

Human minds always are logical; the fallacy always is in the premise, the basic unquestioned assumption, upon which the process of reasoning is based. So in logical return for The Government’s benefits, we are supposed to ‘owe a duty’ to It. The custom of taxation is a remnant of the Incarnate God’s ownership of ‘his people.’ Why do you owe money to Mr. Kennedy? If you need to guard your property, you hire and pay guards, nightwatchmen; if you are a banker you buy and pay for armored cars and hire guards to transport the bank’s gold; if you manage an insurance company you hire and pay detectives to investigate claims against your company. If a foreign power attacks your country, you defend it; you man the tanks, fly the bombers, fire the guns. Is there a need, in reason, to compel persons—by force—to defend their property and themselves? Is there a reason why ‘people cannot do for themselves’ in a free market, everything that The Government is supposed to be doing for them?

It was like being quite alone on the roof of the world. I felt that if I were to go to the edge and look over … I would see below all that I had ever known; all the crowded cities and seas covered with ships, and the clamor of harbors and traffic of rivers, and farmlands being worked, and herds of cattle driven in dust across interminable plains. All the clamor and clatter, confusion of voices, tumults, and conflicts, must still be going on, down there—over the edge, and below—but here there was only the sky, and a stillness made audible by the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me that I felt a part of it, empty myself.