"These are not sentimental considerations; they constitute the mechanism of production and therefore of power. Personal liberty is the pre-condition of the release of energy. Private property is the inductor which initiates the flow. Real money is the transmission line; and the payment of debts comprises half the circuit. An empire is merely a long circuit energy-system. The possibility of a short circuit, ensuing leakage and breakdown or explosion, occurs in the hook-up of political organization to the productive processes. This is not a figure of speech or analogy, but a specific physical description of what happens."
React to this quote
More by Isabel Paterson
See allResonant Thoughts
"The peasants , only a short time free from serfdom, are wretchedly poor. ...The people in that country are about three-fourths illiterate, and the vast majority of the laboring people are peasants. Fl…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"Our liberty is neither Greek nor Roman; but essentially English. It has a character of its own,—a character…"
— Thomas Babington Macaulay"Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison's and H…"
— John Dalberg-Acton"The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expres…"
— David Brooks (journalist)"Some people believe themselves to be independent of surrounding influences because their lives have made re…"
— André Maurois"The pro-feminist male is a wretched, guilt-ridden creature who must at every turn make certain he is not im…"
— Jack Donovan"In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, …"
— Susanna Kaysen
