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L. K. Samuels Quotes (1951-)
Author, Activist
About L. K. Samuels
Lawrence K. Samuels (born December 7, 1951) is an American author, classical liberal, and libertarian activist. He is best known as the editor and contributing author of Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer and In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.
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“Paradoxes often arise because theory routinely refuses to be subordinate to reality.”
“Mussolini found much of John Maynard Keynes’s economic theories consistent with fascism.”
“To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war.”
“One could argue that Lenin’s politics were the first modern-day version of fascism and state-corporatism.”
“In the absence of truth, there is no penalty for failure. We seem destined to live in a failure-prone society.”
“The economics of Italian Fascism is often ignored or trivialized because so much of it is found in today’s world economies.”
“When it comes right down to physical war and bloodshed, governments don’t protect people; people protect governments.”
“Government succeeds by failing: the more incompetence, the greater the potential reward in the arena of the public sector.”
“The more complexity, the more unpredictability and therefore the more uncontrollability. You cannot control what you cannot predict.”
“Mussolini doubled the number of Italian bureaucrats under an enormous bureaucracy of committees. By 1934, one Italian in five worked for the government.”
“Hitlerian socialism… was a form of socialism that resembled a combination of utopian socialism and the socialist market economy found in communist China.”
“Every man creates his own private hell,… Brutal men believe they may challenge the mighty, and when they fall, they become embittered or befriend a shallow grave.”
“Although most religions promise paradise after death, most collectivists, especially Marxists, preach paradise on earth, but through means rarely considered heavenly.”
“Decentralized systems are the quintessential patrons of simplicity. They allow complexity to rise to a level at which it is sustainable, and no higher.”
“Because of Hitler’s penchant for nationalistic Social Democracy and Marxian revolutionary violence, Nazism could be easily identified as a militant Social Democratic movement.”
“I had always subscribed to the cockroach theory: if you find one, there are bound to be far more. That meant that Dylan’s mission stank with a hoard of dirty-crawling secrets.”
“Humanity is plagued with monsters. No matter where you run, they will always follow you. My demons are also relentless. A whole team of exorcists could never expel my tormentors.”
“I no longer have a desire to defend the indefensible. I no longer trust the trustless. ‘As it looks now,’ she said, ‘it seems we have become accustomed to harming our people.’”
“On numerous occasions, Benito Mussolini identified his economic policies with “state capitalism”—the exact phrase that Vladimir Lenin used to usher in his New Economic Policy (NEP).”
“I would have turned my mother into the authorities had they promised enough goodies. But then again, the authorities often failed to deliver the promised goods. The liars were always lying.”
“In essence, Mussolini’s fascism was simply an imitation of Lenin’s “third way,” which combined market-based mechanisms and socialism—similar to Red China’s “market socialism.””
L. K. Samuels Quotes by Topic
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L. K. Samuels on Biology
“Complexity has always been difficult to resolve and to understand. Evolutionary biologists were among the first scientists to recognize this problem, when they dug their way toward new theories about evolution. They discovered that matter does not lack purpose.”
L. K. Samuels on Prediction
“Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness.”
L. K. Samuels on Political science
“The revelation that systems organize on their own sat poorly with the apostles of social sciences—especially political scientists who base their theories on imposing external controls to achieve selected political goals. They are accustomed to thinking about government-produced certainties, not ambiguous probabilities. In their linear calculations, humanity must be physically forced to follow the guiding light of political leaders or flavor-of-the-month ideologies. The economy and human actions must march in step with legislative or dictated law, no matter what the outcome. Yet natural systems do not operate this way.”
About L. K. Samuels
Lawrence K. Samuels (born December 7, 1951) is an American author, classical liberal, and libertarian activist. He is best known as the editor and contributing author of Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer and In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.