Isabel Paterson
Isabel Paterson
Isabel Patersonwas a Canadian-American journalist, novelist, political philosopher, and a leading literary and cultural critic of her day. Along with Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson, she is one of the three founding mothers of American libertarianism. Paterson's best-known work, her 1943 book The God of the Machine, a treatise on political philosophy, economics, and history, reached conclusions and espoused beliefs that many libertarians credit as a foundation of their philosophy. Her...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth22 January 1886
CountryCanada
Every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.
The only way to prevent prostitution altogether would be to imprison one half of the human race.
An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.
The great truth is that women actually like men, and men can never believe it.
If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.
Not uncommonly one hears some romantic young woman say, 'Oh, I would give anything to be a writer.' But she would not; and 'anything' is not enough. One must give everything.
If you go back 150 years you are a reactionary; but if you go back 1000 years, you are in the foremost ranks of progress.
Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.
One genius is about all a house will hold.
The craving for power is in itself a sign of inferior abilities and unfitness for responsibility.
Leadership is obliged to justify itself daily.
Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status.