Rose Wilder Lane Quotes

I somehow always have this idea that as soon as I can get through this work that’s piled up ahead of me, I’ll really write a beautiful thing. But I never do. I always have the idea that someday, somehow, I’ll be living a beautiful life.

We joined long wagon trains moving south; we met hundreds of wagons going north; the roads east and west were crawling lines of families traveling under canvas, looking for work, for another foothold somewhere on the land.... The country was ruined, the whole world was ruined; nothing like this had ever happened before. There was no hope, but everyone felt the courage of despair.

A republic is not possible in the Soviet Union because the aim of its rulers is an economic aim. Economic power differs from political power.

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.

Making the best of things is … a damn poor way of dealing with them.... My whole life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.

Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.

History is nothing whatever but a record of what living persons have done in the past.

The existence of totalitarian states even as ruthlessly implemented as Hitler’s and Stalin’s, cannot destroy personal freedom on earth, for when that ideal came into history only a couple of centuries ago, there wasn’t anything else. The technical development that surged up out of free (released from government control) enterprise make totalitarian states look much more horribly terrific now; but actually, in relation to their time, they are no more totalitarian, no more ruthless and barbarous and bloody, than the France of the Louis’, or than Spain now, or than Pre-Victorian England.

I do not think that any honesty is involved in paying taxes. Taxation is plain armed robbery; tax‐collectors are armed robbers. I will save my property from them in any way that I think I can get away with. If you wake in the night with a flashlight shining in your face and a masked man with a gun ordering you to tell him where your money is, do you feel that you’re morally obliged to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I think you might. I don’t. I will try to get out of that predicament with as little loss as possible. In regard to taxes, this means taking advantage of every legality that any attorney can find in the tax ‘laws’ so called, and regulations. I have no scruples about this whatever, anything that I want to do with my money, and that I can in any way slip under any legality so that the robbers won’t find it and rob me of some of it, I do. They make the legalities, trying to be smart about who gets how much of my property; and to keep as much as possible of my own, I’ll outsmart them if I can.

This rejection of one's self as an individual was, I knew, the spirit animating the members of the Communist Party. I heard that it was the spirit beginning to animate Russia. It was the spirit of Fascism, the spirit that indubitably did revive Italy. Scores, hundreds of the smallest incidents revealed it.

‘Public ownership’ is of course a fantasy. ‘The People,’ ‘The Public,’ do not exist and therefore can’t own anything. ‘Public ownership’ is actually destruction of ownership. Where everyone ostensibly ‘owns’ something, nobody owns it. Who owns a ‘public’ park? or a post office? Complete and absolute ‘public ownership’ is communism, in which nobody owns anything and all persons are inevitably slaves, either willingly obeying or compelled to obey an authority residing outside their own wills. The essential to individual liberty (or more accurately, to the exercise of the individual’s natural self-control and responsibility) is an established legal right to individual ownership of property. Every attack upon ‘private property’ is an attack upon human rights.

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.

Samuel Grafton asked on the radio some weeks ago, for a listeners’ vote on the question; do you want the benefits of Social Security extended to those now excluded from them? Of course, I knew what the announced results would be, but just for shucks… I sent him a postcard saying ‘no’. I signed it Mrs. C. G. Lane (my name) for obvious reasons. Last Saturday, I’m peacefully digging dandelions out of my lawn with a paring knife, when the State Police arrive, in full uniform, complete with gun, and stern and overpowering as hell. The FBI, if you please, is investigating the subversive activities of Mrs. C. G. Lane. It is true that I sent this postcard? (Copy held accusingly before my eyes.) Is it true that I oppose Social Security? What (in effect) do I mean by it? My sense of proportion completely failed; I rose up in fury, and it’s really too bad that only the dandelions heard me. The State Police, really very decent young fellows, tried to explain that they didn’t really mean anything by it, that I should give them credit for coming to me instead of going around collecting evidence against me from the neighbors, and that of course if I’m Rose Wilder Lane—all of which only made me madder, naturally.

Men stood up in Parliament and pointed to the American facts. What had created the clipper ships? Not the American government. Not protection, but lack of protection. What made the British marine second-rate? Safety, shelter, protection under the British Navigation Acts… The result was catastrophe. American clipper ships ran away with the Indian trade. They ran away with the trade in England's own home ports.

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.